Supporting SBML as a model exchange format in software applications.

This chapter describes the Systems Biology Markup Language (SBML) from its origins. It describes the rationale behind and importance of having a common language when it comes to representing models. This chapter mentions the development of SBML and outlines the structure of an SBML model. It provides a section on libSBML, a useful application programming interface (API) library for reading, writing, manipulating and validating content expressed in the SBML format. Finally the chapter also provides a description of the SBML Toolbox which provides a means of facilitating the import and export of SBML from both MATLAB and Octave ( http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/) environments.