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Lisa,
I assume Steven is actually referring to the difference between using XML
for document mark-up and using XML for other applications, and is asking whether
most work is still being done with the former, or the latter. (Although
thanks for the update on your products!)
For my
two-penneth worth, I think the areas Steven mentions - XML-RPC and SOAP -
and the one that Lisa refers to, WebDAV, are going to be more significant than
even the XML revolution itself. Is this possible, I hear you ask? Bigger? Surely
not?
Well,
yes, because although a standardised document mark-up is a great step forward,
the issue of exchanging that information is still posed. Systems have to
understand each other, and even if the documents that they communicate are
standardised, the manner of their communication must be too. Steven asked
for examples. We recently did another recruitment site, and decided as an
experiment to see how far we could integrate the client's existing systems with
our web server's database, with as little disruption as possible to their
existing processes. Now the document mark-up standpoint
would emphasise that we should use a standard format for the vacancies and
CVs - although finding a good one is difficult. But surely more interesting
is finding a means of conveying that information that can be used time
and again. In the end we used SOAP; we placed a SOAP client and
server on their intranet so it could see their database, and then allowed
it to talk to our server. No ODBC connections, DCOM problems or firewall
gotchas. And we can use the whole technique again, regardless of whether the
next client has a relational, object or ferret database. As I've said
before, I think SOAP is a real step forward on XML-RPC, so if you're about to
look at XML-RPC, go straight for SOAP. It's a little extra work, but worth it.
But both of them are a real leap ahead of the many other distributed techniques
that end up being quite proprietary.
Another technique that I think will really take off is
WebDAV. Lisa referred to it in relation to Exchange. For a site we recently got
going, we have to deal with five publications three of which are weekly. These
come out of PageMaker, but get stored as XML for the usual reasons. Now again,
it is easy to get distracted by what seems to be the issue - what standard
should we use to structure the articles? Well, we went for XMLNews, but we can
change it at any time by updating our schema, so who cares? The really tricky
bit is how to give geographically separate journalists the ability to import
articles to the system in a quick and reliable fashion. Well, we wrote a WebDAV
layer that sits on top of the XML store. For now, users navigate through the
store with Microsoft's Web Folders because it's a readily available WebDAV
client, but now we've proved the concept we will replace that. They drag the
article in HTML (exported from PageMaker) into the Web Folder, which sends it to
our WebDAV server, which then converts it to XHTML (tacking on one of the three
namespaces - told you you needed three ...) applies the stylesheet applicable to
the folder imported into and then imports the resulting structure into the
store.
Now,
any WebDAV client could be used here - and obviously someone will come up with
the ultimate publishing client, someone else will come up with the ultimate
e-commerce client. But also we now have a standard way of controlling data in
remote systems. So if we decided to write the ultimate publishing client, but
later decided to move all of the profiles on politicians into the upcoming
Exchanged server - which Lisa pointed out will be WebDAV-enabled - all we
would have to change is a URL. The application would stay the same. Imagine
doing that with your ODBC connections!
[The
site is at http://www.parlicom.com but please
treat this as a preview. There'll be no fanfare till January. Note that the
URLs for articles and contents pages use nearly-XPath - a world where
strings have no quotation marks and attributes think they're elements. Also note
that if you take the URL for an article and drop the filename bit, you will get
the XML for that article wrapped up as a fragment. I wouldn't bother querying
for other stuff because the store is in version -9.8 at the moment, and unless
the document is in our cache, retrieval will be very, very, very,
slow.]
Anyway, my point is simply that the communication of
this information is the next 'big thing' for developers to get stuck into.
Document mark-up is pretty obvious - you gotta have it. But to build an
information-based internet, we need to get the servers talking to each
other!
Regards,
Mark
Mark
Birbeck
x-port.net Ltd.
Not
sure what you're talking about...
- If you're talking about traditional email
messaging type features, the next version of Exchange will expose some email
properties in XML over DAV.
- If you're talking about document markup,
Office 10 already supports document metadata in XML, and the next version of
Exchange will expose that over DAV.
- If you're talking about some combination of
the two, then I don't understand what the question is :)
I'll
be discussing the Exchange XML functionality at the upcoming XMLOne
conference in Santa Clara on November 11.
Lisa
I am interested in how popular XML has become for
messaging type features (eg XMLRPC and SOAP etc...) relative to traditional
document markup? - I see two distinct, but (possibly) similar
markets.
Any exciting project undergo?
Thanks,
Steven
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