[XML-SIG] XML Schema and e-commerce

[Laurent Szyster]

Paul Prescod wrote:
> 
> People will get together, and will define reasonable, maintainable
> document structures because e-commerce cannot afford to fail.

Yet, the fact that e-commerce cannot afford poor standardization
does not make the process of standard definition more efficient.

Also, "reasonable, maintainable document structures" is a myth.

One data model won't fit all applications. Specially on the Internet
where _all_ applications can exchange data. IMHO, small companies
will continue to implement only subsets of the standard documents.
Just enough to do business with their trading partners _today_.
And large players will continue to force small ones to use their own
"flavour" of the standards.

EDI (EDIFACT, X12, ...) standards have been around for a while now.
Knowing that there is no such thing as a universal data model, why
on earth should people invest in a new unproven standard?

People can benefit from XML features (like UNICODE) and the
availability of commodity software for it by translating EDI
messages into XML. That's a lot faster than waiting for BizTalk
(or somebody else) to come up with a working standard.


Laurent Szyster
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