The XML-DEV discussion list - the open, unmoderated list supporting XML implementation and development and managed by OASIS - recently considered the burning question of whether XML is complete...or is still missing something. Renowned XML expert Simon St. Laurent, who initia...

It's often said that history repeats itself - and by studying history we gain better insight into our current (and future) society. In the late 1800s the telegraph was immensely popular, but telegraphs only connected telegraph offices. Messages still had to be transcribed into a paper ...

In the June issue of XML-Journal I mentioned that we need a set of best practices that rein in the complexities of XML Schema. The set offered at www.xfront.com is a great start, but they cater to the XML Schema extremists, and I'd like to modify them, offering some alternative bes...

During the late '90s and the early part of 2000, many people were busily working in startup X or Y, gleefully anticipating an initial public offering and the promise of cashing in on the New Economy.

Rube Goldberg, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist who illustrated complex ways to achieve easy results, saw his cartoons as 'symbols of man's capacity for exerting maximum effort to accomplish minimal results.' He believed there were two ways to do things: simple and hard, and that a su...

Every large corporation is a publisher, whether or not it knows it. User manuals, installation guides, repair manuals, corporate information, even internal documents like employee handbooks take weeks to draft, finalize, publish, and distribute. Ask any corporate information specialist...

The inaugural issue of XML-Journal was published in the first quarter of the new millennium. Then just two years old, XML already seemed to hold almost unlimited promise, and few seemed to doubt that XML technologies had excellent prospects for the 21st century that lay ahead of us. Bu...

Since its inception, XML has gained a strong foothold on Wall Street, but the use of XSLT for financial applications has been selective. This article reviews a real-world case study involving XSLT (and other 'new' technology tools) that led to impressive business results.

Graduating Guy was president of the Students Against Sweatshops organization at NYU. A strong voice for equal rights, he spoke at many gay rights rallies and almost any other social reform event. Newly graduated, he now works at Andersen Consulting and plans to vote Republican in t...

Companies have long dreamed of assembling their enterprise systems from a collection of network building blocks. CORBA and DCOM, both early attempts at tackling this problem, never got very far in terms of adoption. But now that Web services have burst onto the scene, it looks like SOA...

During the past few months I've seen several discussions on the validity of the term XML developer. Does this breed of developer exist in today's computing industry? Has XML matured to a stage that it warrants job descriptions for developers who specialize in XML programming? Is there ...

In case you haven't heard of him, Wopr is a military computer that was prominently featured in the movie Wargames. He was tied into all of the world's major networks, which caused problems since his primary purpose (for some reason) was to wage nuclear war on himself. The brat pack def...

As Java and XML continue as the de facto standard for developing enterprise applications, issues arise in using these technologies. For example, the need to store XML data, and the criteria for selecting the appropriate repository. Here's a real-world example of how applying XML to the...

While the short-term payoff of Web services technologies like SOAP and WSDL is faster, cheaper, simpler integration, I believe the long-term benefits will be more profound. Specifically, I think that Web services will catalyze a trend toward service-oriented architectures in which ente...

Currently Enhydra is receiving lots of attention for its capabilities as a server for wireless applications, but application service providers (ASPs) can use it to improve their ability to provide custom branding while at the same time reducing development costs. This article outlines ...

The Transforming Robot is a 20-ft-tall humanoid machine that can turn into an airplane. He used this talent to become a film and television star in the 1980s, but he soon found himself without a job in the '90s. He was excited to hear about XSLT, remarking at the code, 'There's more he...

It sounds so easy. First, get a bunch of people together who share a common need to interchange some type of data - say, invoices. Explain XML to them. Explain the significant technical benefits of having an industry standard schema for invoices. Get technically minded individ...

No one can beat my kung fu style! I don't care if you're a Java programmer, Orc, or both. I'll defeat you either way. The rest of the office is in fear of my l33t programming skills, and my constant Nerf dart gun fights in the office. But I think most of the fear is from the former.

Now that the age of limitless optimism is over and it's trendy to be cynical, I hear many Web services cynics remark that there's nothing new here. They're just components. Been there, done that, and in fact we called it CORBA (or COM). This leads to the inevitable questions about what...

Kris Kringle's history is kind of a mystery. He didn't seem too interested in giving us much information on his technical experience. We know that he started working in Russia, so maybe he knows Cobol or something. Regardless, unlike normal celebrities he is a wise and innocent sage. W...

