XML in eBusiness tasks realization

There is no doubt that XML is rapidly becoming one of the most important data formats. An example of such data are the electronic business documents round via Internet between the partners of B2B business model. In this article the author will describe his experience from the initiation of electronic data interchange with the XML technology, in one of Polish companies. 1. Aspects of electronic data interchange The initiation (put into practice) of electronic data interchange (EDI) is a very important process in companies nowadays, which is connected with a measurable profit [1]. The EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) standard is well known and highly valued, but also a very expensive solution. A company which is looking for economies could not be interested in the investment of such money as the EDI needs. An alternative could be the XML technology. XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is relatively new, but very fast and still developing technology. The first time XML was presented at the SGML 96 Conference in Boston (November 1996). The 1st XML Conference was held by the Graphic Communications Association (San Diego, March 97). In October 97 the W3C came with a note on “W3C Data Formats on XML, SGML, HTML, and RDF” [2]. Until now the XML specification is backed by SoftQuad, Adobe, IBM, HP, Microsoft, Netscape, Lockheed Martin, NCSA, Novell, Sun, Boston University, Oxford University, and the Universities of Illinois and Waterloo [3]. The XML is a meta-markup language that provides a format for describing structured data. XML has much in common with the data description languages, such as DDS and SQL, but there is a major conceptual difference. An XML document is completely self-contained and includes both data and data description. Other languages only ∗ E-mail address: [email protected]