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Abusing the natives When you define a new datatype you only create a new mapping. The fact that you have an XML datatype does not mean that the data is stored in XML format. So, let's be clear about this: IBM has announced that the next version of DB2 will have native XML storage capabilities. It really is changing the way that it physically stores data on disk. Microsoft and others that are claiming "native" XML capabilities, based on support for XML datatypes, are abusing the language. (Apr. 2005 IT Analysis) Perspective on XML: Be humble, not imperial In many ways, the entire discipline of software development has evolved through insistence on nailing business factors into a tight box, which conflicts with contemporary management ideology. XML's power comes from transparency; these information units are easy to search, retrieve and view. (Dec. 2004 Application Development Trends) IBM Enterprise COBOL for z/OS V3.3 V3.3 builds on existing compiler XML capabilities to provide set-level operations between XML documents, represented as character strings, and COBOL elementary or group data items. The new XML GENERATE verb generates XML from a data item. (Feb. 2004 IBM Press) Building Dictionaries With SAX there has been a lot of controversy in the XML community because NEL (…), the character I happened to mistake for ellipsis, has been added as a standard white space character in a revision that will probably become XML 1.1. Some claim this breaks backward compatibility and is not worth the convenience of a (relatively) few mainframe users. (Jan. 2004 XML.com) XML programming in Java technology This updated tutorial covers the basics of manipulating XML documents using Java technology. Doug Tidwell looks at the common APIs for XML and discusses how to parse, create, manipulate, and transform XML documents. (Jan. 2004 IBM Developerworks) Sometimes Success Begins at Failure IBM had a software project that had been kicking around in its labs for some time but did not seem to have any further potential. It published it on its AlphaWorks Web site. Soon IBM managers noticed that this particular piece of software code was being downloaded at a rate ten times that of other code posted at the site. We know it today as the XML parser. (Dec. 2003 HBS Working Knowledge) What Exactly Is XML? XML always had performance problems. But for many applications that overhead is worth it, if you can really and easily do transparent data exchanges between systems that would otherwise never be able to trade data. It’s that if that I’m worried about. The core idea of interoperability is being lost under dozens of not-so-compatible standards. (Jul. 2003 Software Development Times) Convert Flat-File Data to XML Although XML is in widespread use throughout the world now, there are still many "legacy" systems that do not know a thing about XML or how to use it. Many of these systems work with different types of flat-files that delimit data using commas or tabs, or have fixed-length fields. (Jun. 2003 XML & Web Services) The XML.com Interview XML is a shared serialization of data with different programs and very different data models. A bank might have mainframe software written ten years ago that they really don't want to change. It's possible to put up a web server programmed with a CGI script. Very often the staff are willing to do that because it requires no expertise, whereas a CORBA interface does. (Apr. 2003 XML magazine)
Modernizing the Mainframe - Unleashing the power of XML and Web services Organizations are finding that XML, used in conjunction with a Web services-based architecture, is an excellent foundation for extending the life, functionality, and value of mainframe systems. (Jan. 2004 XML Journal)
W3C Advances XML 1.1 to Candidate Draft XML 1.1 addresses a problem IBM's mainframe systems have in using the language. IBM's mainframes use a special character to designate the end of a line of text, but XML 1.0 can't recognize the character, forcing XML 1.0 documents generated on mainframes to either violate the local line-end conventions or utilize translation phases before parsing and after generation. (Oct. 2002 Internetnews)
Working out the bugs in XML databases XML documents stored as huge binary large objects in relational databases became opaque: They cannot be searched or queried. Trying to "force fit" an XML document into a rigid relational structure can waste storage space and lead to inefficiencies in queries and retrievals. (Jan. 2002 Network Fusion)
Humans should not have to grok XML Unfortunately, computer time and space efficiency suffers tremendously the more we mark up our data. When I worked at a supercomputing center back in 1993, the physicists often stored terabyte files. Adding XML markup to the data would have made those files truly gargantuan. (August 2001 IBM developerWorks)
XML for Relational Data XML by definition is hierarchical. Most business information starts out being hierarchical before it ever darkens the door of a relational database. But it is stored in a database in a way that makes it relational. (July 2001 Application Development Trands)
Converting Fixed-Width Text Records to XML Fortunately, converting fixed-field length text files into XML is not a terribly difficult undertaking, though you need to be careful about a few "gotchas". After some simple preliminary processing to wrap the data in markup and save it as a well-formed XML document, you can use XSLT to handle most of the real work. (July 2001 DevX)