20 th Asia Pacific Council for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (AFACT) Meeting

1. 20th Asia Pacific Council for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (AFACT) Meeting Challenges to adoptions of XML Ang Tan Fong Lecturer, University Malaya

2. Agenda • Introduction • XML Web Services • Benefits • Challenges • Summary

3. Introduction • Extensible Markup Language (XML) • It is a document processing standard proposed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). • It is a simple, very flexible text format derived from SGML. • It is used for structuring data. • A new standard that could preserve general application independence that makes HTML portable and powerful. • The standard for information interchange of a wide variety of data on the Web.

4. Introduction • Difference Between XML and HTML • XML was designed to describe data and to focus on what data is. HTML was designed to display data and to focus on how data looks. • HTML is about displaying information, XML is about describing information. • New tag can be defined in XML. • XML can contain optional description of its grammar • XML was not designed to DO anything??? • XML is created to structure, store, and to send information.

5. Three-tier Web Architecture with XML

6. XML Web Services • The Global XML Web Services Architecture builds on today’s XML Web services baseline specifications of SOAP, WSDL, and UDDI

7. Benefits • B2B E-Commerce • A common data that facilitates participation in B2B exchanges or supply chains with suppliers, customers or partners. • Simplifies the process of transmitting the data among business partners. • Data Access • Common data access techniques for structured and unstructured data. (Semi structured data) • Offers users a single point of control for simplified, efficient data access

8. Benefits • Application Integration • An EAI enabling technology that simplifies application integration within an organization. • As a result, XML is the next Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) system. • Web Services • The fundamental building block in the move to distributed computing on the Internet. • Bridging technology between the .NET and Java Worlds.

9. Benefits • Cost Reduction • Cost reduction in data conversion as well as reduction of application development time • Data Transferring • Standard, portable format to transfer meta-data

10. Challenges • Immature Standard • Some of the XML proposal have not been ratified as standards • XML Schema is too complex to understand. • “Having a standard is not always a good thing and early standardization may cut off innovation”, James Clark, the first recipient of the IDE Alliance XML Cup Award

11. Challenges • Lack of qualified IT staff • It is simple to understand XML conceptually but it is very difficult to implement it. • “it takes 10 minutes to understand XML and 10 months to understand the new technologies hung around it” Michael Champion, Senior research and development advisor, Software AG. • IT Staff already struggling to keep current with technology before XML showed up on the horizon. • Lack of clear guideline and direction on where to apply XML technology

12. Challenges • Security • XML is an unsecured message, and sensitive information intercepted on the network is easily read. • Encryption will protect most of the data, but we can't yet easily encrypt XML documents. • Adding security measures will further affect net- work performance, with larger chunks of information moving from system to system and being encrypted and decrypted on the fly.

13. Summary • As a conclusion, the benefits are well understood and tangible and the challenges are recognized and likely to recede over time. • It will affect our life through Web-based XML and XML-enabled data exchange. • When should I use XML? • When you need a buzzword in your resume.

14. References • Intellor Group, Inc. 2001. • Global XML Web Services Architecture White Paper. • http://www.w3.org/ • http://www.w3schools.com

15. Thank you for your time