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The importance of information asset governance: XML is not a silver bullet. (Enterprise Solutions).

Article Excerpt
The greatest benefit of XML lies in its potential for managing "islands of data" locked into proprietary tools, systems, applications, and technologies through the use of a common data format that's understandable to any process and system that use it for data representation, data exchange, and application integration. In fact, if XML doesn't achieve this potential, there is little point in using it at all.

Following a trend all too familiar to the IT industry, XML is being seen as a silver bullet that will magically solve all the problems of data integrity, instantly remove islands of data, and disentangle the spaghetti of data interfaces across the enterprise. Typically, those who have willingly embraced this "Next Big Thing" approach will be sadly disappointed, and another real opportunity to move forward could be lost.

XML's greatest strength is also its biggest weakness. It is so flexible that different vocabularies and structures can be written to define the same type of data. Left unchecked, this can lead to a confused set of fragmented, point-to-point XML formats that simply move the problems of data islands and integration around, instead of actually addressing them. Evidence from early (and very expensive) XML implementations confirms this problem. Many software vendors are implementing proprietary layers of XML that can give the appearance of providing a common format for data exchange, but in fact are designed to lock users into proprietary platforms. As a result, eXtensible Markup Language is fast becoming the "eXtensively Misused Language."

XML will only succeed when businesses truly embrace the principles of openness, transparency, and reusability that XML can support. This will require moving away from point-to-point negotiations for exchanging data toward an agreement on standard ways of defining and expressing XML vocabularies, and on common guidelines for the implementation and ongoing use of these standards.

The Need for an XML Clearinghouse

The effective application of XML to overcome the "islands of data" problem requires proper implementation strategies to ensure consistent exchange and reuse of information assets using XML. All projects using XML should have uniform access to appropriate XML documents and their related metadata, which can be only be achieved through the development and deployment of an XML Clearinghouse (also known as XML registry and repository) for the enterprise that provides a single location to store and manage the common XML standards and vocabularies used in the enterprise.

An enterprise XML Clearinghouse allows users to:

1. Discover and use pertinent XML components...

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