When an enterprise creates a new web-based application, it is rare for that application to exist in a vacuum. Integrating that application with existing applications on one or more concurrent platforms is no different from requirements for application integration that have needed filling for some time. What is needed is a universal integration solution that will equally satisfy requirements for web/client-server integration as web/mainframe integration, as well as satisfying any other requirement including mainframe/mainframe integration of 30-year-old COBOL applications.

When the problem is viewed as one of data exchange, there is no significant difference in the requirements of one platform from another. XML comes into the equation because it was designed from the ground up to satisfy all data exchange requirements. Indeed, it does so in a practical manner, once you look past the hype. XML can and should be the glue to use to bind multiple applications together. In this regard, we can confidently predict that XML will be as revolutionary as the introduction of SQL databases 20 years ago, and will have as profound an impact as the databases have had, as the technology is absorbed over time.

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