There was a period around 1999-2000 when anything XML was hyped beyond belief. An XML-centric GUI tool, no matter how narrow in focus, attracted interest and, often enough, VC funding. The net result was a myriad of XML tools - really XML gadgets - that tried to address a large number ...

That's right. I always knew my talent for making unorthodox spiderwebs would come in handy someday. And this past year it really has. I used my talents to save a friend from the ax. And I can do the same for you. Let me explain.

I can still remember the first time I met Dr. Charles Goldfarb (the father of XML and one of the creators of SGML). It was early 1998 and the specification had just become public. We were on an XML panel at a conference and were asked what we thought were the strengths of XML. Charles ...

Have you created me just to destroy me? Do your Malthusian curiosities know no bounds? Will your overnight torture sessions, using me mercilessly in your infantile games, ever be brought to justice? I have a good alternate activity for you: do your freakin' job. In fact, I'll help you,...

Is XML required for Web services? Not necessarily. Developers have been designing and building 'Web services-like' solutions for several years - long before the term Web services (or the Web, for that matter) existed. RPC introduced the concept of location transparency - distributed ob...

Hel-LO there! I've started using XML recently, and let me tell you, I CAN'T live without it now! LOL! XML can really help you keep track of your computer files, IMHO. That is, if your computer needs as much organizing as mine does, anyway ;-). If you don't think you need that, ...

Listen up! This is your security chief talking about XML encryption. I better not catch any of you dozing during my speech, because my Laser Pointer is set to stun! I have found that our online databases contain some unencrypted XML information. This is unacceptable!

Process- or workflow-based applications are making a comeback. They ease the concept of plug-and-play functionality by separating application logic into discrete individual components that can be replaced at deployment time by existing infrastructure logic. This type of approach allows...

In previous articles in XML-J (Vol. 2, issues 3, 4) we documented the thought processes involved in Crossmark's development of a knowledge management system using NeoCore's XML Information Server. Although the first version of the application isn't yet complete, we'd like to share some...

Many companies have been building P2P systems for a number of years, even before Napster made P2P famous. In fact, P2P has been around for a long time under other names. Distributed computing is the most accurate - it captures the essential idea the best.

For the past 20+ years SQL has been the predominant query language, but is it now time for a change? The W3C XML Query Workgroup was chartered to develop a query language for XML. It was formed by a large group of companies, each with a wide range of objectives for their particular pro...

For service companies, such as eye-care chains and auto maintenance shops, the time spent performing the service is their inventory so lost time means lost money. Customers who call a business and are frustrated by the time spent on hold or wading through a touch-tone system (punch 1 f...

Since agreeing to chronicle the thought process behind CROSSMARK's Knowledge Management System (KMS) and the use of NeoCore's XML Information Server, I've been involved in two incidents that convinced me that CROSSMARK needs both of these to be successful.

XML is changing the business world by making integration easier. You can't pick up a computer industry or business magazine without seeing an article about the impact of XML on large software infrastructure companies such as Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP.

People are beginning to understand the power of XML. It's an enabler for structured communication within and between companies. XML-formatted documents are used for Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) projects to exchange data between disparate systems within an enterprise and B2B...

Do you really have to spend $50,000 a year and commit to spending that amount for each of the next three years to have formal input to the W3C process? Well...yes and no. If you expect to have hands-on influence in the development of W3C Recommendations for XML and other Web techno...

In today's competitive environment if a company isn't knee-deep in e-business, many times it's not in business at all. Organizations have realized that leveraging the Internet can give them tremendous competitive advantages, but along with these advantages comes increased challenges.

There's no doubt about it, Web services are a hot topic in the XML world. It's somewhat ironic that when Jon Bosak, then an online information technology architect at Sun, brought a group of us together in 1996 to bring the powerful concept of generic markup to the Web, Web services we...

Many products currently support XML as an input/output format; that is, they can translate back and forth between their internal data formats and APIs and those of XML. Such XML-enabled products have many advantages over their competitors that don't support XML. They can more easily ex...

Managing a company's IT infrastructure has become more complicated in recent years. The tools at the disposal of IT managers haven't quite figured out how to work together to deal with this complexity. Instead, to understand how the infrastructure is actually supporting the business, I...