1. XML The “E-Lance Economy” or “Digital Economy” is a new challenge for interacting over networks. XML was developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to meet these new demands. W3C: “We are leading the Evolution of the World Wide Web” This evolution is the transformation of the Web from a “global information space” to a “universal knowledge network” (based upon a platform and vendor independent universal data format).

2. XML - new ways of developing standards The self-conception of standardization organizations, software vendors and users is changing. Open standards are gaining ground. Extensible Markup Language (XML), issued as a standard by W3C in February 1998, is a meta-language optimized for use on the Internet that is on the way of becoming the universal data format for the Web.

3. XML - new ways of developing standards XML should - as two major design goals of the W3C - be simple to use on the Internet and support a wide variety of applications.  Simple development (tools) and use (documents) were considered to be crucial for a fast and widespread diffusion.

4. Design goals for XML The design goals for XML are: 1)XML shall be straightforwardly usable over the Internet. 2)XML shall support a wide variety of applications. 3)XML shall be compatible with SGML. 4)It shall be easy to write programs which process XML documents. 5)The number of optional features in XML is to be kept to the absolute minimum, ideally zero.

5. Design goals for XML 6)XML documents should be human-legible and reasonably clear. 7)The XML design should be prepared quickly. 8)The design of XML shall be formal and concise. 9)XML documents shall be easy to create. 10)Terseness in XML markup is of minimal importance.

6. Design goals for XML Additionally, XML designers anticipated that the language could live up to its full potential only in combination with other - also open - standards. Thus, W3C is developing related standards for linking capabilities, metadata frameworks, platform- and language-neutral interfaces etc. to enable maximum interoperability.  DOM  RDF  XLink, XPointer ...

7. XML opens networks Although XML is still quite young, it has found broad adoption in different industries. XML makes possible fundamental changes in the design of communications relations, especially in the area of business-to-business communication (“EDI for the masses”). It is now possible to define open interfaces to connect a multitude of users over ubiquitous networks. It is expected that new technological possibilities associated with XML in combination with new emerging network technologies will eventually lead to the emergence of new forms of organizations and cooperation, e.g. “spot enterprises”.

8. XML opens networks The increasing importance of the Internet will further accelerate the diffusion of XML since XML provides a new basis for integrating different partners, processes and applications. XML opens the way for SMEs in (EDI-) networks and supply chains and makes possible the emergence of new market forms („Plug & Play Electronic Commerce“). Thus, new open markets could replace traditional closed business relations. XML opens networks.

9. XML http://xml.cnec.org The „Competence Center XML“ at the Institute of Information Systems, J. W. Goethe-University, Frankfurt