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...development approaches, leads to complicated collections of software programs interfering with the clear flow of business information through an application. This article will show that a new approach is essential in order to simplify the complexity of today's software solutions while significantly reducing the cost of inevitable future change.
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Changing Environments
Presentation, exchange of data (both in terms of messaging and logic), and the storage of that data are the core requirements for most applications. For most people, XML is first used in the presentation layer because this means that an application can produce many different types of output from the same incoming data using transformations. Web browsers, mobile devices, and PDF file readers can all have output generated from one incoming document, and this means that many applications now produce their output in XML format.
Over time, most people's use of XML spreads throughout the application's layers. It may be used to pass messages around between applications, technologies, or businesses. EAI projects use XML to pass data as messages between systems and middleware technologies. RSS feeds mean that XML data is used to syndicate content across multiple systems. Open standards for business transactions such as Origo, ebXML, RosettaNet, and so on mean that people are moving away from fixed EDI-type data into this new, extensible format for data exchange (e.g., The Accredited Standards Committee [ASCI] X12), which can halve costs.
This has, for some, ultimately led to XML being used as a storage medium for information. This may be as configuration files to aid in control of the underlying business logic, or persistent storage within native XML databases, or message tracking through messaging middleware. In some cases, the business logic of the application itself is contained within XML files (see Figure 1).
The inherent strengths of XML have ensured that the data is easier to understand because it can now contain the semantic information that describes it, and the extensibility also allows applications to respond more effectively to the changing needs of the business environment. XML has permeated through all of the application's layers, but because the growth of XML usage was evolutionary, many existing systems do not directly process XML data.
Challenges of Processing XML Documents
Traditionally, the main challenge when working with XML is that, at some point, the document must be converted into structures in code, but the business processes themselves are...
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Can one size fit all? Exploring the possibility of one API for XML pro..., October 01, 2003
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