CIS 679 852

PROJECT

XML

Joanne M. SmithMay 1, 2001

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INDEX

Introduction A Brief History of Markup Languages What is XML? What Does XML Mean to Business in General? Down To The Nitty Gritty What Does XML Mean to the Future of Business? Management Implications Summary A Word About Standards Thoughts on the Defense Industry References

INTRODUCTIONOriginally, the Internet was a solution to publish scientific documents. Today, it has developed into a medium equal to print and television. Additionally, the Internet is an interactive medium, being utilized today to support such activities as online shopping, electronic banking, online trading etc…

The essential business purpose of the Internet is communication. Before the computer, even before the printing press, there existed international corporations with impressive communication networks. While the technology of these networks have changed dramatically

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over the years and the speed of the dissemination of information has changed, the goal has remained the same; “Get important information to concerned parties as quickly as possible to allow them to collaborate at a distance.”

Business has been successfully transacted over the years through the exchange of standardized documents, whether electronic or on papyrus. Documents work for business because the interacting parties do not need to know one another’s internal workings or procedures. The “document” allows for the parties involved to know what is required to transact the business at hand and no more. In the course of its business, a corporation may deal with a variety of different types of documents; purchase orders, memos, legal documents, invoices, receipts etc… Documents therefore, are the communication medium of the corporation, and the Internet is a vehicle by which they can be exchanged.

The most popular way to define and create documents on the Web today is with the use of the electronic publishing language, HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). HTML in short, is concerned mainly with appearances; it arranges text and images on a page. HTML produces Web sites that function similarly to a fax machine, merely sending documents to those that ask. As anyone who has utilized the Internet knows, whether doing research or placing an online order, while documents are readily available, it is difficult and frustrating finding the ones needed and can be a very slow and time consuming process exchanging documents back and forth. Individuals and businesses are requiring more from their Web sites. Developers must write applications that can run on any platform and allow everyone to view data in a similar way, no matter what system or operating environment they are using. Web sites require security mechanisms

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that protect valuable information even as data is made available to clients and vendors. Documents must be viewed as information, not just as a picture of a document. HTML is acceptable for displaying information to humans but not to be acted upon by computers.

A means to address this limitation of HTML appears easy; find a way to label or “tag” what information is, not what it merely looks like. An example would be to label the parts of an online order for a sweater not as font, paragraph, row and column; what HTML does, but as price, size, quantity and color. A program could then recognize the document for what it was, a customer order, and process it accordingly, through shipping, accounting, etc… XML or Extensible Markup Language is a new language designed to make information self-describing; it allows authors to describe the data in a document separately from the formatting of those documents and thus make a document more acceptable to computing.

The above is an overly simplified explanation. XML, Extensible Markup Language, has spread rapidly through all fields of science and into industries that run the gamut from manufacturing to medicine. XML is expected to revolutionize network-oriented applications, especially in the area of data interchange, how businesses communicate. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the concept of XML. Define what XML is, where it has come from. To explore some of the areas where XML may prove useful in both the near and long term and look at the implications these applications will have for business in general and management, with respect to the introduction and utilization of this technology, in particular.

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF MARKUP LANGUAGESXML is a markup language and one way to grasp what opportunities it may afford a business in the future is to understand what it is, how it evolved and what problems it was designed to solve.

Markup originated in the publishing industry. In traditional publishing, the manuscript is annotated with layout instructions for the typesetter. The handwritten annotations are called markup. Markup is a standalone activity that takes place after writing and before typesetting.

In the world of computers, word processing requires a user to specify the appearance of their text. An example is a user selecting a particular font for the text and then its position on the page. This information on font and position is too called markup and is stored as special codes with the text. This activity parallels the traditional markup activity with only one, but important difference; the markup information is stored electronically.

Early markup languages were usually invented by the companies that sold document processing software. As an alternative to these proprietary systems, SGML, “Standard Generalized Markup Language” was defined in 1986 as an international standard for document markup. SGML was founded on a generic coding concept with the purpose to devise a flexible, precise and descriptive vocabulary for expressing the contents of electronic documents. This meant that developers were no longer tied to a particular vendor’s markup language and could develop their own by using SGML. This afforded developers the opportunity to easily convert their documents into other formats by specifying certain details about their documents such as the names of its components or its structure. This in turn made documents more versatile by being easily readable across several different

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applications. A document processing application that knows a document’s structure can do more things with it more efficiently. SGML grew in popularity because it gave documents a level of previously unheard of portability. SGML became widely utilized by manufacturers, by insurance companies and by computer companies for their documentation needs. The language’s down side however, was its complexity. This complexity proved a serious limitation for its adoption in applications to be used by a large number of non-expert users over the Web or on corporate intranets. In answer to the issue of complexity came HTML, Hypertext Markup Language.

