Strategic XML

Storing Data

The proliferation of cheap and powerful low-end servers and personal computers has inadvertently fueled the uncontrolled fragmentation of information. Within a large organization, important documents, spreadsheets, and data files are scattered across personal workstations and file servers. With each software vendor implementing its own proprietary file format, the problem of searching and indexing all of these scattered documents would be insurmountable.

Proprietary file formats also guarantee that information will be lost over time. As products evolve, old file formats tend to be left behind. Two or three versions later, frequently even the product that created a file is unable to read it. The widespread acceptance of XML by product ...