The Problem With XML

Cliff Longman, of Kalido, has a very good explanation of why XML should not be regarded as the universal panacea for data integration. He also talks about the genesis of Kalido. It was a tool developed to tackle the horrendous problems of data integration within the oil products businesses of Shell. As Cliff says, at the time, there were a hundred different operating companies, none of which agreed on the same way of defining their data. Trying to discover how much oil had been sold worldwide, and to whom, was a complete nightmare.

 

(hat tip to Andy for the link)