HTML is an SGML application defining a document type by using SGML syntax to indicate the purpose of each part of a document. HTML was developed in 1989 as a specific markup language to identify the structure of Web documents. Specifically it was designed to enable the transmission and display of hypertext documents, a document containing links to other documents, across a network.

In 1992 the W3C, World Wide Web Consortium, published the first HTML specification. The W3C is a collection of companies and universities around the world interested in developing and promoting common protocols for the Web’s evolution.

The invention and standardization of HTML has provided for the rapid growth of the Web. HTML has the advantages of providing developers a simple syntax with a fixed tag set (a tag is a word or word phrase used for identification purposes, for example where a paragraph starts and ends), made it easy to create multimedia documents by incorporating images and audio, and enabled many documents to be linked together. However, as the Web grew, HTML grew. It has grown into a very complex language as more and more “tags” were added to address the growing needs of Web users. As e-commerce continues to

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grow, yet even more tags are needed. The combination of tags is almost endless and the result of a particular combination of tags may be different from one browser to another, ambiguity is thus increased.

In addition, as more companies are using intranets within their organizations, the Web now serves as the interface for a variety of information systems. This utilization presents a much richer internal structure than can be represented in HTML. This limitation is preventing the Web from being used as a platform for information exchange on a large scale.

Couple the above limitations with the projection made by the W3C that by the year 2002, 75% of Web surfers will not be utilizing their PCs for this activity; instead, the Web will be accessed from Palm Pilots or smart phones, something needed to be done. Such devices as Palm Pilots and smart phones are not yet as powerful as a PC and cannot process a complex language like HTML. What was required was a way of providing the richness of SGML, with the ease of use of HTML for publishing and accessing documents on line. Quite simply, SGML was too much for what was required for the Web and HTML was not enough. XML was developed to address these issues.

WHAT IS XML?In the summer of 1996, Jon Bosak of Sun Microsystems recruited a group of SGML experts and formed the XML Working Group, working under the auspices of the W3C. This group began to work on a version of SGML that would prove simpler to implement, especially with respect to delivering documents over the Web.

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The design goals for XML, as called out in Clause 1.1 of the W3C recommendations, points to this need for XML to bridge the gap between SGML and HTML. The design goals are as follows:

XML shall be straightforwardly usable over the Internet. XML shall support a wide variety of applications. XML shall be compatible with SGML. It shall be easy to write programs, which process XML

documents. The number of optional features in XML is to be kept to the

absolute minimum, ideally zero. XML documents should be human-legible and reasonably clear. The SML design should be prepared quickly. The design of XML shall be formal and concise. XML documents shall be easy to create. Terseness in XML markup is of minimal importance.

Working under the guidelines these goals produced, XML was created. By capturing these goals within its design, XML has produced benefits that can be grouped into four major categories:

1. XML is extensible.

2. XML had precise and deep structures.

3. XML has developed two general document types.

4. XML has powerful extensions.

The value to the user community that these benefits can translate into is considerable. By being extensible, XML is able to create its own elements. This means that documents can be customized according to the kind of information that requires processing. This gives the designer the power to customize documents to fit the needs of the business. HTML cannot do this; a designer is subject to the same set of elements.

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No ambiguity exists in XML, which means that programmers have a clear structure to work with which makes applications easier to write and maintain. When clear structures are combined with extensibility, documents become flexible and reusable. Reusability is important because the same document may provide different information to different users depending on their information needs. Deep structures allow for a method of content management, which results in the ability of computers to process information effectively.

In SGML a document is always defined by a document type definition, (DTD). A DTD defines specifically what kinds of elements, attributes and entities may be in that document. In long documents, the DTD becomes very complex. When a document is processed, the DTD is accessed so that the document may be checked for validity. A document that adheres to all the rules of the DTD as well as the rules of the language specification is a valid document. HTML allows for many ways to “work around” the rules. The Web is full of HTML documents, which look fine to the human eye but are sloppy and break many rules, which makes processing of the information difficult.

