SVG allows for two types of graphic objects:
· Shapes (paths consisting of straight lines and curves, polygons, squares, circles etc)
· Text.

SVG Features

SVG has many advantages over other image formats, and particularly over JPEG and GIF.
· Open standard - SVG is an open recommendation developed by a cross-industry consortium. Unlike some other graphics formats, SVG is not proprietary.
· Plain text format - SVG files can be read and modified by a range of tools, and are usually much smaller and more compressible than comparable JPEG or GIF images.
· Scalable - SVG is a vector format, which means SVG images can be printed with high quality at any resolution, without the "staircase" effects you see when printing bitmapped images.
· Zoomable - You can zoom in on any portion of an SVG image and not see any degradation.
· Searchable and selectable text - Text in SVG is selectable and searchable. For example, you can search for specific text strings, like city names in a map.
· Scripting and animation - SVG enables dynamic and interactive graphics. A rich set of event handlers such as onmouseover and onclick can be assigned to any SVG graphical object.
· Works with Java technology - SVG complements Java technologies' high end graphics engine.
· True XML – As SVG is an XML grammar, SVG can be generated on web servers "on the fly," using standard XML tools, many of which are written in the Java programming language.