XML use is widespread across modern information systems in all industry,
government, and academic sectors. The core technologies for processing XML
(XML, XSLT, XPath, XML Schema, and others) are maturing steadily - thanks to
support from standards bodies like the W3C and OASIS, and from major industry
players such as IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle. XML is also the basis for a
growing body of industry standards for data exchange, and it is well on its
way to becoming a mainstream technology for data integration. XML is
transforming not just data - it is transforming information processing in
general.
However, XML as we know it today is not the whole answer. It is simply a way
to represent data in a self-describing format that is easy to interpret
across diverse systems. The demands of today's advanced data integration
challenges require a flexible XML standard for data ... (more)