XML and Application Integration

XML and application integration are coupled. Application integration represents the larger problem of moving information between applications and data stores for any business purpose. XML provides a common mechanism for data exchange and integration with a variety of applications supporting a variety of design patterns.

What XML brings to the application integration party is not great technology, but the fact that XML, and some of the derivative standards, are forcing the application integration vendor community into leveraging standard mechanisms including XSLT and RosettaNet, within their now-proprietary products. What's more, the use of XML within the enterprise allows easy migration to a strategic B2B information exchange platform. It's just a matter of pushing the XML documents to B2B integration servers.

Even with all the promise and "presence" of XML, we've also learned that it is not a panacea. Users must understand the limits, as well as the potential, of the technology before leveraging it for their application integration solution. The real power of XML is the notion of the standard information interchange it brings between one or many applications existing within a single organization or within a trading community. It's just going to take some time before we're able to reinvent our existing middleware technology and applications around XML. But that day is coming and it's going to be here sooner than we think.