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proprietary formats, it doesn’t matter what services you provide, you are going to face
tremendous communication problems in transferring information both internally and
externally.
Specifically, What Benefits Do I/My Clients Stand to Gain?
Entire volumes could be written about this topic alone. Though woefully incomplete, here
are a few points to ponder:
The ability to deliver your data over the Web.
We mentioned this before, but it
seemed an important benefit to reiterate again. XML information is transferred using the
same protocol as HTML, that is the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Therefore, every
benefit accrued from transferring HTML over the Web is directly, if not more, applicable to
XML—and all without having to change your existing network.
The benefit of open standards.
Because XML is an open standard, supporting it is very
cost-effective. Tools and support of XML products are virtually free. The open standards-
based HTML coupled with Web browsers enables thousands of businesses to
communicate (at least in a unidirectional manner) with millions of clients with very little
overhead. Similarly, an open standards-based XML enables the same low overheads to
be incorporated by everyone again, only with bigger and better possibilities this time
around.
The tools for developing XML applications will be available as easily and cheaply as
they are for developing HTML pages today. Oodles and oodles of developers will be
working with it and openly exchanging their experiences so the learning curve drops
tremendously. In short, with open standards, you’ve opened up an endless array of
support and compatibility that even the most expensive paid standards won’t ever
provide.
