The Future of XML

Improvements to Web Publishing

• The Layout Problem
• More versatile ways of displaying data
• Searching and Agents
• Exchange information between different systems

Jon Bosak's four applications where XML will make a difference

1. Applications that require the Web client to mediate between two or more heterogeneous databases.
2. Applications that attempt to distribute a significant proportion of the processing load from the Web server to the Web client.
3. Applications that require the Web client to present different views of the same data to different users.
4. Applications in which intelligent Web agents attempt to tailor information discovery to the needs of individual users.

The alternative to XML for these applications is proprietary code embedded as "script elements" in HTML documents and delivered in conjunction with proprietary browser plug-ins or Java applets. XML derives from a philosophy that data belongs to its creators and that content providers are best served by a data format that does not bind them to particular script languages, authoring tools, and delivery engines but provides a standardized, vendor-independent, level playing field upon which different authoring and delivery tools may freely compete.

Doing Business on the Web

• "Well, the Web itself is awfully big, but XML may render such breathless sentences prescient. Here's the pitch: Websites are built using markup languages--sets of rules for displaying information on a Web page. Today's standard language, HTML (hypertext markup language), was chosen at the dawn of the Web for its simplicity and the ease with which it combined pictures with plain text. This very simplicity, though, makes the Web in its current form a very tough place to do business."
• HTML simply lacks the software muscle to handle the business world's endless and complex transactions. "I call it Macbeth Multimedia," says Glushko, "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
• The Web's original markup language made it easy for humans to read Websites; XML makes it easy for machines to read them.
• XML makes Websites smart enough to tell other machines whether they're looking at a recipe, an airline ticket or a pair of easy-fit blue jeans with a 34-in. waist.
• any entrepreneurs who do business on the Net will need only to create a set of agreed-upon tags to make it immeasurably easier to buy and sell and communicate with one another and with their customers.
• Even in its infancy, XML tends to inspire daydreams at that level. Next year we'll find out how many of them actually come true.

Synchronized Surfing

• Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language (SMIL) describes a simple markup language that lets developers synchronize content--such as text and voice--without arcane scripting.
• SMIL is based on XML
• SMIL lets developers create content with low-bandwidth media types, such as text and graphics.
• The user experience will be similar to what people have traditionally described as interactive television.

Problems with XML (my opinions/observations)

• A little more complex for average HTML user
• "Strict" compared to HTML (like Ada is to C/C++)
• Require higher download bandwidth
• HTML Legacy documents
• XSL is still not a standard
• have to go get a new browser ($)