This article is very well written article for a wide audience on what XML is and what it means to consumers, business, e-commerce, developers, etc.

http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,0-38355,00.html?st.ne.lh..ni

From the article...

news analysis: Only in the abbreviation-laden world of high technology could three letters have such wide impact.

For application-to-application integration, XML is better than component systems like CORBA and DCOM," claims James Utzschneider,
director of Microsoft's XML-based BizTalk initiative. "XML is good for things that CORBA and COM were not really good at, like
building an applications backbone."

Some XML software providers, such as DataChannel and Bluestone Software, are touting XML and HTTP as a Web component model.
Bluestone executives believes XML's ease of use will quickly make it more popular than CORBA, EJB, and COM.

Norbert Mikula, DataChannel's chief technology officer, said it should not turn into a religious debate, but that developers have
more options.
"I don't care if the future is CORBA or Java objects," he said. "What is in my mind is the data itself becomes mobile and it becomes
mobile through XML. You don't have to worry about COM, as long as [XML] describes the interchange of data."