Recently in XQuery Category

There's an interesting discussion about XML repositories going on over at the XQuery Talk mailing list at Stylus Studio's website. Also, if you are interested in XML repositories, the best publicly available deep-dive is over at Ron Bourret's site.

• Over at eWeek, Jim Rapoza looks at the most overhyped technologies of the century, and XML isn't one of them.
• At IBM developerWorks, Elliotte Rusty Harold speculates on the future of XML. He's bullish on XQuery and Atom, and he declares the end of markup-centric editors.
• Speaking of being bullish on Atom, check out Mochilla's Atom-based API for premium content.
• Geoff Bock sends along news that Microsoft's push to get OOXML as a standard is being scrutinized by the EU.
• Also on the OOXML front, IBM and Microsoft seem ready to go toe to toe. More perspective here and here.
• Have you ever thought you should be able to take DITA-encoded content and pump it through InDesign? You are not alone.
• If you follow the Apache Software Foundation or other technical listservs at any level of interest, you just have to try Mark Logic's MarkMail application where you can ask questions like, "Who from Microsoft chimes in on the XML schema list at the W3C?".
• I'm not the only one to think that part of Microsoft's interest in Yahoo is driven by Yahoo's impressive efforts in wireless technology, which have XML at their core.

Well as the name of the blog suggests, the focus is on both technology and strategy. We have been at this long enough to come to the stunning conclusion that technology adoptions minus well-thought-out and sound business strategies are doomed to failure. (Now you know why we get paid the big bucks!) While obvious, the conclusion is also true. I have had the luxury of consulting with several clients over a long period of time. I like to think they are successful because they listen to me (and they do), but the bigger reason they are successful is that they use my input to inform well thought out business strategies. Sometimes these are operational (they want to save money, improve efficiency), but more often they are about the top line. They want to drive more revenue.

For commercial publishers this means bringing more product to market more quickly, customizing products, and developing derivative products (think of offerings like SafariU). For enterprises, this is also tied to bringing more product to market more quickly; think of a company like Autodesk using XML-based publishing and globalization to bring more products to more markets simultaneously. These are world-class projects based on XML that are bringing incredible value to their organizations, but--even more significantly--these are not the only efforts of their kind. Whereas in the early days of SGML the community could count projects of this type in perhaps the low double digits, I have long ago given up on trying to remember or catalog how many of these projects are out there backed by XML technology.

But not every project is as successful as the ones I have cited. Indeed these stand out as case studies of the best practices. Projects do fail and projects do falter, and I will reveal my bias here in saying that, especially in the recent few years, few projects fail because of the chosen technology. (All complex systems require significant customization! Who would have thunk it?) Much more often they fail because of problems with project management, lack of sufficient staffing, and shifting plans and execution when the inevitable problems arise. And these kinds of failures come right back to a failure in strategy, or at least a failure in realistically planning for a complex undertaking that is critical to organizational success.

So content strategies are indeed a critical half of this practice, but technology is the other half. Here as well a comparison to SGML is in order. Whereas in the days of SGML there were few vendors at the table, now there are literally scores. Even more importantly, none of the major vendors are missing, and one can make the argument that the major vendors are--or soon will be--the dominant players in the market. XML is central to the product and development platform strategies of Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Sun, Adobe, and EMC. One can only speculate at the level of R&D dedicated to XML at these companies, but it is safe to say it is a lot. Just as impressive is the community of developers who work in XML daily. Most programmers working in contemporary languages like Java and C# use XML for all kinds of routine tasks, and XML data mapping and modeling tools are built into Visual Studio and many other development tools.

To be more specific, we intend to cover what we categorize as the range of XML products of most interest to business and IT professionals responsible for content management initiatives. These include:

• XML Repositories


• XML Content Management Platforms


• XML Editors


• XML Transformation and Publishing Tools


• XML Utilities, Middleware, and IDEs


• XML Forms

Among other things, we will be developing an online directory of these product lines (more on that in a future post). I have been informally cataloging the companies over the recent few weeks and I already have 60 to 70 companies without trying very hard. We expect to interact with these vendors, get details of the products and product roadmaps, and also work with them when appropriate on product strategy and projects like white papers and case studies.

So that's the news so far from here. Do get in touch if you have any questions, ideas, or complaints!