Where Are The XML Apps We Can See And Touch?

By Jon Udell

April 12, 2001

(Report From XML DevCon 2001 :  Page 3 of 3 )

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Report From XML DevCon 2001 XML Databases Where Are The XML Apps We Can See And Touch?

Now they are, and I'm delighted. But I'm also starting to wonder if there's something missing from the picture that's developing. I started to say so in my panel discussion, but I didn't want to rain on the Web-services parade, which I am greatly enjoying. Nevertheless, I've got to ask at some point: where and how do all these Web services intersect with people?

A lot of demos featured a Purchase Order or some equivalentXML packet being shunted around from business process to business process. I've been assuming, all along, that we'll get that Purchase Order pretty well figured out. Apparently, we haven't yet, and people whom I greatly respect say we need to bake some more standards to get there. I don't disagree, but neither do I have much to add to that discussion. We have the right core in place: XML over HTTP. Let's follow the advice of the Extreme Programming folks -- namely, "do the simplest thing that could possibly work" -- and then figure out where we stand.

Here's the fly in the ointment. That Purchase Order, in real life, does not wend its way through the machinery untouched by human hands. There is usually a conversation swirling around it. That conversation happens in phone calls, IMs, e-mail, and documents, and there is context woven through all that stuff that -- I am sorry to say -- we are making no progress in capturing, never mind using to improve the business process.

Where is the viral app that does for the end user, by means of XML, what the browser did for the end user by means of HTML? Where are the XML-enabled tools for writing, for personal-information management, for knowledge capture and refinement?

I do a lot of electronic publishing. Nowadays, it's all driven from XML repositories. But none of that content is yet produced by XML-aware tools. Rather, it's converted from other formats. These conversions are painful and expensive, and still occur in about the same ways they did five years ago.

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