This seemingly esoteric difference is precisely what's needed at this juncture in the Internet revolution, XML buffs say. The new language will enable banks to create knowledge systems and to exchange financial information with customers and such third-party service providers as stockbrokers, mortgage and insurance companies, and mutual funds. You don't know or care what the words mean. You can program your system to do this without calling up a separate routine at each step of the billpay transaction. That saves a lot of processing time.
Banks are late-adopters of XML, but some interesting applications are beginning to emerge.
Wells Fargo leads One of the first banks to use XML in a major application was e-banking pioneer Wells Fargo. The centralized base had to be able to accept information in unstructured form, such as Microsoft Word and e-mail, and from structured databases, such as Excel. Entries would include administrative documents, sales presentations, company forms, corporate-wide communications, and information on mergers and competitors. Proprietary local area networks can do some of this, but they reject different applications. Wells decided to convert the knowledge base from HTML and use system software from eXcelon Corp., a leading XML-technology provider.