Foreword


David A. Taylor, Ph.D.

When I wrote the foreword to the first edition of this book, I stressed the importance of keeping up with emerging technologies in a time of rapid innovation. Today, those words are no longer appropriate to this book. In just three short years , XML has gone from a promising technology to the new standard for Internet communications, which makes it all the more urgent for managers to understand what XML is and how it can be used to gain maximum leverage from the Internet.

The problem with using the Internet to conduct business is that, even as the 'Net accelerates the flow of data, it strips away the structure that gives the data meaning. For example, suppose you are searching the Web for the price of a product you'd like to buy. Typing in the name of the product together with the word "price" *may* produce a Web page that gives you the answer you want, but that answer will be buried under an avalanche of pages that happen to include the name of the product and the word "price" but don't put the two together. The information may be out there somewhere, but you can't find it because all the meaning has been stripped away by the time it hits your screen.

XML ”the extensible markup language ”is the solution to this problem. Rather than just formatting text for display as HTML does, it communicates information as meaningful patterns. To do this, XML uses named attributes, and it organizes those attributes in a way that reflects the structure of real-world objects. In the search example, the price of a product would be defined as a property of that product, and a request for its price would either return the correct value or no value at all.

This example illustrates the potential of XML to improve the Web, but the real impact of XML is being felt on business communications, which typically bypass the Web and ride directly on the Internet. Here, XML provides a common language for transmitting such vital business documents as orders, queries, quotes, and notices. Instead of requiring a person to read these documents and interpret their meaning, computers can communicate with each other directly and understand each other in business terms. This kind of communication ”which might have been viewed as science fiction a decade ago ”now happens countless times every day.

Exciting as this development is, it's already yesterday 's news. The newest breakthrough is Web Services, in which computers exchange Internet messages directly, without human intervention, and request services from each other. These requests automatically call up the required functionality and return not just data but meaningful responses, including business commitments. Thanks to an unusual level of cooperation among standards bodies, software companies and corporate customers, the standards to make Web services a reality are already in place. In addition to XML, Web Services use SOAP ”the Simple Object Access Protocol ”and a set of registration services to let programs discover each other and invoke each others' capabilities.

At present, Web services are being used primarily for specific, isolated requests, such as requesting a price or scheduling an activity. As the use of Web Services becomes accepted practice, a new generation of software will emerge that operates entirely over the Internet, without being constrained to the capabilities of a single host machine. With software such as this, entire business communities, such as alliances and supply chains, can begin to function like a single enterprise.

In the midst of exciting developments such as these, no manager can afford to be ignorant of the concepts and applications of XML. Unfortunately, the widespread adoption of XML has made the search for a good management book on the subject as frustrating as the search for a price on the Web. As I write this, a query on Amazon nets 360 books explaining XML. By the time you read this, there will be many more.

Let me simplify your search. If you are a manager and you want to understand XML, look no further. This book offers up the clearest, most understandable explanation of XML you are ever likely to read, and it provides just the right level of information to help you make solid decisions without bogging you down in details. And the new edition just makes a good book better, with a new chapter devoted to Web services, updated advice based on lessons learned, and new applications to illustrate the way XML is changing the way companies do business.

If you are going to read one book on XML, this is the book.



XML. A Manager's Guide
XML: A Managers Guide (2nd Edition) (Addison-Wesley Information Technology Series)
ISBN: 0201770067
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 75
Authors: Kevin Dick

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