Jim Phillips (At home on vacation today!) writes:

>So, your're saying what?  That XML will roll with punches and automagically
>adapt to chaging web pages?  Or that the customer will accept our way of
>doing things after spending lots of bucks getting this up and running?

If you choose to use XML for B2D (Business to Devil commerce), remember that
your XML document should only contain data - no <framesets>, no <b>, no
<nothing>.  Generally, it is the look and navigation that changes with web
pages and not the content.  When you are using XPath to reference data in
your file, it happily skips any elements that it doesn't need.  The only
time you will get into trouble, is if you change your vocabulary by
rearranging the nesting of elements or by deleting a needed element
altogether.  So in a sense it can roll with some punches.

As for asking a business to load everything through a web page, that is kind
of dumb unless you think you are only working with consumers.  Now a
clever-dick would take their web page and submit the form as an XML document
so it doesn't matter whether the page came from another computer or the web.

Devilishly yours,

Mark Wonsil
4M Enterprises, Inc.