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Rx for Excellence: XML

Youve just been called into conference with your CEO. Your Name Here, he says, I just came from a board meeting and Johnson from Advanced ...

By Paul Rolich | Updated on April 30, 2002

Youve just been called into conference with your CEO. Your Name Here, he says, I just came from a board meeting and Johnson from Advanced Financial says his IT guys are using XML for everything, and theyve improved their efficiency by 400 percent. When are we going to get with this XML thing and improve our efficiency? I want a full report by Friday!Sound familiar? These are the same guys who were demanding that we had to have everything Web based right after their kids told them to sign up for AOL. SureI have a 50 year old flat-file database that was originally designed for sequential access on magnetic tape and I need to have a plan to XMLize it by next week. While Im at it, I might as well design an XML-based STP (straight through processing) system.

Dont Believe the HypeEverywhere we look these days we see that now familiar acronym, XML. Two years ago on these pages I warned about the over-hyping of XML: It is not the panacea that will solve all of your data processing woes. It makes no sense to mindlessly demand that we use XML in every system. On the other hand, it really is ubiquitous and should not be ignored. Your latest browser supports XML, Microsoft Office is XML-enabled. I have seen many applications that use XML files the way we used to use text-based INI files.A recent report by ZapThink (www.zapthink.com) states that expenditures on XML technologies in the financial services sector will grow to over $8.3 billion by 2005. Is the insurance industry really going to spend billions on XML? I dont know, but I do know that we are putting the cart before the horse. Lets build and purchase systems that efficiently integrate with our existing systems. Lets make those decisions based on a wide range of criteria, not just on their use of XML.

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