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RE: on-the-wire xml ... Even if you're ...

• To: 'David Lyon' <david.lyon@c...>, xml-dev@l...
• Subject: RE: on-the-wire xml ... Even if you're ...
• From: "Bullard, Claude L (Len)" <len.bullard@i...>
• Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2005 10:25:14 -0600
• Cc: Dare Obasanjo <dareo@m...>

Strange conversation.

1.  XML is becoming more invisible to the developer because 
it is supported atoms-up by the development framework.  I 
can't name any mainstream frameworks that don't have XML 
support.  The programmer penetration is largely an age 
discriminated metric.

2.  XML is visible to the marketeers because they interact 
with the proposals people who have to sign off on requirements 
for applications support, and both of them have to go beat 
on programmers to make sure it is there.  

3.  XML is increasingly less important to the marketeers but 
increasingly more important to the proposals people.  That 
will even out in the medium term because most interactions 
by comma delimited are fast becoming XML and that support 
is assumed, so, transparent at the higher organizational 
levels. In short, you won't make money selling XML itself. 
That time is past as well it should be.

4.  Because XML is largely still focused on transactions 
(which wasn't the original intent but ok), the more your 
business is interacting and scaling, the more XML one sees. 
Self-contained businesses (say sell lumber but not information 
although they may exchange some and need ebXML) don't make 
money on XML.  They MIGHT use it.  Even then, they largely 
don't care.

5.  Depending on where your business type is in the chasm 
of Internet technologies, you see more or less requirements 
for XML.  Our business didn't see any prior to 9/11.  Now 
we see A LOT and the rate is increasing.   Wildly, these 
requirements are being pushed mostly by smaller companies 
trying to do business with big customers.  The larger 
principals have waited, probably longer than was smart, 
but legacy is the drag on innovation.  You can't mandate a 
data schema to thousands of customers with multi-gig databases; 
the conversion costs kill.  That is why transactional XML 
dominates the current discourse.  That can change but the 
pace is glacial in long lifecycle procurements.

XML is alive and well and still meaningless.

len


From: David Lyon [mailto:david.lyon@c...]
Sent: Saturday, January 29, 2005 2:10 AM

On Friday 28 January 2005 10:29 am, Dare Obasanjo wrote:
> XML on the wire? You mean like RSS or EBay & Amazon's web services which
> account for a significant amount of their traffic?

As I keep saying, big business can be very good at using xml and other
clever 
technology. It's a no brainer....

but take the same stuff to a small company and the outcomes aren't always
the same.

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