The adoption of Internet-related technologies throughout industrial communication systems enables web-based solutions for their management. This requires effective methods for modeling and description of the managed systems and components. The Extensible Markup Language XML provides a promising solution for a general-purpose description. Based on exemplary solutions for different fieldbusses, the paper shows concepts, description methods, software tools, and migration paths in XML-based frameworks. These frameworks use a hierarchically organized structure of linked XML description files. Appropriate solutions using style sheets and scripts are explained. Special attention is paid to description approaches suitable for an integration of heterogeneous systems into a unique management framework.