XML denies a programmer the ability to break the rules of the specification by allowing for another type of document, the Well Formed Document. The well-formed document does not have to adhere to a DTD, but it must adhere to two rules about structure. (open and close tags for each element and one root element) This forces the issue of precise structure. It simplifies the process of validation and processing of documents.

While HTML’s simple linking mechanism has made it easy for Web development, it lacks the power to provide different linking capabilities such as multiple links. HTML only supports single point links. XML’s linking technology allows for bi-directional and multi-way links, as well

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as links to a span of text both within the same document or other documents.

In summary, in XML, the identification of what a piece of information is, is separated from information on how that information should be presented or processed. So what does that all boil down too? “HTML created a way for every computer user to read Internet documents. XML makes it possible, despite the Babel of incompatible computer systems, to create an Esperanto that all can read and write. Unlike most computer data formats, XML also makes sense to humans because it consists of nothing more than ordinary text.” (Bosak and Bray, 1999.)

WHAT DOES XML MEAN TO BUSINESS IN GENERAL?What does XML provide to the business community? How can the above benefits be translated into the language of the definition of business goals and objectives and thus their attainment?

First, XML will enable a longer life span and a further reach for information. XML data is plain text. Compare that to word-processor file formats that change every two years or data that exists in proprietary databases, XML provides the freedom to use and reuse data without being tied to specific hardware or software. The XML language consists of rules anyone can follow to create a markup language that leverages existing infrastructure. The rules ensure that a single compact program can process all new languages. What this means is that it is possible to create a language that everyone can read and write. Even languages that use a different character set like Japanese or Russian can be read by software programmed in XML. Information is not only exchanged between different computers but across national and cultural boundaries as well.

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Secondly, XML provides for a richer, more intelligent and easier to use Web. XML allows for a business or more importantly an entire industry or academic group to define a markup that describes their data. This will lead to improved search engines that can match on tags as well as text content and can support intelligent manipulation of data by a client since the markup is not tied to the appearance of the formatted data as in HTML.

Today, computing devices, whether PCs or pocket planners, connected to the Web don’t do much more than get a form, fill it out and send it back via a Web server. As XML is utilized by more and more Web sites, these devices will be able to do more of the processing on the spot. This will reduce the load on Web servers, reduce network traffic dramatically and will speed and ease the search for information.

Lastly, XML will improve computer-to-computer communication. XML’s text based data, its self-describing markup, the fact that its data can be validated, and the ready availability of processors that can be plugged in to other programs makes XML an impressive tool to be utilized in machine-to-machine communication.

Appling these enabling properties to actual business applications we can see XML being utilized in two categories of applications; document applications or data applications. XML can be applied in these applications areas immediately. The difference between the two is merely qualitative. In both application categories, it is the same XML standard being deployed, the same tools being utilized, just different goals being strived for. This however, is an important point because it means a business can apply or reuse the same tools across a number of different applications.

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The use of XML for document publishing produces a distinct advantage. XML concentrates on the structure of the document and makes it independent of the delivery medium. It is possible therefore, to edit and maintain documents in XML and automatically publish them on different media. The key point here is automatically.

The ability to target multiple media is highly important because many publications are available online and in print. The Web with its rapidly changing environment, what is “in” this year will be “out” next, requires one to reformat their site regularly. In addition, some Web sites are optimized for specific viewers, this often leads to the development of two or more versions of the same site, one generic and one pointed at specific users, this is costly. All of these points make it clear that to main documentation in a common version in a media independent format that can be automatically converted into publishing formats is optimal. The more media we need to support and the larger the document, the more important that the publishing be automatic.

XML brings a publishing kind of distribution to data. This leads to the concept of an application as the document. What this means is that ultimately there is no difference between documents and applications. In the applications content, XML can be therefore used to exchange information between organizations. The XML Web becomes a large database on which applications can tap. This is an extension of the idea of extranets where one organization can publish some of its data on the Web for the use by its partners.

With these two categories of applications in mind, some specific business case examples of XML in the immediate near term could be:

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The maintenance of large Web sites by working behind the scene to simplify the creation of HTML documents.

