Several blossoms are in evidence at the XML Developer's Conference, held this week in New York.
For XML to succeed, industry groups must reach consensus about the rules of interaction, and identify the information to be exchanged. Industry groups must agree on the vocabularies they'll share and the schemas that define them. They also need a way to find out which schemas are available, or have been updated.
One advancement on XML's evolutionary ladder is this week's announcement of an XML registry, sponsored by OASIS (www.oasis-open.org), the nonprofit XML interoperability consortium. Member organisations and individuals can submit, publish and exchange XML specifications, with no strings attached. The registry (http://xml.org/registry) enables easy access and public availability of industry standard schemas, specifications, and vocabularies.
Less quantifiable but no less impressive are several collaborative projects among businesses that might not otherwise be seen in the same room. Sun XML Technology Centre engineering manager and OASIS president Bill Smith said that establishing the standards XML needs, "requires that we reach agreement with our fiercest competitors and our best friends, to work out solutions for the future."
Among the most promising projects is ebXML, a schema for electronic business being developed with the active involvement of the United Nations.
By every account, and despite our usual ratio of cynicism, these efforts are succeeding. While every vendor has a natural tendency to promote its own agenda, the industries whose products and services have value only when data is exchanged--financial services, the travel industry, health care--are actively working together to adopt the technology.
That's largely with the help of OASIS, as part of its purpose is to coordinate efforts and mitigate competitive issues between its members.
