re: XML Multimedia Formatting Language.
While stumbling around in XML xHTML land I ran across this article that I think is one of the better ones on the subject.
It helps me better ubderstand what XML is, and what its significance is as IT and wireless converge.
>> The XML Sell
Karen Brown
August 6, 2001
Broadband Week
Data language promises to cross content boundaries ... In the multimedia world, it literally is the latest word.
It is Extensible Markup Language, touted as the first true multimedia formatting language. A flexible system for marking content elements, it promises to make content providers' lives easier because it translates across print, CD, video and the Internet without the need to reformat. But that flexibility also is the technology's chief stumbling block, potentially creating a maddening cacophony of dialects.
XML is the necessary outgrowth of print-centric Standardized General Markup Language (SGML) and Web-centric Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). Both languages allow programmers to assign tags to individual content elements explaining how they fit in together, but SGML was complicated and print-centric, while HTML is oversimplified and Web-centric.
After working on the problem, it became clear among Web developers that a single standard, flexible language wasn't likely. Instead, they concentrated on creating a system that let individual developers create their own tagging language to suit their needs.
Thus XML was born.
"The nice thing about XML and the toolsets being built around XML is they are being built to work with just about any media you can think of," says Tony Freeman, executive vice president at DeepBridge Content Solutions, a Web business and content management provider. "So there are XML approaches to print that may never see a Web page; there are XML approaches to video that may never see a Web page. But the point is that once we have it in XML, we have something that can be transformed from one media to the other, because we have these hooks - these tags that allow us to say 'in print, behave like this. On a Web page behave like this. On a CD behave like this.'"
Not only can it lay out how content elements are displayed and related, XML also can give content owners control over how and where it is presented. One such example is Extensible Rights Markup Language (XrML), an XML language created by digital rights management provider ContentGuard Inc. An open specification, it allows content owners to assign rights and issue conditions to their content elements.
"As things now start life in one media and move to another, the need to be able to track rights and permissions goes through the ceiling," Freeman says. "And why that is particularly important is that while a media company is probably very, very aware of something like this, as other companies come onto the Web and start putting up content and start using XML to move it from one place to another, people that never previously had to worry about rights and permission issues suddenly will have to."
The Standards
XML allows infinite uniqueness, but it can also lead to chaos. Although it is a formal recommendation from the World Wide Web Consortium standards body, right now, there are no firm standards to govern XML language creation. So markup languages created by one company may not interoperate on another's.
That in turn could limit XML's product development and use, according to Peter Kacandes, senior product manager for Java XML APIs and technologies at Sun Microsystems.
"You lose the ability to scale," he says. "If everybody is doing their own thing, you have to look at each individual implementation and then bring that into your system and develop some sort of interface to it."
Innovation does happen that way, but "for a lot of small and medium enterprises, they are not necessarily going to want to be developing their own thing," Kacandes says. "They just want something cooked, off-the-shelf that they can plug in and it works for them."
Having a standard doesn't preclude companies from developing their own methods, but it does give content providers more options.
"It allows people to innovate, but it also allows people to say, 'Oh, I just want to use that standard. Let me have a plug-in that goes into my QuickBooks or whatever and now I can do business with these people that support that standard,'" Kacandes says.
Freeman, meanwhile, thinks XML development will follow a trend much like streaming media, with some companies developing their own proprietary XML products while others call for standards.
"Some companies are just going to struggle through this and develop their own standard for doing it, and many have," he says. "The other thing I think we are going to see a rise of is industry standards. It's just taking time for the right people to come together and get the buy-in across the board."
Other Pitfalls
Another problem has to do with factoring XML into content development itself.
"Most people are not used to tagging their content as they create it. That's an extra step for most people, and there is some debate over who should do it and where (it should happen) in a given workflow," Freeman points out.
Then there is the tool shortage--with XML being relatively new, providers of content production and authoring tools haven't added it to their products on a wide scale.
"A lot of the tools we are using really don't have the ability to integrate XML smoothly and easily in the hands of the person creating or producing the content later on," Freeman says. "It's not ubiquitous yet--it's not built in; it's not everywhere."
XML Sells
Despite these issues, XML is gaining steam among content and software developers. Microsoft Corp., for example, already is building in XML capabilities across its product lines and is making the language the central driver focus for its upcoming ".Net Web" services platform. At Microsoft's annual financial analyst meeting in July, chairman Bill Gates said the company would be making several XML announcements at its annual Professional Developers Conference in October.
"XML is to our strategy today as graphics interface was in the late '80s and early '90s and as new Internet standards like HTML were in the late 1990s," he said at the conference. "That is, we are focusing the vast majority of the new things we're doing on this bet."
Rival software provider Sun Microsystems is using XML to boost its Java product lines.
"The great thing about XML for Sun is that it complements our whole Java (platform) and our whole open networking approach so well," Kacandes says. As the prime backer of Java, Sun has created a community of developers who can then compete with products based on the same standard, so "XML adds another great piece to that, because you have Java, which is portable code, and then you have XML, which is portable data."
Sun is using XML on two levels of its product development. First, within its Java platform it is creating tools for developers to develop XML applications. Second, it is supporting various industries, such as the financial and travel sectors, to use XML in creating interoperable systems.
Though widescale adoption may be two or three years away, Freeman thinks XML eventually will find its place and focus.
"What we are in is a sort of Tower of Babel situation that has to be rationalized, and the markets are going to be what will rationalize this," he says. "I think what's going to happen is that it is just naturally occurring of itself." <<
- Eric - |
