NewsForge: Using Open Source Tools to Build Interoperable Web Services

“XML and Web services have been touted for years as the new
lingua franca for application development, destined to transform
the way companies conduct business and communicate. Lingua franca,
or ‘bastardized French,’ was a pidgin or trade language used a
couple of hundred years ago by various language communities around
the Mediterranean to communicate with others whose language they
didn’t speak.

“XML, by itself, can’t be a lingua franca, since it really isn’t
even a language; it’s more an alphabet or limited set of characters
for sending information between application systems. And just
because applications speak XML doesn’t mean that they can talk to
each other, anymore than English and French speakers will
understand each other despite using languages based on the same
alphabet…”

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