Re: Web apps on the AS/400

At 15:11 03/20/2001, James Kilgore wrote:
>XML -IS NOT- a documented standard.  Or maybe I should say that it -is-
>documented, but it is not yet a -standard-.  It is a work in process
>that is still under heavy debate.

Au contraire. XML is absolutely a standard. It is explicitly documented by 
W3C, and the standards (they're called recommendations, but they're 
standards nevertheless) are actually being respected and followed as 
quickly as possible by Microsoft, Sun, IBM, and Netscape to name a few. The 
documents are at http://www.w3.org/XML/. The difficulty is not with the 
standard, but rather with the schema that are applied to specific 
applications. These are not standard, but they are moving in that 
direction. Biztalk (www.biztalk.org) for instance is a repository for many 
of the current attempts. It would be a lot simpler if somebody could just 
publish a schema for whatever and everybody would follow it. Obviously that 
will never happen. It would be nice if industry wide standards bodies would 
materialize and do the grunt work, but that too seems to be wishful 
thinking. I can't even generate enough interest where I work to investigate 
the possibility, even though it would be very good for company image and 
prestige to be a member of the standards body.




Pete Hall
pbhall@execpc.com
http://www.execpc.com/~pbhall/

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