The use of XML as a bridge to integrate environments and/or organizations where the business intellectual data exists in both document and structured data formats.

Offloading and reloading databases. Syndicating content between Web sites. Working with electronic commerce where different organizations

collaborate to serve a customer. Exchanging information between parties and/or organizations.

An example being an organization that will publish its price list on its Web site. In an industry such as electronics where pricing is quite dynamic, changing several times during the month, a customer can always have access to the latest information because XML can automatically visit the list, extract the data and update it.

Provide new markups in the scientific arena for mathematical and chemical formulas.

Provide new markup languages to express rights and ownership with respect to electronic books.

Provide new markup languages to optimize the use of handheld devices and smart phones. This could translate into an application that would integrate a business’ legacy environment with a wireless remote device. Access to company legacy data, i.e. inventory data, financial data, schedules, etc…. via a Palm Pilot or a smart phone. Appropriate for travelers and the promotion of a virtual organization.

DOWN TO THE NITTY GRITTY

Any reasonable businessperson at this point would be confused, bored or annoyed at the time wasted with all this talk of tags, extensibility, DTD’s and reusability. The one question shared by all however would be, “What can be done with XML that can’t be done without XML?” The answer to that question would be, “Nothing.” There is however, a lot that can be done more easily with XML than any other way.” (Usdin and Graham, 1998) The bottom line quite simply:

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INTERNET SEARCHES: The all too literal nature of today’s searches is well known. “If you search on “chips” the Web will retrieve everything from potato chips to computer chips. XML allows developers to add tags for browsers like “food” and “electronics” to signal meaning so searches are more precise.” (Microsoft, 2001.)

CUSTOMIZED VIEWS OF INFORMATION: Databases contain huge amounts of information that goes unused because the form of the data contained is not easily accessible. XML allows developers to present information in as many different ways as users. Users then can manipulate data and view it however they require without utilizing the server.

BRINGING INFORMATION TOGETHER FROM DIFFERENT SOURCES: XML recognizes information independent of where it came from. This allows for companies to package data from many different sources and make it available on a single Web page. This, as with point two above, allows companies to deliver information exactly the way a user requires or wants.

EXCHANGES BETWEEN SPECIALTY GROUPS: Many industries and special interest groups have their own “language” or unique sets of data and/or statistics. XML provides for communities of users to come up with their own vocabularies that can make information flow more quickly and easily. An example would be doctors sending prescriptions to pharmacists.

INSTANT UPDATES: XML is able to send updates to individual cells in a table without updating the entire table; saving time for the user and speeding searches.

ELECTRONIC COMMERCE: At the moment a computer cannot distinguish an address from an item number. This is the reason entire forms are sent back and forth via the Web today. XML assigns identifiers to each number in a form and therefore when exchanging data only the information required is sent back and forth speeding and streamlining communication.

WHAT DOES XML MEAN TO THE FUTURE OF BUSINESS?

That same reasonable businessperson after reviewing the above section may still not be convinced that XML is worth investing in at this time. Why not adopt a wait and see approach with this technology? There are many arguments for the “fast follower” approach as opposed to the “industry leader” in general when it comes to computing. With

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respect to XML, the one viable argument for the “wait and see” approach will be explored in more detail in a later section of this paper that deals with the issue of an XML standard. For now, we assume that is not a concern and will continue to explore the future of the Web and how Mr./Ms. Reasonable Business Person can become the Savvy Business Person by taking advantage of this technology that will take the Web to the next level. The question to be answered in this section is, ”What can be done in XML in the future that can’t be done now?” The answer, “Plenty.”

“Zona Research predicted early last year that the percentage of E-commerce transactions using XML would rise from .5% in early 2000 to more than 40% by the end of 2003. In a Zona Research Market Report, “XML: The Dash for Dot.com Interoperability,” released last month, a survey of more than 200 companies indicated that IT managers expect XML to dramatically improve the adaptability of their businesses.” (Marshall, 2001)

“For small companies, XML may serve to finally fulfill the promise of electronic data interchange (EDI). For others, it will completely change the way business occurs online, opening the doors to previously unimagined data integration and information deployment solutions. And don’t overlook the unexpected wildcard; every major technological development has rocketed in directions its inventors never believed possible. The bottom line is that XML is HTML done right, and content management systems, search engines, email systems, and online business processes will never be the same.” (Santalesa, 2000)

Couple the extensible markup language XML with the concept of agents, and the Web of tomorrow will be a far different animal than the Web of today. When we speak of tomorrow, we refer to a time frame of

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a mere five years. Why should a firm embrace XML? Let’s look at the Web of the future.

