On Tuesday 29 January 2002 01:35 am, Mike Champion wrote:
>  Perhaps this gets at the idea:  The "conventional" data processing
>  and document processing approach treats XML as simply a standardized
>  input and output format for objects and programs. SOAP was clearly
>  designed primarily as a neutral wire format for serialized object
>  exchange, and the  W3C XML Schema spec seems driven more by the
>  needs of RDBMS vendors to exchange SQL data.

When the XML activity was chartered, it was chartered as an alternative to HTML to improve t
he life of *people*. There are lot's of cases where people can leverage the markup in intere
sting ways.
As an example, I've seen a number of examples of ad-hoc knowledge bases being built around v
ery simple tagging... people added tags as they added knowledge as it were. A very effective
 use of the technology. 

I've recently begun to feel that we've lost focus on the document (things that people work w
ith) side of XML. I think (hope?) Simon feels the same way. 


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