This complex process was hard to create and maintain, and something as routine as the installation of a new version of any of the software involved could require major reprogramming. XML simplifies this greatly by plugging directly into each piece of communicating software. Each application will communicate directly with any others that it needs to, either internally or across the supply chain. Companies of all sizes have constant problems transferring data between incompatible legacy systems and the rest of their data architecture. Ker believes XML may become the answer to this problem because of its ability to plug into each application and automatically exchange data over the corporate Intranet.
Nothing is ever quite that easy.
While XML technology is available, it still requires standards for electronic documents, just as EDI did before it. These standards must be precise because computers cannot interpret or understand. If something is not exactly where the software expects it to be, the computer has no ability ot search for it somewhere else. Almost 20 years after EDI was introduced, the ANSI X12 standard for EDI documents is still unfinished. As XML becomes ubiquitous, a large user community will push standards forward quickly.