In today’s world, e-commerce includes such activities as identifying requirements, brokering products and/or vendors, negotiating deals, making purchases and/or payments. These typical activities however are initiated and executed by humans; in the future software agents will perform these functions.

“Software agents are personalized, continuously running and semi-autonomous, driven by a set of beliefs, desires and intentions. They can be used to mediate users and servers to automate a number of the most time consuming tasks in e-commerce, with enhanced parallelism. Agents can also be used for business intelligence, such as discovering patterns (e.g. shopping behavior patterns or service providing patterns) and react to pattern changes. Moreover, agents can selectively preserve data and themselves to become dynamic information sources.” (Chen, et. al., 2000.)

E-commerce aside, within any given organization, this concept of XML coupled with agents can act as a catalyst for change. “Business processes, or workflows, may be considered as a kind of multi-agent cooperation, in the sense that software agents may be used to perform tasks of business processes, and workflow may be used to orchestrate or control the interactions between agents.” (Chen, et. al., 2000)

What does this mean to the average businessperson? First from a buyer’s point of view, the need for custom interfaces with every customer and supplier will be eliminated. This will allow for buyers to compare products and services across many suppliers and catalog formats for Web sites will provide agent-searchable catalogs that supply product descriptions, price and availability. Smart shopping

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agents will level the playing field with respect to buyers and sellers. These agents, utilizing an Internet wide shopping directory will be able to locate all suppliers handling a particular commodity or providing a service and locate the best deal. Suppliers will provide sales agents that negotiate with shopping agents and generate offers in response to solicitations. Shopping agents can then sort out the best offers according to the criteria set by the buyer, i.e. the lowest price, the longer warranty, etc… This could in turn open a new field of opportunity with respect to Webmediaries; a type of information broker if you will, matching buyers to sellers.

Sellers will only have to publish their information once to reach potential customers. Online businesses will be able to build on one another’s published information and services to create true virtual companies and markets. Additionally, whenever a product or service is bought, information trickles down the supply chain, triggering a series of transactions with respect to distribution, ordering, manufacturing, billing, etc…Today much of this information is exchanged via EDI (electronic data interchange), a complex and expensive process that transpires predominately over proprietary networks. EDI over the future Internet will be simpler and more open. Large companies cannot impose proprietary message formats on smaller companies. In addition, by publishing documents in XML, the Web makes that information available instantly to all partners; supply chains are more flexile and agile, with partners or participants able to transact business spontaneously. This in turn can facilitate such activities as billing and payments, ordering and the movement of goods and services.

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MANAGEMENT IMPLICATIONSIt is clear from the above discussion that XML advances will have a profound effect on B-to-B and internal company interactions. The view of the future may in itself be enough for a general management executive to want to embrace XML. Generally however, no matter how attractive a new technology is, a reasonable business person will want the cost and implications of any new technology or tool assessed. This assessment usually falls upon the business’ IT executive. IT executives usually must have strong technical reasons for making a strategic investment, such as required by XML. XML can stand up to the test of technical reasoning. In a Zona Research Market Report, “XML: The Dash For Dot.com Interoperability,” “IT managers expect XML technology to shorten application development time and enable the performance of new operations once the data is in XML form. It’s too soon to obtain broad quantitative data on how much application development time will be saved, but the few IT managers who were willing to make an estimate considered themselves conservative in estimating 30% to 50% speedups in development time. (Marshall, 2001)

In addition, to the IT executive, XML means that programmers will have only one data interface to program instead of many, and they will no longer have to embed all business processes in every application. XML allows for business processes to be shared across applications.

What is the cost of embracing XML? Minimal. Programmers will have to learn the tagging syntax of XML and its various processes. The learning curve however, should not be steep. XML is similar to learning a script language such as JavaScript, as opposed to a third generation language such as C++ or Java.

