As the scope of enterprise integration grows, IT organizations are demanding
greater efficiency and agility from their architectures and are moving away
from point-to-point integration,which is proving to be increasingly
cumbersome to build and maintain.
They are migrating towards adaptive platforms such as BEA's 8.1 Platform and
many-to-many architectures that supports linear growth costs as well as
simplified maintenance. To connect systems, WebLogic developers are shifting
away from creating individual adapters between every pair of systems in favor
of Web services. For data, they are shifting away from individual mappings
between data sources and targets in favor of Liquid Data enhanced with
canonical messages. But trying to implement canonical messages can be rife
with problems such as causing infighting between departments and creating
rigid models that becom... (more)
As XML survives its debutante ball and begins to be accepted by mainstream IT
shops, it's being put to work, creating excitement among CIOs with its
extensibility. Having had first-hand experience with several next-generation
XML e-business application deployments, I'd like to describe how the
extensibility of XML is revolutionizing e-business, making it possible to
finally develop applications that are flexible enough to keep pace with
today's constantly changing business requirements.
What Is Extensibility?
When we talk about XML's extensibility, we're talking about the ability ... (more)
In my last column (XML-J, Vol. 2, issue 1) I talked about Web services and
how they can change the way we think about e-business and application
development. This month I'd like to elaborate on a few points and examine
some of the market benefits in greater depth.
Both the Internet and XML offer great promise for electronic business, and
have enticed people with the vision of friction-free commerce and
collaboration. The Internet and XML give disparate entities a physical
connection and common language, but nirvana was not immediately reached
because so many questions about the ... (more)
XML-J: Would you care to comment on the state of XML technology in the
industry today?
Jaenicke: The official "state" of XML is that it's been accepted, but I don't
think it's well understood. Most IT managers and project leaders have XML on
some checklist somewhere, but few have yet incorporated IT in a strategic
way.
What's most interesting about the state of XML - past, present and future -
is the direction that it's moving. Technology (consider Java) usually comes
from the Ivory Tower, and it eventually pushes its way into the mainstream.
XML is completely different - it has... (more)
In my last column (XML-J, Vol. 1, issue 1) I talked about XML's extensibility
and how it's the key to building dynamic systems. But that begs the question:
Does the freedom to extend a data structure create new opportunities, or is
it another example of flexibility run amok?
The debate over supporting extended or XML data structures has been taken one
step further to include support of different schemas - or vocabularies. The
proliferation of XML vocabularies (and sometimes competing ones) has many
people worried about fragmentation. But fear not.
What to Do About All Those Vocab... (more)
Coco Jaenicke was, until recently, the XML evangelist and director of product marketing for eXcelon, the industry's first application development environment for building and deploying e-business applications. She is a member of XML-J's Editorial Advisory Board.
David Lucas
Shaul Efraim
Terence Martin Breslin
Cory Marchand
David Hughes
James Carlini
John Iffert
Dan Stolts
Joe Zeto
