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Middle Men: How Mark Logic is
Redefining the Role of XML in Content Aggregation |
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27 September 2004 |
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With the eXtensible Markup Language gaining steam as a
method for getting content to and fro in an easy-to-use
format, more organizations turn to XML as a solution for
driving down content delivery cost and complexity. Easier
said that done in many instances, especially when it comes
to getting search engines to hum across a wide variety of
sources. But Mark Logic has drawn together XML-based
content normalization, search and delivery capabilities in
an open and flexible framework that makes the prospect of a
universal enterprise Web environment based on XML standards
far easier to consider for both enterprises and the premium
content suppliers that support them. It might not be the
sunniest news for content suppliers who had hoped to
maintain proprietary advantages in the face of XML, but
it's news worth watching carefully. |
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Once upon a
time disparate content sources were held together by a form of
software called middleware. Middleware provided a proprietary
but standardized way for enterprises to get at diverse content
sources from inside and outside their organizations, but its
proprietary nature tended to keep the cost of pulling content
together rather high. Then along came
eXtensible
Markup Language (XML), a method for formatting content in
standardized forms that made it easier for enterprises to
consume individual elements of content from a wide variety of
sources without having to resort to proprietary middleware. XML
was great - if you could manage to get content providers inside
and outside an organization to use XML formats to deliver
information. In a world in which search technology was making
it easy to get at structured and unstructured sources of
content regardless of its format, this was not always an easy
task. XML content would appear as one of many sources available
to a search query, limiting the value of having its
standardized and elementized forms available.
But then came
Mark Logic,
a San Mateo, CA-based outfit that decided to leverage its
experience with search technology, XML conversion and databases
to create a new way for organizations to consume and update
content from a variety of sources in XML format without
disturbing the original sources of that content. Mark Logic
calls their core technology the
Content Interaction Server, a combination of content
conversion, storage and delivery functionality that allows an
organization to create a middle layer of content serving
capabilities with middleware, database and search capabilities
rolled into one neat package. Using the
XQuery
standardized search interface for XML content it became a much
simpler task with the Content Interaction Server to scale
searches across diverse structured and unstructured sources,
including vendor-supplied content, at a very granular level as
if they were a single source. The content extracted from
various sources that was stored in the Content Interaction
Server could be hooked up easily to both standard office
automation applications and sophisticated content analysis
applications from vendors such as ClearForest, Groxis and
Inxight. Scaling content resources to get effective analysis in
such packages all of a sudden became far easier without having
to redo entire infrastructures: middleware without the
headaches, if you will.
With an increasing number of development
partners using these capabilities Mark Logic
announced recently an Open Content Architecture program,
effectively declaring their Content Interaction Server as an
all-purpose enterprise content interface for internal and
external content sources. That's easier said than done, but
clearly Mark Logic is on to something here that should have the
eyes and ears of many of today's content publishers and
aggregators. For many of these content suppliers XML hovers out
on the edge of their operations as a feed delivery medium or a
way to provide content in any number of industry-specific XML
formats. Mark Logic's capabilities offer these content
suppliers an opportunity to look at XML as not just a content
delivery format for specific purposes but also as an
environment in which their clients can determine the usefulness
of elementized content within a wide variety of sophisticated
user applications in a far more open and universal fashion. In
doing so, though, it shifts in the balance of power for
determining content's usefulness to the institutions that
consume it - a central theme of what Shore calls
The New Aggregation.
The types of capabilities that Mark Logic
is offering promise to provide an XML "middle man" presence
that will be an increasingly strong factor in delivering
premium content to institutions drawing together content from a
wide variety of sources. What should premium content vendors
think about in approaching this environment? Here are a few
items to consider:
- A quick and easy way to play with a
wide variety of enterprise applications and portals.
Although there are a handful of content vendors with the
resources to develop workflow applications and middleware for
specific vertical markets, most publishers and aggregators do
not have the wherewithal to make their content useful in
specific desktop applications beyond their own user
applications or a standard Web interface. An environment such
as Mark Logic's offers these content providers a way to play
in the big leagues of enterprise content without having to
throw away their current investments in content delivery
infrastructure: just park a service such as Mark Logic up
against your current content and let the client do the
driving with some assurance of consistent usage monitoring.
- Hmm, I thought that's what
aggregators were supposed to do. Seems to be
a theme here, doesn't it? Institutions that have used
middleware in high-end applications such as financial
securities trading to draw in content from a wide variety of
premium sources have been pondering the value of major
aggregation services for quite some time. With XML as a
middleware replacement for many kinds of content delivery
this pondering is likely to take hold in a far wider range of
institutions. There's a clear place for premium content
aggregators here and they'll be wise to play aggressively in
this environment, but it may not be the role that many have
come to expect with their clients.
- XML as the enterprise Web is a step closer to reality.
The benefits of XML have been touted widely and loudly for
quite some time, but for the most part it's a capability that
has succeeded in dribs and drabs instead of as a universal
content transport. The Mark Logic approach enables XML not
only as a transport format but as a content interaction
environment for a wide variety of specific content sources
and applications. This holds out the promise of XML as a
high-octane universal alternative to standard Web searches
and sources that can allow institutions to use XML to place
both internal and premium content in its most useful context
quickly and cost-effectively.
Mark Logic has made significant progress with its XML-based
content query and delivery strategy in a remarkably short
period of time. It's not the only one singing the benefits of
XML to draw content together from disparate sources, but it's
certainly a trend-setter at this point for premium publishers
to watch carefully if they want to write a happy "once upon a
time" fairy tale of their own.
-
John Blossom
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