XML Survivors

Computerworld - About a year ago, Payet Guillermo's systems and Web development work called for more robust capabilities for the sharing of information and applications. That's when he started dabbling in XML.

XML is an important skill to master, because more clients are asking to link data sources and applications for use on Web sites and for back-office integration. And they'll soon be asking for business-to-business extranets as well, says Guillermo, president and chief technology officer at Ocean Group in Santa Cruz, Calif. "XML is already here, and it will eventually be very widely used," he notes.

Job Watch WHO: Payet Guillermo, founder, president and CTO, Ocean Group, Santa Cruz, Calif. REPORTS TO: IT leaders at client organizations JOB DESCRIPTION: Develops XML to package, transfer, link and translate a variety of data forms and applications SKILLS REQUIRED: Web application and systems integration background; versed in HTML, parsing and common languages like C and Java WHO ELSE NEEDS TO KNOW XML? Application developers Systems integrators Web developers Security professionals (See "The Threat of XML," July 9) Emerging structured-documents specialists

One of his clients, a women's sports clothing Web site, wanted a front-page window running scores of women's sporting events. London-based Reuters Media's news service provides the scores in XML format. Guillermo's job was to parse that data and translate it back into the client's native Java environment. After much research, he chose The Apache Software Foundation's Xerces XML parser, which is also available for C++ translation.

Applications like these often relay data directly between application servers housed at different companies. This makes security knowledge an important part of the job, Guillermo says. For example, he's now working with a company that wants its Web visitors to be able to query a back-end database for astrology information.

That astrology data actually comes from a third-party news service. Packaged in XML, the data is transferred to an application server at the Web business, where it's then pulled up to the user in HTML.

"We're putting an XML wrapper around code someone else has already written, and then the Web business can format it anyway they want," Guillermo says. "So you really have to pay attention to securing the data transport in these one-to-one connections, especially authentication."

This is where inquisitiveness becomes key. Working in XML during this early stage means following the many standards coming from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and vertical industries, Guillermo says. While the W3C's authentication and public-key infrastructure standards make a good starting point, XML developers must also track down best development practices, vendor developments and the evolution of standards.