Tag, You're It! XML Supercharges the Net

Baldwin Louie — Fri, 13 Nov 1998 14:00:00 -0800

When your company doubles in size in three years, you can get overloaded with data - if you're not prepared. Guidant (GDT), an Indianapolis medical device maker, has found a way to meet the challenge.

Its answer: Extensible Markup Language, or XML, a powerful tool for handling data on the Web. Guidant, which has seen its pacemaker and defibrillator division alone mushroom from $400 million in sales to $800 million in three years, thinks XML's data-tracking capabilities will go a long way toward solving its information management problems.

"XML helps us keep up with the increased product data using the same number of people," says Mark Rutkiewicz, Guidant's manager of documentation.

Guidant got turned on to XML by Arbortext, a Waltham, Mass-based vendor of electronic publishing software. Guidant plans to use Arbortext's Epic software to create a single, online version of its product literature. The XML-based software can quickly ferret out data from legacy systems and reformat the information for the Web. For Guidant, Epic provides a way to create a single data source for developing new documents. Arbortext contends the software can pay for itself in three to six months.

The concept behind XML is straightforward. Attach descriptive tags to individual bits of information - data about data. The tags make it both faster and easier to manipulate underlying data. For example, XML can make search engines work faster. There's a growing effort to use XML to build common standards for business-to-business online commerce. Even publishing tools can be bulked up with XML.

So far, the industry hasn't really embraced the technology. You can't get an XML-compliant browser from Netscape or Microsoft (MSFT), for instance. But early adopters of the technology are brimming with enthusiasm. If the kinks can be worked out, they say, the software can make a real difference.

It's already become clear that XML applications can be used to jazz up Web content. "You see sites with greater navigability, personalization and the ability to integrate media components a little bit more seamlessly," says Randall Hancock, senior VP at Mainspring Communications, a Cambridge, Mass., research firm.

In electronic publishing, asserts Arbortext CEO Bob Crowley, XML can provide a huge leap forward, saving time and money spent seeking out information and changing data from one format to another.

To date, some of the most dramatic benefits of XML can be seen with search tools. Discovery Communications (dossier), the Bethesda, Md., company that operates the Discovery Channel, as well as various other cable television networks and two affiliated retail chains, has taken advantage of XML to startling effect.

It used to take Discovery days to track down photos. The company would phone stock agencies, whose staff would manually fetch and mail the slides. The process created reams of paperwork. And a coordinated attempt to bring parts of the process online didn't help much. Discovery staff still had to slog through individual photo agency sites, each with their own passwords and protocols.

Now the entire photo retrieval process happens in a mere 45 seconds. To accomplish this minor miracle, Discovery uses an XML tool from WebMethods, a Fairfax, Va., software developer. The software gives Discovery the ability to hit one key and sift through a slew of sites rich in graphics and data.

Here's how it works: An intelligent search agent flies out to all of the sites that have been tagged with XML, logs on, navigates its way, culls images and information, and returns with a focused report, complete with relevant graphics and descriptions. From there, Discovery's staff can blow up any of the images to full size and compare them with others from alternative sources.

Pam Huling, director of photo services at Discovery Communications, says the company expects to save both time and money on designers this year.

Discovery's experience is no isolated example. XML is gluing together efficient supply chains across industries. Companies specializing in one type of product or service will have the ability to communicate with a larger number of suppliers. Businesses will have the flexibility to outsource more of their functions to third parties that transact almost exclusively on the Web - and at the same time have the ability to document these activities in real time.

Business-to-business commerce isn't the only place XML has gained ground. For retailers, the protocol provides a way to reinvent the online mall, allowing consumers to shop from many sites at once.

That's the theory behind Junglee, a San Francisco company recently acquired by Amazon.com (AMZN). Junglee's software is turning companies into superstores without requiring supersize investments. "Instead of having to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to put together a comprehensive retail site, Junglee gives us access to 80 of the best brands," says Victor Oquendo, VP of technology at Seattle-based Go2Net, which operates an online shopping site.

Go2Net's WebMarket and MetaShop give shoppers a level of convenience they may not have experienced before: near-instant searches of a wide range of retailers. One Go2Net customer had spent weeks trying to find a particular scholarly book, scouring each online bookseller individually; WebMarket found the book in 15 seconds.

Given that kind of search capability, it's no wonder that Amazon.com bought Junglee. The acquisition catapults the bookseller into a broader retailing space, as the XML engine can search through 16 different categories of products as if they were a host site's own.

Despite XML's power, the language hasn't become a standard yet. A recent survey of 207 webmasters found just 5 percent plan to add XML to their sites within the next six months, according to Zona Research, a Redwood City, Calif., market research firm. Another 17 percent say they'll adopt XML within the next year; 12 percent say they'll be using XML within two years.

That's not terrible for a language that's only been around for about a year - the standard was only finalized by the World Wide Web Consortium in February.

But roadblocks remain. For starters, consumers will need XML-enabled browsers. So far, neither Netscape nor Microsoft fully support XML, although Netscape's Communicator 4.5 uses a modicum of the new protocol. However, the next versions of both Internet Explorer and Communicator will utilize XML extensively, although neither company has set a release date.

Standards issues remain, but a variety of vendors and industry consortia are working on solutions. Among the more visible efforts is CommerceNet, a Palo Alto, Calif., business-to-business group that's testing an online product catalog. At least two other groups have tinkered with retail shopping applications. Keep your eye on the Open Trading Protocol, and a rival effort called Open Buying on the Internet.

A raft of financial services groups have also been grappling with XML standardization. The Open Financial Exchange specification, developed by Microsoft, CheckFree and Intuit (INTU), facilitates the exchange of information across different home banking applications.

On Wall Street, firms are welding XML into trade instructions using a specification called Financial Information Exchange. "XML will give us greater interoperability," says John Goeller, VP at Salomon Smith Barney. "It will be simpler and cheaper for us to program."

Citibank, meanwhile, is spearheading an effort to spice up electronic data interchange, or EDI, a well-established method for transmitting payments and information. The hope is to boost usage, with XML making EDI more flexible and cost effective.

Jay Green, who is the business development manager for electronic commerce at American Century Investments (dossier), a Kansas City, Mo., mutual fund company, believes that using XML will lead to better customer service. Green thinks XML will let American Century deliver more account information to customers who use Quicken, for instance.

To make that happen, American Century uses software from Innovision, a Lenexa, Kan., company. Innovision's XML-powered software fetches information formatted with the Open Financial Exchange specification from legacy systems in a fraction of the time it would otherwise take.

Green says that gives American Century a distinct edge in an industry in which the average customer typically has relationships with several competing financial institutions. "XML-based standards will help customers aggregate data on multiple products, from many different providers," Green says.

With such a wide variety of implementations already under way, XML is off to a solid start. Not long ago, analysts predicted the protocol would not hit the mainstream for years. Now, some experts think entire documents will be written in XML within 18 months.

"In the meantime, there will be simpler uses of XML just for data flow. And that's six to nine months away," says Bruce Delagi, senior director of architecture for the enterprise products group at Sun (SUNW) Microsystems. "It will be an evolution." In some ways, the emergence of XML looks a lot like the early days of Java: Early hype, accompanied by high hopes for dramatic change, followed by slow but steady adoption. Don't be surprised to see XML follow the same pattern.

XML is being adopted much more quickly than many people expected. The one-year-old language is cropping up in a variety of offerings, from search tools to electronic publishing, and even to browsers and servers. The following is a selection of products fashioned with XML.
- J.C.

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Tag, You're It! XML Supercharges the Net