a question to the authors ...
XML technology is large, huge ... there are XML, XSL, DTD, Schema,
Java XML APIs ... and so on.
IMHO, XML , just the data representation is not so strategic ... it is just another manner to write data. Moreover, if you write data in XML with very long tag (like this: <datablahblahblahblahblah>me</datablahblahblahblahblah> ) it is a hot bottleneck when exchanging this XML structure over network.
XML is the "Buzz"
word of the moment. Certains IT people have the bad idea to use XML, whereas they could declare their own protocol, more performant.
SO... XML (just writing XML data structures) is NOT so strategic, and it could be a huge bullsh*t !
IMHO, concerning what will be strategic in the future, is the definition of DTDs and Shemas for B2B (like ebXML, CommerceOne, RosettaNet) ... the transformation of XML into another data format (use of XSL) is not so strategic, I mean just for people who want to have more than one diffusion channel on their website.