And HTML is no longer enough. Although HTML provides us with forms to transmit data, it is limited and clumsy. XML will change all this. Schemas are likely to be the more widely adopted, partly because they are supported by Microsoft but also because they offer genuine advantages. Also key is the club, or industry grouping.
Clubs define and agree standard schemas for specific purposes.
As long as different firms use the same schema, eBIS-XML enables the direct exchange of purchase orders and invoices between different accounting software packages, via email and the Net. These schemas are available free from the BizTalk Web site, set up by Microsoft as a repository for XML schemas. About 100 developers have already confirmed that they will implement eBIS-XML in their products. EDI has been around for 20 years yet less than one percent of organisations around the world use it because it is so complicated and costly to implement. Basda's 350 members handle the other 99 percent of transmissions by printing out on specialist stationery orders and invoices generated by one computer system, which are then sent by mail and keyed into another system, at great cost in time and materials.