RE: using XML to build web pages -- MIDRANGE-L

Joe, eXtensible Markup Language is in the early stages of adoption. It has
generated a lot of buzz and excitement. If you don't have an application
where you absolutely have to use it, I'd stick with the HTML. Bleeding edge
, pioneers getting arrows, etc. Many standards are still evolving, and I'm
sure a year form now there will be many more products, some of which will
even be stable. Just my 2 cents. Carl Friedberg, carl@comets.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Joe Teff [mailto:jteff19@idt.net]
Sent: Saturday, November 27, 1999 5:54 PM
To: IGNITE400 MEMBERS LIST; MidrangeDotCom
Subject: using XML to build web pages


I am currently serving html from an AS/400 using

   o  static html located on the IFS
   o  Net.Data macros
   o  CGI written with RPG IV

Using either Net.Data or CGI, the html document doesn't
exist, rather it is generated and returned to the browser by
the HTTP server. To the browser it is a HTML document
and it doesn't care how it got there.

I was asked recently if I could use XML to generate the web
pages instead of HTML. I know that XML is converted to
HTML either at the server or the browser. Since the end
result is HTML, I cannot understand why anyone would want
to generate dynamic XML with the only purpose to convert
it to HTML to view as a web page. I've seen examples (at
Microsoft's site) on how you can view the same HTML in
different formats by changing the XSL. This requires that
the XML be in a static document that can be retrieved. You
can then use JavaScript and convert it to HTML.

I've read that an XSL processor is in the AS/400's future,
but that will be 3rd quarter in 2000 at the earliest and maybe
not even that release.

Is there any current way that I can generate a dynamic
XML document on the AS/400 and have that document
converted to HTML (using XSL and PDF documents
stored on the AS/400).

The only reason given as to using XML is the CEO read
in a magazine that XML is the future. I just want to make sure
that I'm not missing something here. I just cannot see how
this makes sense when you simply want to give customers
inquiry into the status of their orders and projects.

I'd also like to hear anyone's opinion on using XML in this
scenario and why it would be good or bad.

Thanks,  Joe Teff

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