By Jean Paoli¹

We are very excited about the potential XML holds for jump-starting new business scenarios for our customers. The extensive support of XML in the 2003 release of Microsoft Office means that Microsoft Office programs can now create, view, and edit structured data stored in disparate systems, enabling archiving, indexing, and exchange across platforms. By creating specific data models, or "schemas," businesses can customize the structure of data, making it easier to search and reuse critical company data, as well as improve productivity for end users.

With the announcement regarding the open and royalty-free licensing of the Microsoft Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas, we are addressing a concern that our customers expressed: too often business-critical information ends up locked inside data storage systems or individual documents, forcing companies to adopt inefficient and duplicative business processes. By broadly supporting XML, an open and widely accepted W3C standard, and offering the license and documentation in an open and royalty-free way, we're enabling businesses to add two highly significant pieces of functionality to their systems.

First, customers now have the option of saving any Microsoft Word document or Microsoft Excel spreadsheet in XML, which allows those documents to be read or written through XML Web Services by any application, on any platform, through any device. Customers have also the option to gather information in XML by creating Microsoft InfoPath Forms Templates. To ensure broad availability and access, Microsoft is providing, under a royalty-free license, complete documentation and a full description of the Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas using XSDs (XML Schema Definitions), the cross-industry standard developed by the W3C. Designed for ease of use and broad adoption, the royalty-free license provides access to the schemas and full documentation to all interested parties. The Office 2003 XML Reference Schemas include WordprocessingML (Microsoft Office Word 2003), SpreadsheetML (Microsoft Office Excel 2003) and FormTemplate XML schemas (Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003). A citizen can now, for instance, create a letter to his government and send it in the XML format, enabling the government to easily archive, index, and find it for many years to come, in a heterogeneous platform environment.

But as significant as this capability is, an even greater and more innovative benefit is that companies can now create their own XML schemas specific to their business, define the structure and type of data that each data element in a document contains and exchange information with customers and business partners more easily. This capability opens up a whole new realm of possibilities, not only for users, but also for the business itself because now organizations can capture and reuse critical information that in the past has been lost or gone unused.

Finding a way to describe the actual meaning contained in a document has been a central focus of the XML community for nearly 20 years, when the technology was Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). Those of us in the XML field have long believed that if we could separate the actual content, or meaning, from the presentation of a document, then users would be able to "tag" parts of their document with labels that mean something to them. So in a resume, for instance, a user could tag the name, address, career goals, qualifications, and other fields. A medical clinic needs to be able to define and organize information that is entirely different from the type of information that a financial institution needs. By making it possible for businesses to capture the kind of information they need in a richer, more semantic and structured way, we're enabling businesses to work with information in whatever way makes sense to their organization.

At Microsoft, we've worked very hard to bring XML and all its functionality to the hands of the masses by implementing the technology in Microsoft Office. I'm thrilled about and very proud of the great feedback we've received from the XML community regarding the 2003 release of Microsoft Office and the advent of XML on the desktop. It is a great achievement and something that the XML community has been looking forward to for a long time. The potential is huge for customer-defined schemas to transform the way we interact with and use information, whether it's on our desktops, on another local server, or across the world via a Web service.

Sincerely,

Jean Paoli, Senior XML Architect
Microsoft Corporation

¹ Jean Paoli is one of the co-creators of the XML 1.0 standard with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and has played a significant role in the XML community since 1985. Jean helped start the overall XML activity at Microsoft by creating and managing the team that delivered the software that XML-enabled both Microsoft Internet Explorer and Microsoft Windows and was instrumental in creating the newest XML Microsoft Office application, InfoPath.