XML: Another piece falls in place of the next next gen network.
There are already portfolio of XML software solutions and services, which will support Microsoft?s BizTalk to enable cross platform electronic commerce over the Internet. DataChannel's XML Framework enables the enterprise to exchange information between disparate systems while protecting their investment in existing technologies.
Working with industry leading partners, DataChannel's offerings unleash the power of Enterprise Information Portals (EIPs), facilitating the way companies share information with employees, vendors,customers, and consumers across intranets, extranets, and the Internet.
Solution Partners
Advanced Client Server Solutions
AB
Andersen Consulting
Ardent Software
ITS
Libra Software
Lockheed Martin
Microstar
STI Tecnologia da Informacao
Team Force BV
ISV Partners
Aventail
Tibco
Manage.com
OEM Partners
AT&T Labs
Crescent Deviceware
Pipeline UK
POET Software
QuikSilver
Software AG
Alliance Partners
Microsoft
Oracle
Sun
Surprised not to see CSCO in this list? Don't worry. TIBCO is there and Cisco's Don Listiwin seats in its board.
Watch your language
DATE 26-Jun-99
ONE of the biggest impediments to e-business is that computers are not very bright when it comes to recognising context.
Most people who use the web have been through exasperating searches that deliver either thousands of useless results or,
even more bafflingly, next to nothing. As Microsoft?s Bill Gates says in his new book, ?Business @ The Speed of
Thought?, a query about the fastest computer chip on the market could easily produce information about the rapid delivery
of fried potatoes.
The problem gets even worse when businesses are trying to communicate complicated catalogue or stock information to
each other. This is because the web?s main language, HTML (hypertext markup language), is essentially superficial. It tells a
web browser how to lay out the contents of a web page, but it remains blissfully ignorant of the content.
The solution seems blindingly simple: use tags to label the content, rather than describe what it looks like. For example,
HTML would label the elements of an order for a pair of trousers as boldface, paragraph, row and column. If they are
tagged as price, size, quantity and colour instead, a program can identify the document as a customer order and do
whatever is needed to get the trousers to the recipient as quickly as possible.
In the nick of time to allow e-business to take off, the World Wide Web Consortium ( W3C ), a not-for-profit group that
controls web standards, has come up with an extension to HTML called XML (eXtensible Markup Language). XML not
only describes the nature of web content, it also provides a way of indexing data. Its system of tagging data with relevant
information allows applications running on other computers to respond in an appropriate way. For example, XML makes it
clear that ?The Economist? is a newspaper and not a particular economist. By using metatagging, data that describes other
data, XML can also speed searches in the way a librarian?s card index can.
The only drawback is that for XML to work properly, there has to be some agreement on definitions. It may be possible to
achieve this within particular professions or industries, perhaps using an information intermediary as both initiator and
ring-master. But to ensure that there is a shared language of business on the Internet, cross-industry initiatives are also
needed.
To its credit, Microsoft is actively engaged in just such an initiative, which it calls ?BizTalk?. It is using its market clout to
bring together disparate customers, computing-industry vendors and consortia to define XML schemas (electronic
dictionaries) to describe common business processes. For example, Microsoft and SAP have begun defining schemas for
exchanging product-catalogue information and business documents.
Microsoft intends to incorporate BizTalk into future versions of its Office, BackOffice and Windows programs but,
perhaps unusually for the company, it is going for open standards that will allow integration across all platforms, regardless
of the underlying technology. As the Yankee Group?s Harry Tse says: ?Microsoft can win by not controlling XML .? |
