<img style="float: right" src="http://www.iexbeta.com/images/news/logos/iexNews.gif">Despite rumors to the contrary, the adult entertainment industry is not developing its own dialect of Extensible Markup Language dubbed XXXML.

Aside from that, it's hard to find an industry or interest that isn't taking advantage of the fast-growing standard for Web services and data exchange. In the six years since the main XML specification was first published, it's spawned hundreds of dialects, or schemas, benefiting everyone from butchers to bulldozer operators wishing to easily exchange information electronically.

While some industry observers worry proliferation has gone too far, potentially creating new instances of the interoperability problems that XML was meant to solve, proponents say the explosion of schemas is a testament to the format's success.

Tim Bray, co-inventor of the main XML specification, said the proliferation of special-interest XML dialects validates what he and his colleagues set out to achieve.

"The idea from the start was to make it as easy as possible for people to come up with their own special languages for their specific problems," Bray said. "In the big picture, I think XML is more successful than any of us who designed ever thought it would be."

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News source: c|net News.com

I never understood the big deal anyway, it's just a special way to format a flat file so you can recurse it a bit easier. I don't understand why there are so many sceptics considering how useful it can be.

XML makes things easier, but it surely isn't impossible to do things the "old way" and still make it fast, secure, and efficient (eg., PHP/MySQL/ASP, etc)