7. XML Schema
In the four years since it was released, XML has become widely used in a variety of applications and systems employed today in e-business. Extensible Markup Language is also a core technology in Microsoft's linchpin .Net initiative. However, XML has yet to reach its greatest expectation of being the ubiquitous language used to enable business-to-business data communications.
This should finally start to change early in 2001, when the World Wide Web Consortium releases XML Schema as a recommendation, which will essentially make it a standard.
The main problem holding XML back as a mechanism for B2B communication has been that systems using XML created for one company or industry cannot understand XML documents created for another company or industry. This is because each one is using a different Document Type Definition or schema, and the systems have no starting point for deciphering differences.
XML Schema will change this. Simply put, it will bring rich data descriptions to XML. By defining a set of shared markup vocabularies, it will provide a method for describing all the data in an XML file. Businesses and industries will still be able to create the specific schema information needed for their market but, because they will be starting from a common base, that information will be much easier for other systems to understand.
There are several other schema definitions being used by various industries and groups, including the Microsoft-backed BizTalk framework. However, most groups have publicly stated that they will move to support and incorporate the W3C's XML Schema.
Like XML itself, it will take some time before XML Schema is in everyday use. However, its release will finally allow businesses to start building XML integration. And it should also allow businesses to take a look at several other XML-based standards that really need XML Schema as an underpinning, such as Resource Description Framework.
