My point of view on this XML stuff:
I think someone could come up with a framework to support
XML. The areas that I can see could be addressed are:
1. Taking an XML document (e.g. a sales order in XML format)
and parsing it to create an EO or EOGenericRecord that holds
the order and line items
2. Taking an EO (e.g. a SalesOrder) and generating XML output
3. Taking XML data specification and generating an EOModel
4. Taking an EOModel and generating an XML data specification
Some of our customers are hot for XML. Not really sure why
yet but it seems like it could potentially become a very
popular way to exchange business documents. There still
needs to be some standardization on the data elements like
it happened with EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) X12 and
other EDI standards.
Some of our customers are looking at Oracle 8i just because
of the XML support in it. It seems like the days of Java.
It came out and it was hot but it took some time for the
support to show up and tools to mature and catch up with
it.
Ricardo Parada
PSW Technologies, Inc.
