Chapter 1. Desktop XML: The reason why
Introductory Discussion -
Information sharing and integration -
Documents as information assets -
Sharing information on the Web Attention information workers! -
Are you tired of cutting and pasting from one document to another? -
Are you frustrated because people outside your work group can't find your reports? -
Are you concerned that your spreadsheet analyses may not be using the latest data? -
Do you have that tired, worn-out feeling? Well, we can't help you with the last item, unless you've been losing sleep over the first three! But Microsoft has a cure for those: They've added a powerful dose of the miracle ingredient XML to your favorite Office tools. XML is a neutral way to represent data in a computer file. By "neutral" we mean that XML is not associated with a single vendor's computer programs, nor is it limited to a particular structure or type of information. XML is therefore ideal for sharing information among programs. In fact, it is recommended for that purpose by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and is supported by hundreds of products from every important software vendor. XML allows you to share the data in your Office documents in new and more useful ways. It can help to automate routine drudgery. It can allow your documents to become first-class information citizens, managed and protected like the other data assets in your organization. As an example, let's look at the large and successful (and utterly imaginary) Worldwide Widget Corporation (NASDAQ: W2C) before it began using XML. | 
