XML Schema Much work has been done on the XML Schema during the year. W3C has published a two part working draft. The Fragment Interchange specification is at draft stage. This specification allows parts of an XML document to be interchanged without losing any of the associated metadata. It is the specifications and standards controlled by SC34 that have influenced W3C's XML, XSL and Xlink.
STEP is the standard for industrial product model data representation and exchange.
If approved this concept will provide both the SGML and STEP communities with a direct link to the Web. The initial part of this programme of work is to use XML as a format for product data. However, DTD's for product data are typically 4 or 5 times bigger than DTD's for documents. For example, it is quite common for a product data DTD to have up to 2000 element types. Therefore, design and maintenance of the DTD can be a problem.