Re: [xml-dev] The year is 2027,and we need to examine archived XML docum

[Tim Bray <Tim.Bray@Sun.COM>]

On Sep 11, 2007, at 12:31 AM, Anthony B. Coates (XML-Dev) wrote:

> There are long-term financial instruments (like swaps: http:// 
> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swap_%28finance%29) which can extend to 30  
> years or more.  Many institutions are encoding these using FpML  
> (Financial Products Markup Language: http://www.fpml.org/), with  
> their own custom extensions, and they will need to be able to  
> access this data in 2037 or later.
>
> If XML has been surpassed in popularity by some competing  
> technology by 2027 or 2037, I suspect that what you will find is  
> that institutions who need it will maintain staff who know how to  
> use and run their XML tools

Maybe I'm missing something, but XML feels like a safer long-term bet  
to me if only because almost all those tools are (a) open-source, and  
(b) written in mainstream languages and (c) written for  
portability.   So you won't get the situation you get in some IT  
shops I've seen where a horrible old PDP-11 or Unisys box is kept  
limping along at great expense because they occasionally need some  
long-forgotten black-box proprietary app.  I.e., whatever it is we  
call a "computer" in 2027 will probably run libxml2 and Jing just  
fine.  -T