 Cross-media Publishing Development Strategies and Market Adoption projections for XML  A growing number of mainstream applications support XMLAn increasing number of users require non-proprietary data structures The market is getting ready to adopt XML in a pervasive way, thus opening new development opportunities  For software developers, it is important to assess how much XML support and development will be needed in order to stay ahead of the market. And that in turn will depend on whether XML data structures manage to go beyond the realm in which they have acquired standard status |
|||||||||
|
|||||||||
 Discussion What is happening with XML? Over the past few years the markup language derived from SGML (Standard Generic Markup Language) has gained a lot of ground in high-end information management applications. Lately, XML has also become an industry buzzword, a must-have feature for anyone working in modern content processing applications. While XML has been the backbone of high-end applications for some time, the ‘shrink-wrapped” market is now taking off to a certain extent. Citing a few recent examples: Quark has just shipped avenue.quark, its XML import/export extension for XPress, and Adobe has released FrameMaker 6.0 (which exports XML, though does not support XML import) and has announced XML support for the next version of GoLive. As for Microsoft, the company’s recently announced "dot-net" strategy for Internet-based services is also based on XML. Where is this market going? What do users expect? Is there a low-end XML market? What strategies should software developers use to jump on the XML bandwagon? Will XML simply remain a data format, or is there an emerging market for XML applications? Analysis Of course there are no quick and easy answers to these questions. XML is a very powerful tool and, as far as data interchange is concerned, it has already proven that it has a lot to offer. Over the last few years, XML has become the de facto standard for high-end content and asset management. As such, it is not surprising that more and more software developers are flocking to support it. The real question is: where is this XML market headed? We are currently in a trend of media consolidation, both on the corporate level and as far as end-users are concerned. High-end applications are increasingly required to support XML but what about the low-end market. From a developers point of view: is there room for an XML killer app? Quark is giving the market a shot with avenue.quark, which will also be part of XPress 5.0. Avenue.quark is an extension for XML import/export, allowing the integration of XPress content with XML-based web authoring systems, such Vignette Story Server. For Quark it is also a showcase application to demonstrate that the company is moving full steam into cross-media publishing. It will be interesting to observe whether avenue.quark will build a user-base outside of its captive audience, namely high-end Web content managers who need to integrate XPress content with their data-serving application on the Web. So where is the market going? For the main publishing market to move seriously to XML-based data structures, it will be necessary to re-engineer the applications and proprietary data-structures extensively. This is of course not going to happen overnight. Though XPress 5 will support XML through avenue.quark as an import/export function, for instance, there is not much indication that the XPress file format will be rewritten to move closer to XML-based structures. As for Adobe, the company's official position on XML is not very clear yet either, despite the general trend towards established standards within the company. For software developers, it is important to assess how much XML support and development will be needed in order to stay ahead of the market. And that in turn will depend on whether XML data structures manage to go beyond the realm in which they have acquired standard-status. What does the market need? Does the end-user need XML? More importantly, does the end-user THINK he needs XML? Market perception can be as important as genuine need for a an emerging technology. Interestingly we are here in a reversal of the technology-adoption patterns which are the basis of our modern digital world. Practically all tools which have gained a predominant market position have evolved from the ground up, starting their careers as end-user applications and then moving up to become more and more professional. If XML moves beyond the vertical, high- end applications - which is not at all impossible - the process will have been the complete opposite. In the end, whether or not the markup language becomes pervasive beyond the high end of content management will also depend on software developers. Right now, there is a consensus that XML is complex and needs specially trained operators. Nevertheless, we have seen before, through PostScript drawing packages for instance, that it is indeed possible to make inherently very complex, programming-based processes reasonably simple to use. XML is today where PostScript was before the arrival of Illustrator: a programming language which could be manipulated through a number of specialized utilities - but did not really have much end-user functionality. In other words, for XML to become as much a standard as Adobe’s page description language, both ingredients will be necessary: strong development efforts, as well as the broad end-user interest and education that only happens when products move into the highly competitive realm of shrink-wrapped software. The market is not there yet - but XML is not going to go away. We are living in a world where non-proprietary data-structures have become an essential requirement for an increasing number of users. What really remains to be seen is which of the industry players will be capable of capturing and focussing this growing market interest and turning it into the “XML Killer App.” Pfeiffer Consulting is preparing a report on development strategies around XML. Contact us with your development news and suggestions, or if you would like to be informed when the report becomes available. 23June2000 ©Pfeiffer Consulting 2000. |
| Home / About Us / Consulting / Publications / DTA Labs / Press / Contact |