IBM Version 5 manual Acceptability of use for data transfer, Uniformity and conformity

Acceptability of use for data transfer

XML is not a programming language. It is a standard way of putting information in a format that can be processed and exchanged across hardware devices, operating systems, software applications, and the Web. It has become such a common medium of data that it enables the transmission and retrieval, and storage of information over the Internet across company boundaries, making it a natural choice for data management for e-business transactions.

Uniformity and conformity

The inability of two computer systems or applications to talk to each other is always a challenge. When two applications are integrated, the business and technical experts must decide either to integrate the two systems, or to re-architect the applications. If data from both applications, conform to a format and is easily transformed from one to another, development costs can be reduced. If this common format could be developed upon and is accepted industry-wide, then interfacing the applications to other applications is less costly.

Simplicity and openness

Information coded in XML is visually read and accepted, because it can be easily processed by computers, XML is widely accepted by major vendors in the computing world. Microsoft has indicated that it will use XML as the exchange format for its Microsoft Office software suite. Both Microsoft's and Netscape's Web browsers support XML.

XML has garnered interest because it is very simple to understand, implement, and use. It follows the Pareto principle, a 80/20 solution, meaning it supplies about 80 percent of the functionality of competing technologies with perhaps 20 percent of the effort required to build Enterprise-level solutions.

XML is not a total solution for every problems in e-business, but has made, and is making significant inroads in communications between old computer programs. That means these old programs last longer, saving money and time, which are important when both are so precious to the bottom line.

Separation of data and display

Separation of data and its display is not a new paradigm in the computing world. In the last few years, application designers have raised the concept of the Model-View-Controller (MVC) approach to building applications. There are many reasons for this. Firstly, without separation of data, re-use of that data in multiple user interfaces would be difficult. Web sites have evolved radically over the last 8 years. Evey year, Web sites have to be upgraded to compete for consumer attention. They have to have better attention getting displays and response times. If the data had to be re-hashed everytime an upgraded to the Web site was

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