April 3, 2000

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Questions Still Surround XML Specification Standards

By Charles Waltner

hile the Extensible Markup Language tools market is starting to perk, the challenges of XML development have just begun for many companies. That's because there continues to be questions surrounding XML specification standards and the complex tasks of business-to-business integration for supply chain management and E-commerce.

Since XML is open and easily configurable into an endless array of variations on how it can be used to exchange information, companies such as Solectron Corp. see more hurdles ahead for XML. Solectron, one of the nation's largest contract manufacturers with almost 200 large companies as customers, uses XML to integrate product design and production information, manufacturing schedules, and supply-chain data with its customers' back-office systems.

"If processes and language standards aren't well-defined, then the tools don't stand a chance," says Ken Ouchi, corporate VP of strategic transformation at Solectron in Milpitas, Calif. "If everyone's writing their own schemas, you could see how that would snowball into a monumental task." Solectron is working with Rosetta.Net, a Santa Ana, Calif., consortium that's developing XML specifications for the IT and electronics supply-chain industry.

Others also see standards as making life difficult for XML tool vendors. Dennis Freeman, senior director of product marketing at Harbinger Corp. in Atlanta, says the uncertainties about industry schema standards--the dictionaries and assorted rules for how each type of data is represented and exchanged--are repressing wider development of more advanced, off-the-shelf type applications for plug-and-play XML data usage. "The solidification of all the variables surrounding XML standards will make it easier on vendors to create tools," he says.

IBM, Oracle, and Sun Microsystems are part of a standards body called Oasis, which is trying to standardize schemas and super schemas for vertical markets. And, of course, there's Microsoft. Its forthcoming BizTalk XML framework technology will reportedly include 134 schemas for vertical-market sectors, according to Zona Research. But Microsoft's standards don't match up well with those from other vendors such as Sun.

Uttam Narsu of Giga Information Group says many products are divided between favoring Microsoft's XML technologies and Java XML development from Sun. Still, he says, XML technology is a pretty safe bet, adding that, "I'd say XML is a much lower risk than Java or something like Corba."

Return to main story, "Adoption Of Standard Fuels Growth In XML Tools."

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