XML Makes Its Way into the Enterprise

Software Magazine, Sept, 1999 by Elizabeth U. Harding

XML is a universal data format touted as "the great enabler for electronic commerce." While some industry watchers caution that XML (Extensible Markup Language) might make existing data more verbose because it adds tags and attributes, most will probably agree that XML can live up to the hype, depending on how it's used.

"What makes XML usable are standards and tools," says J.P. Morgenthal, chief technology officer, TechSolv Inc., Uniondale, N.Y. "Until these come to bear, XML is just a drop in the bucket."

Currently, there are at least two major standards in competition. There is Oasis, a nonprofit, international consortium dedicated to accelerating the adoption of product-independent formats based on public standards, including XML. Sun Microsystems and IBM are among the vendor supporters. And then there is Microsoft's BizTalk XML framework and server.

Not all agree that BizTalk and Oasis are in competition. Clarus Corp., Suwannee, Ga., offers Clarus Commerce on Microsoft platforms only. The product leverages XML through Microsoft's BizTalk, which Steve Hornyak, vice president of strategy and business development for Clarus, views as "consistent" with Oasis. "Microsoft is consistent with Oasis from a foundation perspective and will leverage what Oasis has built to bring true business solutions to the market," he says.

An IBM spokesman sees that customers will be seeking consistent XML definitions. "The standard of XML is not going to be left in the hands of technologists--it's driven by business people creating business relationships," says Scott Hebner, program director for Java and e-business technology marketing, IBM Software Group, Somers, N.Y. "Therefore, it's much less likely that you will have fragmentation of the XML standard."

In Hebner's view, Java boosted the momentum for XML. Java provides interchange and portability of business logic in an open network; HTML provides the same for presentation; and XML provides the same for data. "Together, they provide an open programming model for the Internet," he says.

IBM is in the process of XML-enabling its application framework for e-business, Hebner says. Among IBM products with XML support are MQSeries, DB2, VisualAge, and Lotus Notes/Domino.

The types of applications IT organizations can build will be revolutionized by XML, suggests Coco Jaenicke, product manager, Object Design Inc. (ODI), Burlington, Mass. Today's e-business applications are in many cases automating what had been done manually. "The next wave of e-business applications is going to be better than the brick and mortar version," she says. XML will enable firms to leverage bits of information that make each business different.

ODI's eXcelon product is an e-business information server that aims to take XML beyond a platform-independent data-exchange format. "Some people look at XML just as a transport mechanism," says Jaenicke. "But XML is more than that." It is a data format for e-business that can be extended as the business is built. Tools should support the extensibility of XML, she advises.

When choosing products, define requirements carefully, suggests Dr. Charles Goldfarb, co-inventor of General Markup Language (GML) which led to the Standardized GML (SGML), an ISO standard for defining the format in a text document. XML is a subset of SGML that is more flexible than the standard HTML format, which uses a fixed set of tags. XML allows tags to be defined by the developer of the page. The definition of these tags is provided in a Document Type Definition (DTD).

"XML addresses such a broad set of categories," says Dr. Goldfarb, who is co-author of the XML Handbook Series by Prentice Hall. "You need to pinpoint your requirements carefully."

ODI's Jaenicke groups the XML-based products just getting off the ground into three basic categories: 1) Products that get XML--these are tools that go to non-XML sources and then convert them to XML. 2) Products that manage XML--management tools and servers, such as ODI's eXcelon. 3) Products that consume XML--application servers that help build data-driven applications.

"You want to look at XML for internal and external use," says Keith Lowery, chief technology officer, InfoSpinner Inc., Richardson, Texas, maker of the ForeSite Application Server. "Externally, the race is on for defining XML standards-based business-to-business data exchange. But internally, XML is also a good vehicle for exchanging internal information between incompatible enterprise systems."