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Learning and developing a mark up language is only part of the process however. Companies must develop an approach and begin the process of mapping current HTML content to the XML markup. This does not prove to be a major obstacle because all information humans create and use has some or many kinds of underlying structure. If the structure is regular, it is usually straightforward to map it into an XML representation. Database content organized in relational, object-oriented, or other schema types can be exported to XML for interchange and processing with XML tools. This can be done with other types of applications as well. Microsoft for example, has announced intentions to provide XML export from Word, Access, PowerPoint and Excel.

The conversion of legacy documentation is another area of issue that needs to be addressed. Typically the most efficient way to handle this situation is to write computer programs to do as much of the work as possible before handing the work over for editorial work and quality assurance. There are companies that specialize in this type of work and since it is usually a one-time event it often makes sense to hire them. The problem here is to not expect miracles because it is difficult to go from documents that were created with little or no structure to a structured XML document. This conversion task could end up being a bit costly but this would prove to be the highest cost XML will ever demand of its users and given the business benefits of XML, well worth it in the long run.

A hidden cost of embracing XML is in the structure of a business’ organization itself. Whether it is XML or any other technology, an organization must be flexible, scalable and controlled such to take advantage of market opportunities. A new or old technology will not save or help a poorly constructed and run enterprise. A business must

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have a technology architecture/ solution that executes consistently on any platform. Control over all aspects of the business must be in place. Efficient, effective and integrated business processes must exist. Management must hold an understanding of the business, the industry and the dynamics of and between both. An organization’s house must be in order to be able to exploit the future of the Web.

SUMMMARY

Within the next few years, business-to-business commerce is expected to experience phenomenal growth. “Recently, Forrester Research estimated that B2B e-commerce revenue in the United States will increase from $109 billion in 1999 to $2.7 trillion by 2004. The reasons for this prediction are not trade secrets: the Web helps organizations streamline processes so they can do business more efficiently. It gives them a faster way to compare prices and availability of goods and services they need to buy. And it’s an excellent way to show global customers what they have to offer.” (java.sun.com) The Web does not perform these tasks itself. It is merely a vehicle for such activities. The Web must be manipulated with the appropriate tools and technologies to accomplish these business objectives. XML is one such technology: just as SGML and HTML were such technologies. XML however, is the technology that can take the Web to the next level of its functionality if deployed correctly.

There appears to be much excitement in the literature on XML and its potential to revolutionize the Web, commerce and the exchange of data. XML is no magic wand. XML is an enabling technology poised to be a valuable tool in the effort to provide more powerful and precise searching capabilities on the Web. XML is more akin to a philosophy

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than a science: a philosophy of data identification and shared data vocabularies and specifications. If industries can embrace that philosophy, agree then advance that philosophy, XML will prove to be the powerful and environment changing tool all hope and believe it can be.

A WORD ABOUT STANDARDS“At the XML ’99 conference last year, Steve McVey of Sterling Commerce remarked, ‘XML is very flexible. Everyone can do their own thing, and by golly, everyone is!’ A survey of current and planned applications of XML for exchanging business data suggests McVey knows the subject well! The good news is that the number of business vocabularies using XML is exploding. However, these applications have developed few, if any, guiding standards for interoperability. Getting them all to talk to each other will be an enormous challenge for the Web standards community.” (Kotok, 2000)

“In a recent Forrester Research survey of e-commerce managers at 2,500 companies, 71 percent mentioned exploring some form of XML. However, only 18 percent could articulate how they use or plan to use XML. Even more damning, 76 percent implied a wait and see approach, saying that before they can use XML for automating Business to business transactions, industry specific details need to be added to the XML standard. The result could be a classic “chicken or the egg” conundrum as companies wait for other to do the heavy lifting in jump starting their industry schemas.” (Santalesa, 2000)

The power of XML is enabling interoperability and simplifying the sharing and reuse of information between business domains. What is required is for companies to work together to develop XML-based specifications for the business information they exchange. If companies

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do not work together, the Web and XML will not be able to come together to change the way things are done today. This lack of cooperation is a potential disadvantage of XML. Fortunately, many companies already recognize this need for information exchange standards and are uniting in several initiatives focusing on XML standards for particular industries or business processes. Examples of work in the area of standards are:

Open Trading Protocol. A consortium of banking, payment and technology companies specifying information requirements for payments, receipts, delivery and customer support.

