Updated: July 12, 2020 (February 11, 2002)

  Analyst Report

XML to Glue Applications Together

My Atlas / Analyst Reports

3,684 wordsTime to read: 19 min
Rob Helm by
Rob Helm

As managing vice president, Rob Helm covers Microsoft collaboration and content management. His 25-plus years of experience analyzing Microsoft’s technology... more

The newly released .NET development platform gives a prominent spot to the Extensible Markup Language (XML) data format. In fact, XML is popping up in all of Microsoft’s strategic products (and seemingly all of its executives’ speeches). “XML is affecting everything at Microsoft, not just our tools and our platforms but the very applications themselves and the way they deal with data,” says Chief Software Architect Bill Gates. By understanding XML, IT planners and software architects can design better applications with Microsoft’s operating systems, servers, and tools, and can tie those applications into larger information systems more effectively.

Three Key Roles

The XML format is showing up throughout Microsoft’s product line, from Access (as a file and report format) to Windows XP (as a format for program installation information). However, XML will have the biggest impact on software and information system design on the Microsoft platform when it is used in the following three ways:

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