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| October 2000 PROGRAM |
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| Title: | Focus on XML |
| Date: | October 18, 2000
7:30 AM to 11:30 AM |
| Location: | Hennepin County Medical Center |
| | Topic: | Why XML? |
| Presented By: | M. Victor Janulaitis - Positive Support Review, Inc. |
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| Abstract: |
XML ? Different For Different People and Enterprises ? Or What is XML Today vs. Tommorow?
XML has many faces and many different implementations. Each requires different kinds of tools and even different standards. They use different kinds of tag sets—some require tag sets that are shared across a number of different users, perhaps as a standard within a particular industry, while others will use tag sets that are specific to a particular company’s business process.
What does this mean to the enterprise, the end user and the developer? What will drive XML to be the future? Will it go the way of the EDI Standard ? Large Complex Application Focus or something for the smaller entities?
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| Summary: |
XML has many faces with and many different implementations. Each type of implementation carries different issues, challenges and risks. At the simplest end is the use of XML for customization of a site. The problem domain is application or site specific and the complexity and risk is low – if you are good. The next step up is the use of XML for intra-enterprise data exchange, where the problem domain is a single enterprise. There is medium risk in these implementations but it is difficult to nail down an ROI. Moving up the scale is inter-enterprise data exchange, where the universe is multiple entities. This type of implementation carries medium to high risk as you start to wrestle with “who sets the rules”. The top levels are Content syndication and content publication, where the universe is industries or even the universe. Here the complexity and risk is very high.
What does this mean to the enterprise, the end user, and the developer? What will drive XML to BE the future? Will it go the way of the EDI standard? Is it for large complex applications or something for the smaller entities?
One thing is certain, XML as we know it is transitory and will not be the answer 5 years from now. XML has been touted by many as the “be all - end all”. For now that may be true, however, anyone who has been in the industry for a couple of years has seen this before. Over the last 30 year, no “software standard” has stood the test of time. We’ve seen this in programming languages, COBOL, application interfaces, EDI, and relational databases, IMS, DB2, SQL. Business needs will drive the process, not technology. Technology is a tool and XML may be the most cost effective one right now.
Victor discussed drivers to focus on when considering XML technology. Innovation will be easy at first but the complexity of scale is a limiting factor. Vendor driven standards will not be open, standards will be modified to give an entity competitive advantage. Market share will be king. XML will go the way of EDI, controlled by a few large entities. Standards will get to tight they limit creative and the cost to implement the full transactional spectrum could exceed the ROI benefit. Technology will change – XML is not what it will be.
How standard is XML? One Vendor’s Solution touts “a few of the XML standard support…” Think about what that is saying – or any of the following quotes: “Work with virtually any XML standard” – from a vendor. “XML Today is where relational databases were 20 years ago” – Educator. “Tower of Babel” – Media.
To close, Victor gave his prediction on the future. In 6-9 months, the easy stuff will be old hat. In 9-14 months, cross enterprise alliances will begin to bear fruit. By 2-18 months, a new “better way” will be the wave of the future. Early innovators have the best chance to be winners. Competition will be key and cooperation will wane. As XML standards and technology evolve, quick “controlled” change will be rewarded.
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| Speaker Profile: | Mr. M. Victor Janulaitis is the President and Founder of Positive Support Review, Inc., a West Coast-based management consulting firm specializing in developing competitive weapons and information systems for Fortune 500 Corporations. He has been involved with several well-known systems including American Hospital Supply's and the Infiniti Launch, both of which have been written up as case studies for Harvard University and the University of Colorado, respectively. He and his firm have consulted with corporations such as IBM, Xerox, Time, American Hospital Supply and Security Pacific National Bank. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Southern California – Graduate School of Management, conducted executive seminars for a Graduate School of Harvard University, and has been a guest lecturer at UCLA and several other major universities both in the United States and Europe. He has been a senior executive at IBM, Touche Ross, Damon and Index Systems. As an executive at IBM he helped to develop the marketing program for the IBM 370 and its software advances.
