>>Very interesting
>>
>>Have you any applications which use XML to pass data directly to a Web based application or to retrieve it from the web? I have a client who looks at XML as a means of updating web applications on the fly and is putting forward the argument that this is the way forward rather than more traditional methods like emailing attachments or sending emails which can then be parsed and the data extracted into applications (for which XML would be very good)
>>
>>Any comments?
>
>XML is hierarchical and can have nested sets of data. It's text so it goes fine through http and firewalls (standard port 80).
>The only drawback is that it is more verbose so it might be slow to parse, (too big a text file) for big datasets.

Thanks for that

Alex is it too simplistic to view XML as a container language for passing data in a standard format between applications? I could see the benefit if everyone converted to it but is that likely to happen - forgive my ignorance but I'm just trying to get some impression as to how important XML is going to be and how quickly it will catch on on a large scale