Limiting cohesion between applications

In order to make applications or components communicate, it was, until now, necessary to modify the various parts. This generates a strong cohesion between the various parts of the system, and any evolution of the system will involve modifications throughout.

Thanks to XML, it is possible to exchange information without knowing in advance which software component will process it. Indeed, exchanged XML documents are self-describing, and each part of the system provides only one interface: an XML interface.

Conclusion: XML facilitates communication and simplifies the work of the communicating components (development time).

The separation of substance from form

XML meets a need that became evident with the development of the Internet and search engines. In a "classic" HTML document, the information to be displayed is mixed with the page-setting elements. Moreover, this information is formulated in human language so that the machines do not receive any information concerning the contents of the text itself (its subject for example). XML, the result of the simplification of SGML (a recognized standard for document description), allows you to describe the contents of the documents without taking into account its appearance.

XSL then makes it possible to describe how the XML document should be formatted. There is a clear separation of content and form into two distinct files, which makes it easy to alter the layout quickly and to add information simply. It also makes it possible to display the same data using several different formats (HTML, WML...).

XML Applications

At last, the exchange of documents is standardised with XML. The world of applications is opening up to XML and many companies have created products using XML such varied fields as chemistry and mathematics. Microsoft Office XP supports XML format for all document types. And this is just the beginning, we have barely touched the possibilities for XML application.

The Future

Since the publication of the last XML recommendations, all the great names of data processing have revised their products to integrate XML (from Microsoft to IBM, including Sun, Netscape, Hewlett Packard, Oracle, Sybase, Adobe, Macromédia...).

The directions for the future thus seem well drawn, even more so because the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) guarantees the independence of XML from commercial companies. And to encourage us to use XML, Sun, IBM, Apache Group, and Microsoft have provided Java libraries which make it easy for developers to handle XML documents. The whole world of Java applications is thus opened up to XML.

SOFTEAM and XML
SOFTEAM got involved in XML very early on, thanks to the experience of engineers working on XML-Java projects for well-known industrial companies. This experience is now at your service SOFTEAM's offers of Consulting, Training, Development and Products.