Distributing Information in XML
Most of the publishing solutions mentioned so far involve transforming XML into another format for presentation to the user. But, in some cases, the final transformation step is not required.
For example, take the simple online banking site design shown in Figure 6.4.
Figure 6.4. XML account statement transformed to HTML for Web access.
As more personal productivity software is XML-enabled, the demand for access to raw personal information in XML will increase. Many personal accounting packages already download financial information, but, for the most part, the protocols are proprietary and vary among financial institutions. Figure 6.5 shows how the raw XML could be delivered directly to an application running on the user's local workstation.
Figure 6.5. XML account statement delivered directly to an application on a client PC.
The best part of this type of functionality is that after the XML-based publishing system has been built, it is available for free. To offer access to the raw XML data, all that is required is for the Web server to pass the original data without applying any transformations to it. This is yet another argument in favor of moving to XML as a standard corporate data format.
▸See the Automating Internal Processes with XML project (in Chapter 13) for an example of this type of application.