Potential Enterprise Web Forms Solution - XDocs
One of my products is enterprise web forms. Due to other priorities, I have not been able to spend much time investigating possibilities for this product. Something came to my attention today that may be useful in developing that product: a product from Microsoft called XDocs. It allows users to create forms that are based on standard or user-defined XML schemas. This opens the door for integration with web services, and makes the case for developing web services-based applications even stronger.
In a story from Computer World, speculations are made about the future of this product. Here is an excerpt:
"But some analysts are looking beyond the dearth of details to the potential long-term impact of XDocs. Ted Schadler, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass., predicted that the new software will be a "killer app" that shifts control of corporate data from the IT department into the hands of all employees, who will gain an easier way to access applications from vendors such as SAP AG and Siebel Systems Inc.
"It's going to absolutely upset the apple cart," Schadler said, referring to the "classic" controlling attitude that IT departments have about their data centers. "Let chaos reign. That's a good thing. Business ultimately will win."
But Schadler acknowledged that it could take 10 years before companies get their applications upgraded and put the necessary XML infrastructure in place for XDocs to have the impact he foresees. "
XDocs could help us integrate our forms with applications much better than a product like eWork. EWork creates its own proprietary tables and data structure, which greatly hinders the usage or purposing of any of the data that the forms create. You can make eWork play with existing databases, but you would be better off building a custom application. Now, I have no idea what XDocs can do for business process management, but it is definitely worth investigating. The product is due to come out in the middle of 2003.
1:16:31 PM 
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