Escaping Entropy Death: The Imperative of XML and Java

Escaping Entropy Death: The Imperative of XML and Java

Simon Phipps, Chief XML and Java Evangelist, IBM Corporation, gave a spirited presentation. He began with the point that interconnections lead to complexity which lead to greater cost, which sometimes exceeds the value of the effort. Entropy death is when the cost of the solution exceeds the value of the solution. Co-dependencies were described as dependencies that you aren't aware exist, which can cause major problems because they relate to unconscious choices.

Phipps contrasted e-Commerce and e-Business; e-Commerce is something you do, whereas e-Business is something you are; it pervades the whole nature of your company. He spoke of a Solution-Centric World that tries to minimize the dependencies that would otherwise kill a company, with this mapping:

Delivery	Web Model
Program	Java Components
Data	XML and Vocabularies
Network	TCP/IP
Security	Public Key

Phipps contrasted three corporate views of the relationship between XML and Java. He said that Sun Microsystem's view is a Java-centric world with XML serving specific functions. Microsoft, according to Phipps, has an XML-centric view with Java playing a limited role. IBM's view is a more balanced interplay between XML and Java. In discussing IBM's XML strategy, Phipps listed some of the many tools from IBM's alphaWorks, a site for free emerging technologies, some of which WDVL has featured since November 1998. Several new free IBM XML software tools were announced by Phipps [and featured in WDVL's Weekly XML News]:

• Visual DTD: a visual editor for editing and viewing DTDs. It will generate DTDs, and W3C XML schemas as it evolves. Provides tree, design, and source view.

• Visual XML Transformation Tool: for composing new XML documents based on existing XML documents.

• XSL Trace: helps debug XSL stylesheets by stepping through XSL scripts and showing the transformation rules as they are created and the output as it is generated.

• XML Generator: a Java program that creates test cases for DTDs by generating instances of valid XML from an input DTD.

• Also, there were updated versions of Xeena and LotusXSL.

Commercial IBM products that support XML include:

• DB2 - store and retrieve XML document from DB2, fast and powerful search

• MQSeries - open, scalable, industrial-strength messaging and information infrastructure; XML is the preferred message format

• WebSphere Application Server - develop and manage high-performance Web sites to ease the transition from simple Web publishing to advanced e-Business Web applications; services that enable e-Business applications that interchange data via XML to parse, generate, manipulate, and validate XML- and XSL-based content

• Domino - easy creation of XML documents: views and forms to export XML, Domino Agents and Java Servlets to import or export XML, LotusXSL processor to transform XML to another format

• VisualAge for Java - Java development environment for building and testing Java applets, servlets, and Enterprise JavaBean components; enables developer interaction with UML (Unified Modeling Language) business object models through a common XML Metadata Interchange Format (XMI) interface

IBM features a number of XML tutorials, articles, resources, and a search engine in their developerWorks XML Zone. Phipps indicated that IBM is placing a strong focus on XML, which it sees as a key technology for e-Business. A team of 500 developers is involved on an ongoing basis in developing B2B (business-to-business) solutions and assisting in defining industry vocabularies. In the next six months, these XML developers will concentrate on standards and technology refinement, product and solution rollouts, and customer engagements.

Phipps quoted a Gartner Group study that predicts that computer-to-computer use of XML will be pervasive in one to one-and-a-half years. His own predication is that both Java and XML will be completely mainstream by 2001 at both the client and server levels.

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