xml-dev - Re: Dangers of De Facto (WAS RE: Dangers of Subsetting?)

[Jonathan Borden <jborden@mediaone.net>]

Bullard, Claude L (Len) wrote:

> Let me give you an example of why "de facto"
> may not be good enough.  Here are two statements
> from a real Request for Proposal:
>
> "Solutions that use Internet technology will be
> considered."
>
> Followed later in the same document by:
>
> "The ... plan for (a named agency) provides for a deployment
> that allows for the improvement of departmental systems and
> for access to the Internet.  The planned direction for
> information system provides for an architectural plan as
> defined by the following elements:
>
> o Open Systems (ISO/OSI) standards "
>
> See the problem.  We can't even mention the use of
> XML in a response to this.  The W3C isn't anywhere
> in this considered a standards org.

    Or the fact that as of October 2002 electronic healthcare communications
between healthcare entities will be legally required to use X12 EDI
messages.

    How do we change this? By standardization. You should note that you CAN
specify XML as a subset of ISO SGML, so really the problem isn't with XML
itself but the host of other W3C Recommendations which have come after XML
1.0 including Namespaces, Schemas, XLink, XPointer etc etc etc.

    In terms of Healthcare standards, we CAN specify XML and related W3C
recommendations in the standards we write, and these, issued by accredited
standards organizations in the ISO food chain, are standards which may be
used for such purposes.

Jonathan Borden
The Open Healthcare Group
http://www.openhealth.org