XML: Too much of a good thing? | CNET News.com: "It's hard to find an industry or interest that isn't taking advantage of the fast-growing standard for Web services and data exchange. In the six years since the main XML specification was first published, it's spawned hundreds of dialects, or schemas, benefiting everyone from butchers to bulldozer operators wishing to easily exchange information electronically."
Many XML dialects - is this going to cause problems in the future? That depends entirely on how it is going to be used:
"How much is too much?
While XML makes it easy to create special-purpose dialects, the privilege shouldn't be abused, Bray warned. Competing schemas handling similar tasks create the potential for confusion and broken connections. Consider musical notation, where there are at least a half-dozen projects to apply XML to standardizing music scores. Similarly, the seemingly arcane field of cave exploration has inspired at least three attempts at XML data standards.
"There's an incentive to create a language to solve your specific problem," Bray said. "But if there's something out there already that might serve your need, you should consider using it." "
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