what's missing in XML? What's coming?

[Liam R E Quin <liam@w3.org>]

At the end of 2011... what's missing?

Here's my perspective...

We've got a ton of validation languages, but no general framework for
pipeline validation - e.g. no way to say the document is acceptable only
if the stock ticker symbols are all current (and insert the current
prices too please) -- xproc is most promising there.

We've got XLink for explicit links, but no link discovery mechanism --
no equivalent to HyTime architectural forms.

We've got JSON going on all around us and no clear story about XML,
XSLT, XQuery, Xpath and JSON, nor about XML validation and JSON.

We've got XQuery and people doing XRX-basd Web sites, but no generalized
standard app framework, no way to pass HTTP/form params back to XQuery
or XSLT, no standard http-back-end libraries.

People are still saying XML is slow, and Apache still doesn't ship with
EXI.

But hey, Web browsers now support SVG without needing plugins...


Coming in the new year?

We have XSLT 3, XQuery 3, XPath 3, XSD 1.1, and watch out for new work
on Full Text 3, XQuery Update 3, XProc, EXI on small devices, and
probably more that I haven't mentioned :-)

What did I forget? What should be on our radar that isn't?

Liam

-- 
Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/
Pictures from old books: http://fromoldbooks.org/