Summary

Is XML worth investing in? When a technology has the blessing of the W3C and is endorsed by hundreds of industry participants, including such formidable players as Microsoft and Oracle, you can be sure it is here to stay.

XML will change the Internet for the better. HTML is probably here to stay for quite a while as a way to describe how to display Web pages. But XML is now available to describe the information in content, and enables a new class of transaction possibilities across the Internet.

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Bruce Sharpe has been involved in software development since receiving his Ph.D. in mathematical physics in the mid-1980's. He is currently VP Development at SoftQuad Software Inc. where he is responsible for the HoTMetaL and XMetaL family of products for HTML, XML and SGML authoring.