The adoption of Internet-related technologies throughout industrial communication systems enables web-based solutions for their management. This requires effective methods for modelling 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 like CAN and P-NET, the paper shows concepts, description methods, software tools, and migration paths in XML-based frameworks. These frameworks use a hierarchically organized structure of dedicated XML description files, that are extensively linked together depending on the target systems' configurations and on the stages in their life cycles. Although modern web-browsers have built-in support for XML, specific formatting instructions have to be used in different contexts. 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. Relations between existing web-based management concepts and frameworks using XML descriptions are shown. Furthermore, the important task of generating reusable software components based on XML descriptions are discussed, and interfaces to the software design process are pointed out. Experiences and results of practical implementations are discussed, and further trends are highlighted.