“XML was, and continues to be, a revolutionary technology. Tim
Bray likes to say that XML came in “fast and low and under the
radar,” taking the world by storm. Since then we’ve seen it explode
from a minority interest to a pervasive technology.”
“Now that XML has hit the big-time, there’s a lot of money
flowing into it, and into companies basing their businesses on it.
This is a good thing, and testament to the value of an
interoperable syntax. However, we need to see interoperability
going all the way, and XML being more than a “buzz-word” to gain
acceptance for a product.”
“Users need to realize that just because a product uses XML,
it is no guarantee of either interoperability or openness. You
may be aware that on XML.com we have conducted XML 1.0 conformance
tests using the suites developed by OASIS and the US NIST. In
our last round of tests we found the big vendors — Oracle and
Microsoft — lagging a significant amount behind various
open-source XML parsers.”