Security XML

XML is the shortform for eXtensible Markup Language. For details, click links below "XML history" opposite.

XML is flexible
It was developed because HTML and SGML could not do all things that organizational needs demanded and because of that XML has been evolved as the answer, the solution.

XML is best of breed
Its 'parents' are W3C, a working group of the World Wide Web Consortium, including 14 leading companies whose membership comprises Adobe, HP, Microsoft and Sun Microsystems.

XML is universally accepted
XML is fast becoming the open standard for storing, exchanging and publishing electronic documents across the IT industry. It is the de facto standard for
e-business. XML is being deployed by people in your organization right now.

XML is 'extensible'
A major advantage is that new terms and new instructions can be handled by XML. The schema can be added to without a massive re-write unlike previous programming or relational database structures. These earlier system were inflexible and costly to adapt: XML is future-proof!

A science fiction story?

	Fast forward just five years. You are working for a devolved, networked company. No longer is the nine-to-five ruling your life. You can afford to complete the report for your boss and miss the rush hour. You finish your coffee, grab your PDA (Personal Digital Assistant with GSM mobile phone) and walk out the front door. The house, sensing you are the last to leave, sets the alarm and sends a message to your workplace that you are on the way. As you approach the car, you touch the fingerprint reader on the PDA and the driverÕs door unlocks. You ease in, say 'Start' and prepare to back out of the drive. At work, your calendar, knowing that you take about 20 minutes to make the journey, turns on the air conditioning in your office. Meanwhile the car computer has checked your normal route and found it clear of hold-ups. When you arrive at the office, another touch on your PDA lets you through the access control system and logs you into the building.

This scenario may sound fanciful but astonishingly, almost all the technology for this exists. So why can't we have it today? The reason is not technological, it's commercial and organisational. Although the IT industry has made huge strides to allow interoperability between systems, the same has not occurred in the security and building control industries. In any large building today, you will find systems controlling heating, lighting, ventilation, air conditioning, intrusion detection, access control, fire detection, cctv, public address, intercom and telephone. Not only will they often each require quite separate busses leading to hundreds of kilometres of expensive cable they all work using completely unique and often incompatible protocols. Even modern buildings designed from the ground up by architects and engineers for least cost end up being more expensive to build and operate than they need be.

Why is this? Because the supplying companies are all looking for customer 'lock-in'. Whereas the IT world learned 20 years ago that standards lead to growth, other sectors have yet to learn this lesson.

To solve the communication protocol/bus problems, the IT world has provided XML.