XML/EDI. A group chartered by CommerceNet, ANSI X12 and the Graphics Communication Association is defining how traditional X12 EDI business data elements should be represented using XML/

RosettaNet. This is a PC industry initiative interested in how to exchange PC product catalogs and transactions among manufacturers, distributors and resellers.

Open Buying on the Internet. This initiative was launched by Federal Express and includes such giants as Ford Motor and Office Depot. Their charter is the automation of the large-scale corporate procurement of office and maintenance supplies.

Information and Content Exchange. CNET, News Corp. and other information content providers are developing ways to create and manage networked relationships such as syndicate publishing networks, Web superstores and online sellers.

Open Financial Exchange. Proposed by Intuit, CheckFree, and Microsoft this effort supports banking, bill paying, investment and financial planning activities.

Unfortunately these initiatives operate independently fueling the question whether XML should become a “Real” standard, e.g. be submitted to a more formal standards body such as the International Organization of Standards (ISO) or some other body. (The W3C, which developed the XML recommendations, does not consider itself a full–fledged standards organization.) Some in the field are of the opinion that such standardization by ISO or any such organization buys little and does not necessary attract usage or compliance. The debate over

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the benefits of standardization and the rush to standardize continues covering the range of topics from who pays for this activity to the quality of standards produced and the expected life span of standards produced to date.

Whatever the outcome of the debate, it will be a challenge for industries to agree on the procedures and vocabularies that are most pertinent to their businesses but will prove in the long run, for all, well worth the effort. Those that adopt a wait and see approach and allow others to define vocabularies and operating procedures are missing the opportunity to define and construct their future worlds and will have to live with what others decide. It is the difference between pro-activity and reactivity.

THOUGHTS ON THE USE OF XML IN THE DEFENSE INDUSTRY

The Defense Industry is an area ripe with opportunity for XML. The most obvious applications would be in the areas where the exchange of documents initiate a process or satisfy a requirement such as in Purchasing, i.e. purchase orders, requests for quotes, etc…. Contract management, the initiation and negotiation of contracts, subcontract management, or the production and distribution of manuals. An immediate application of XML would be as a mechanism to bridge the gap in an area where both hard documents and electronic data exists and must be exchanged. An example is the Import/Export licensing area.

As mentioned in a previous portion of this paper, the ability to connect via a smart phone or Palm Pilot to company legacy data would prove a fruitful application for Marketing as they pursue and negotiate new business opportunities around the globe.

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I am of the opinion that the two areas in which XML may be applied and would have the effect of dramatically changing the face of the Defense Industry would be with respect to EDI and interactive design applications.

Presently EDI is utilized in the Defense Industry as a mechanism to rely contractual information and shipment/payment information between the government and its contractors. No action is capable of being undertaken directly from this exchange however, today. In the future, utilizing XML and smart agents, such transactions will be able to kick off ordering information from a receipt of a contract for example to the transfer and payment of funds when a shipment document, a DD250, is signed and transmitted via an XML exchange.

As pointed out in the Management Implications section of this paper, what is required for this type of functionality to move forward is the agreement between all concerned parties on vocabulary and process. This I foresee as not being such a large hurdle in this environment as there has been a sense of cooperation and a concerted effort in the past to work as a team between the government and its large contractors.

The other area bursting with opportunity but perhaps not quite as cooperative in nature for the application of XML is interactive design. Given the fact that there are so few “large” government contracts being awarded today, partnering between sometime competitors has become quite common place. One problem with such partnering is in the design phase of such proposals. A company may have as its team mate a company it is a competitor with on another contract. How to design interactively without violating or putting at risk company legacy data or company intranets is a concern. One solution has been the establishment and utilization of an IDE (Integrated Data Environment )

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environment. This however has acted as only a large “filing cabinet”, where documents such as design specifications, meeting minutes and action items could be shared back and forth. Again, with the establishment of a standard drawing vocabulary, drawings and designs could be worked back and forth between partnering design agents quite easily and effectively.

XML is about metadata, the ability to describe the meaning of data in any given document. This provides for tremendous flexibility; a single XML document can encode characteristics about the data that meet the needs of several parties, each of whom may only pay attention to a subset of the data. A technology that will no doubt have a profound effect on not only the Defense Industry but also business in general.

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Navarro, Ann, White, Chuck, and Burman, Linda, “Content Management with XML: A Dell Case Study,” Mastering XML, Chapter 29.

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