The challenges that XML faces

Proponents have promoted XML as a revolutionary replacement for HTML that will add semantics to Web technology; let users, devices and applications on different platforms communicate across the Internet; and permit organizations to integrate different data types within their systems. Indeed, organizations have developed many XML-based applications, including the Chemical Markup Language, Commerce XML, MathML, VoiceXML and the Bioinformatic Sequence Markup Language. Meanwhile, users have widely adopted the language. However, XML still faces two significant challenges. First, users have developed so many flavors of XML that there is now concern that the diverse versions won´t work together properly over the Web, thereby defeating one of the technology´s purposes. Second, the characteristics that make the language effective also pose potentially significant security problems. Researchers and standards organizations are working to overcome these hurdles, but the challenges are significant