Re: XML and the Real World

[Peter Flynn <peter@silmaril.ie>]

On Fri, 29 Jun 2001, Michael Champion wrote:

> This came up in the Blueberry debate, but didn't get much
> discussion:  How many real-world, mission-critical,
> money-making applications currently depend on XML technology? 

Probably the jobs of everyone reading this :-)

In reality, some, but not as many yet as we are led to believe.

> In "internet commerce" broadly defined, XML is a widely used,
> perhaps even dominant technology.

But I wonder about "depend". If XML was outlawed tomorrow by
Geneva Convention (what an appropriate location :-), I suspect
we could find another way of doing business over the Internet
fairly rapidly.

> In the "information" industry broadly defined (publishing, web
> sites, portals), a fair amount is really done today.  I suspect
> that most of us are using or selling XML solutions in this
> sector. 

In the publishing industry there is still a significant amount of
SGML as well. 

> In manufacturing, XML is being used in prototypes, proof of
> concept applications, and lots of vertical industry standards

I see more of it in the backrooms now, being introduced by
stealth because tech support or tech dev has spotted it can do a
job they need doing. Rather like Linux :-) I suspect there is
more being used than CIOs are aware of. 

> In general, I get the impression that the prototypical
> response of a real-world Chief Information Officer to XML is
> something like "Very interesting stuff; we're keeping an eye on
> it and doing some pilot projects.  When our industry
> standardizes on a small set of XML vocabularies, we plan to
> incorporate it into our business processes." 

The really smart ones are out there trying to lead their
industry with pilot vocabularies they have already developed,
along with the software to do the job, in the hope that their
company will be in the driving seat when the rest of their 
industry climbs aboard the bandwagon. But it takes an investment
of money over time to do this, and the beancounters and VCs are
on a rather shorter timescale.

///Peter