Mr. Janulaitis is the author an architect behind Zinnote® the winner of BEST OF COMDEX award for BEST PRODUCTIVITY SOFTWARE, www.supporthelp.com a PC WORLD TOP 100 SITE Award winner and www.laintermodal.com a clearing system for all cargo containers in and out of the Port Los Angeles and Port of Long Beach. In addition, Mr. Janulaitis has authored several books including: Metrics HandiGuideÒ Processing for the Internet and Information Technology; Client Server Management HandiGuideÒ; Information Technology Position Description HandiGuideÒ; Information Systems Position Description HandiGuideÒ; and PC Policies and Procedures Management HandiGuideÒ. In addition to being widely published on competitive advantage and technology, he has an MBA from the University of Chicago, is a Certified Management Consultant, a Certified Public Accountant and is listed in Who's Who.
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| | Topic: | XML for Data Managers |
| Presented By: | Priscilla Walmsley - XMLSolutions Corporation |
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| Abstract: |
As corporations move rapidly into electronic commerce, data management must keep pace. One of the fastest growing areas is the adoption of XML, which has recently established itself as the language of e-business. This presentation is designed to give a nuts-and-bolts introduction to XML and the challenges and opportunities it presents to a data management organization. Specifically, it will cover:
* The basics of XML: syntax, history, & relevance
* The meta data of XML: DTD’s and Schemas - what are they and which should be used?
* The role of data management in XML-based e-commerce initiatives
* The importance of centralized schema management |
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| Summary: |
XML dates back to 1996, its roots in SGML. SGML defines both the structure and context of data. XML, in contrast, separates content from presentation in a manner that is both human and machine readable. XML standards are being applied to a variety of problems yielding specific vocabularies. Examples include: CXML, XEDI, RosettaNet, CBL, IFX. This presentation focused on modeling XML, XML Schema and DTDs.
DTSs and Schema are metadata documents defining names of valid tags, the structure and order of the tags, required and optional values, valid values, and data types. Schemas are useful to validate XML documents and can carry additional metadata which improves the understanding of the document. The schema can serve has a “contract” with trading partners, to agree on format for exchanging information.
Today, 90% of XML schemas are implemented using DTDs (Document Type Definitions). DTDs are not XML based; they have their own syntax. DTDs are limited in that they do not support data typing and value domains for elements. Alternatives to DTDxs include SOX (Commerce one) XML-Data/XDR (Microsoft), DDML, and DCD. W3C is developing a standards for XML Schema which is expected to be completed this year. The XML Schema standard is expected to replace other standards, included DTDs. Some of the strengths of XML Schemas include the ability to specify a data type and define your own data type, the ability to define substitution groups or alias, and the ability to extend or restrict other schema. In addition, keys and uniqueness constraint capability is improved over DTDs
As a result of XML’s popularity, data managers are facing a new schema proliferation problem. There are vendor specific schemas such as SAP BAPI. There are industry standard schemas such as cXML, IFX, and CBL. In addition, your organization will/has developed custom schemas. Add to that, your business partners’ custom schemas. We need to challenge ourselves, is XML a data free-for-all or a new frontier for data management? Data managers will be challenged with understand and tracking existing schemas from trading partners and industry standards and chasing after changes to XML schemas as business rules changes. To avoid another legacy, we need to avoid a proliferation of redundant but incompatible schemas.
Priscilla offered some best practices that can be applied to manage the chaos. First, design schemas well to ensure wide applicability and future extensibility. Use good name that match your business and are easy to understand. Follow good models that match your business and are extensible in the future. Seek out opportunities to reuse existing components.
Second, consider centralized schema management. To close, Priscilla covered some ideas for implementing centralized schema management.
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| Speaker Profile: | | As Vice President of Research at XMLSolutions Corporation, Priscilla researches and prototypes new technologies in the application of legacy systems and metadata to e-commerce initiatives. Priscilla has extensive experience in semantics and metadata architecture. She was Director of Development at PLATINUM Technology, managing the integration of PLATINUM’s metadata repository and DW tools with ERP solutions. Priscilla was heavily involved in the development of version 2 of the Microsoft Repository. Prior to her development role, Priscilla spent 8 years managing large consulting projects for PLATINUM Technology and RELTECH, specializing in repository implementation, DW, ERP implementation, and decision support. Priscilla is a member of the W3C XML Schema Working Group, and a frequent presenter at industry conferences on the topic of metadata management. She holds a B.S in Management Information Systems from the University of Virginia’s McIntire School of Commerce. |
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