So here we are, more than four years since XML (eXtensible Markup Language) first saw the light of the public day. We have come a long way since the early days.

The XML hype started with a small group of experts who argued that SGML wasn't suitable for Web-based publishing and that HTML is pure evil anyway. Today, top-level executives of larger and smaller companies around the world announce that XML will solve all the problems of the world, including, but not limited to, the common cold.

At this point, XML found its place - if perhaps only temporarily - next to all the other initialisms beloved of business people, such as ROI, TCO, and more. "What the heck. It has three letters, like many of the popular acronyms, so it must be good."

I recall in 1994 laughing over a comic that showed a CEO telling his poor IT executive, "I want a Web strategy and I want you to tell me why I want one." Today it appears to me that we are at the same place with XML.

As I followed the exciting evolution of XML, I had the opportunity to become both participant and bystander as history started to unfold. What have I seen? Let me share my two cents worth of wisdom.

'Tot gesagte leben laenger'
Which loosely translated means, "What's been pronounced dead lives longer." Here are a few examples:

The biggest fear (or wish) since 1996: that XML will replace HTML. Sure, why not? It seems to make sense to replace old angle brackets with sexy new angle brackets. Well, certainly it would make sense to replace HTML with a true data-format that can be parsed and processed without having to write megabytes of parsing and heuristic algorithms. However, we are still talking about one being a language to present information, the other being a language to describe it.

XHTML, of course, is a completely different beast. Finally, we have well-formed HTML combined with a powerful and established formatting language. Heaven at last? Let's wait and see. After all, we are in 2001 and HTML is still with us and deployed widely and wildly.

Another big fear (or wish) since 1996: that XML will replace EDI. Many would argue that it makes sense to replace archaic codes with sexy angle brackets. First, we don't understand them, and second, they're not particularly sexy, they might add.

The reality looks somewhat different. If I'm a channel master and dictate what formats my suppliers have to use, why bother changing what I am doing? "If it ain't broken don't fix it." Pointy brackets don't change the rules of business in the same way that the Internet does not change easily established business models - as we are ever so painfully reminded when we look at our investment portfolios.

EDI is alive and growing. That said, it's certainly not going away any time soon.

Interesting things happen, however, when we take two disciplines and collectively benefit from the lessons learned, and ebXML is one such example. Here we have people who bring to the table the experience of decades of national and international electronic trade combined with the "new age" Internet and markup technology experts and visionaries.

Money, Marketing, Mass Hysteria
XML was grassroots, no doubt about it. There was a time when you could put all of the world's XML experts into a small room and every meeting would start and end with a big group hug (sometimes metaphorically, sometimes literally).

Things change when marketing folks and evangelists realize that there is something that sells a great vision. Things change when something is a great means to secure a new round of financing or potentially lift your stock price (way back when). Things change when the big boys enter the picture and endorse this new thing as The Next Big Thing.

Suddenly everything gets very serious and the stakes rise. Technocrats and visionaries, once enthusiastic "group hug" participants, now engage in a game of visionary tug-of-war. Not only do companies start competing in winning over the hearts and checkbooks of customers, but they also compete in vision and glorified statements.

A certain amount of mass hysteria is actually very beneficial for advancing standards and technologies. Experts from different disciplines apply their expertise and energy to this new thing and bring forth new and exciting solutions to solve new and exciting problems.

As with so many other grassroots initiatives, once something enters the mainstream and has to live up to the expectations of large scale corporate deployment and support, it inevitably has to lose some of its "innocence."

The XML Rubber Meets the Road
The XML hype has subsided. Today we are actually seeing deployment of XML outside of textbooks and conference proceedings. We're also seeing articles that question whether the whole thing was a good idea to begin with. This kind of skepticism is good, as it clears the air and lets us refocus on what's real.

These negative reflections come, for a good reason, from the people in the trenches, those that have to solve today's very real business problems. They see most clearly that some-times a chasm exists between visions and the realities of life.

It's always entertaining to see somebody dare to attack an established sacred cow and question it. Hordes of faithful followers are immediately at hand to defend the "unfair and unreasonable" attack, using every trick in the rhetoric book.

Sign of the times: Industry celebrities are now talking about "what works and what doesn't." Large conference organizers are selecting themes for this year that dispel the XML myth, like: "XML: What Really Works?"

We have gotten past the craze to soberness and from now on we can build solutions and solve real business problems, using XML where it makes sense to do so. Now that the worker bees are taking over, we can expect the evangelists to focus their attention on the new Next Big Thing. It's time to get down to business; XML has entered production mode.

Enter Web Services - the New Next Big Thing
So, what happens to XML evangelists? Are we standing in the food lines alongside the dot-com casualties? Not at all. While the XML worker-bees are taking XML to the next level, evangelists have moved on to the next big thing: Web services.

"Web services give XML something to do," (to abuse a popular tag line of yesteryear).

Web services is a new standards-based approach to an old thing - enabling distributed computing over the Web. Just like XML many years ago, Web services was a grassroots initiative promoted and kept alive by a small group of devoted technologists and visionaries.

Technology vendors today have identified Web services, a.k.a. the "RPC via the Internet" as the missing piece of the puzzle to their solutions portfolio. What we can expect to see in the ensuing months is the same craze around Web services that we saw with XML in its glory days of hype.

I also find some of the statements regarding the new business models amusing. Will we see the emergence of new ways of doing business? Certainly! However, let's not forget that for many years to come there will still be companies that work with a handful of selected customers and that will not need dynamic negotiation of (Web) services via registries. For many years to come, there will still be channel masters that dictate how one has to conduct business and by what means.

There will be one place, however, where I believe Web services may have enormous impact on the business communities and that is the integration of small to medium enterprises into a global e-business community.

So Who Will Get Killed This Time
2001 marks Groundhog Day, when, just like XML before it, the Web services initiative will see its technology adoption cycle realized, and whole Web services will see the light of day.

Well, for one it is programming and programmers. Since Web services will bring about higher degrees of reusability we'll end up knitting together new applications out of existing components. The businessperson will become the developer.

As I pointed out recently on a panel at an XML conference - and as was pointed out to me many panels ago, doesn't this remind us of the promises made by 4GL sortware packages? Doesn't it remind us of the promises associated with object-oriented technologies?

Where Do We Go From Here?
I sincerely believe we have an exciting future ahead with Web services. We'll see a certain degree of hype, followed by a healthy dose of reality and disillusionment. At the moment, the Web services hype has gone far ahead of implementation reality. So we have some catching up to do.

Roll up your sleeves: Web services has entered the marketplace.

Author Bio:
Norbert Mikula, who developed the first validating XML parser in Java (NXP) and has been engaged in XML-related efforts since the early days of this standard, is the industry editor of Web Services Journal. Norbert currently serves as vice chair of the board of directors of OASIS, the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards. The chief technology strategist of Washington-based DataChannel, he is the author of numerous white papers and articles and has been a speaker and chair at a variety of national and international conferences and industry events. Norbert@DataChannel.com