Still news

[Michael Champion]

----- Original Message -----
From: Tim Bray <tbray at textuality.com>
To: <xml-dev at ic.ac.uk>
Sent: Tuesday, November 23, 1999 2:18 PM
Subject: Still news


> XML is the cover story on PC week; coverage effusive even by the standards
> we've started getting used to.  Check out http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/

And InfoWorld as well -- although the coverage is not at all effusive (The
overall headline is "Tag Trouble" and the title of the lead article is "XML
stumbling blocks").  The actual articles are fairly positive, however.  I
especially like the interview with Simon Phipps.
http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?interviews/991122phipps.htm

When asked the usual question about the e-commerce standards and the danger
that MS or someone will impose proprietary formats and protocols, he
replied:

"[Y]have to first of all understand that the most important XML standard is
actually XSL [Extensible Style Language], not XML. What's going to happen
with XML is that people are going to represent their business data
structures as hierarchical data structures marked up with XML. Let's assume
that you and I are in the same business. We have a different business model
because we are in different businesses. Therefore, it's likely that we will
have different hierarchical data structures for the way we represent data.
So, just for you and me -- in the same business -- to express ourselves, we
will probably need to have slightly different vocabularies. Consequently,
the lifeblood of all business to business in XML is going to be
transformation. And if the lifeblood of XML is going to be transformation,
it doesn't really matter if vendors produce slightly different XML standards
because at least the data's all marked up."


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