With the increasing need for communication between companies, Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) has become a hot topic. Expensive products and heavy-duty solutions have had “EDI” slapped on their label, and are selling like mad. However, these expensive solutions may quickly fall out of favor with companies that do not have deep pockets. In fact, with the rise of XML, even companies that can afford enterprise-level EDI solutions are deciding to go with an XML-based approach instead. While this is certainly due in part to the standardization that XML provides, it is also a testament to the ease of use of XML. In a single chapter, you have acquired the skills to enable disparate systems to communicate in complex ways, something that ten years ago would have required an entire team of developers and still would have resulted in a proprietary solution.

In fact, it is arguable that XML totally replaces the need for EDI. Legacy systems, proprietary applications, massive databases, and tightly secured products can all interchange data by using XML as a data format. With APIs like SAX and DOM, and now JDOM, developing complete XML solutions is practical, and building XML layers over existing data in different formats is a matter of weeks and months instead of years. Expect to see EDI system sales slow to a crawl, and e-business offerings based on XML and Java rocket in the years to come.

One of the common questions regarding using XML formats such as RSS is “Are they here to stay?” This most often stems from an assumption that because the format is used in a particular way (such as Netscape using RSS for their Netcenter page), the format must always be used in that particular way. This is true in the case of RSS, as early supporters were dismissed, and RSS was considered something “that Netscape did.” However, with XML as the underpinnings, RSS and other XML-based formats can be used just as any other XML document can. The styling of the document is totally arbitrary, and a stylesheet to transform an RSS channel into WML for a wireless phone is trivial to write. In fact, as we mentioned, the Apache Jetspeed project uses RSS, and the O’Reilly Network (http://www.oreillynet.com) is using RSS channels on sites like XML.com (http://www.xml.com).

Even more important than understanding that RSS is a viable technology for years to come is realizing that XML-based solutions, by their nature, are non-proprietary. Any XML document can be manipulated in any way the content author or developer can imagine. Don’t be surprised to see most presentation layers migrate to XML in the coming years, or move to a particular flavor of XML such as RSS, as they seek to increase their applications’ dynamic content without having to keep a fleet of web developers on staff just to update that content.