Remembering the Future

Maybe XML is the COBOL of the future. Millions of applications have been written to emit and consume XML, just like there are billions of lines of COBOL code still in production.

But if I’m right we will soon move on to a much smarter approach based on self-describing, self contained and open databases. It would share all XML’s key benefits, but it would be in a much better format for manipulation and querying, and that can only be good.

This would leave behind a wasteland of legacy XML systems that will be maintained by the equivalent of today’s COBOL programmers, the XML programmers!

Perhaps the key distinction to make is this:

Today when we query a database we get a recordset. Tomorrow when we query a database we will get another database.

Data2.0 here we come...

Topics: XML | Database | Web2.0