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The word 'cruft' is a truly excellent word. From the moment the subject of this article entered my head, I knew I wanted to use it in the title. Now I have a dangerous habit of using words because they sound right at the time, even if they are not the right words in the sense of their meaning. Needless to say this can be a problem. Call it a character flaw. I thought it expedient to hit the dictionaries on 'cruft' just to be sure.

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This is the second part of a two-part article about XML. The first part talked about ways to benefit from XML without taking on too much heartache in the sphere of application configuration files, machine-oriented data exchange, that sort of thing. In this part, I concentrate on using XML effectively in document-centric application areas.

First up, a scope warning for this article. This is the first part of a two-part piece about XML. Here I focus on uses of XML in areas such as application configuration files, the exchange of structured, machine-oriented data, that sort of thing. In the second part, I discuss XML in document-centric applications such as content/document management and Web publication systems.

var addthis_pub = 'itw'; I have been thinking a lot about autonomous, software agents recently. I was somewhat startled when I concluded that we might be well on the way to creating a large number of these things, using nothing more complicated than Web technologies. Here is my (possibly) erroneous reasoning, expressed in flashback form. Some liberties have been taken with the timing of events, hopefully without detracting from the overall point. In the beginning, there was the Web and it was good. However, it pretty much would just sit there in the ether until a human or a process (collectively a "user agent") would come along and ask to "see" something, generally in HTML or PDF form. Time passed. It soon transpired that responding to requests from user-agents by generating something on-the-fly added a significant amount of power to the Web. Soon, the whole Web became engulfed in application frameworks for generating content on demand. It too was good. Time passed. It transpired that a significant number of user-agents were not in fact, people and therefore it was much more useful to send machine readable information over the wire. XML, JSON, RDF, YAML etc. were all created to meet this need. They too were good. Time passed. It transpired that a serious amount of effort was going into automating the process of change detection on the web. Feed formats and protocols came into existence that allowed applications to sit back and be notified when something of interest occurred. Formats like RSS/Atom were joined by protocols like XMPP and LLUP. They too were good. Time passed. The change notification formats/protocols became increasingly sophisticated and machine-oriented. Soon, the major use cases for XML, JSON, RDF, YAML formats were event-oriented. At first, the primary consumers of these feeds were end-user applications which, in effect, mirrored the client-server model familiar to decades of users and developers. However, still more time passed. XML 2.0 and HTML 6.0 walked the earth. More and more event-oriented applications came into existence that did not directly interact with end-user at all. Many of the client programs consuming event feeds became server programs, living in the cloud - just like the event servers they were interacting with. Statistics for web servers began to show dramatic growth in server-to-server communication with client-server communication falling significantly in percentage terms. Nobody could pin-point when the so called "agents" running out there in the cloud became critical to the digital health of the planet. We were mostly taken by surprise. Our dependence crept up on us. Nobody had anticipated that some simple messaging protocols and data formats on the Web would have such a profound effect on the world. Here we are in the year 201x. Time still passes and still we wonder as we watch the time whiz by. Did we create this increasingly intelligent, self-healing, evolving Web? Or did it cause itself to be created by the original, speed-challenged, scalability-impaired carbon-based agent technology know as Man?

There is a rumor going around that IT application design is some sort of scientific endeavor that proceeds logically from requirements gathering through to the production of "the design".

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First up: disclaimer. I am a computer geek. Not a medical practitioner. If you have symptoms, go see a doctor, ok?

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We live in a world that is fixated on the idea of aggregating eyeballs together with the aid of technology. Advertising is the obvious example of eyeball aggregation writ large. Print, radio, TV and now Internet technologies are heavily involved in finding better, faster, cheaper ways of getting more and more eyeballs tuned in to particular world views, particular value propositions, particular products. At a blogging event I attended recently, Michael Breidenbrücker put it bluntly in the title of his talk: "Let's face it: Web 2.0 is all about advertising".

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There are two types of integrated development environments (IDE) in the world. That is convenient, because there are two types of developer in the world. To make things even more symmetrical and just super peachy, there are two types of opinions about IDEs in the world. Those that make grand generalizations and make everything look nice and binary; and those that do not. The opinion in this article is in the former camp. There are two types of possible reaction to this...

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From time to time I find myself feeling overwhelmed by the sheer complexity of all the moving parts that make up modern IT environments. Even if your job is not specifically about fixing stuff, it is so very, very easy to lose entire days trying to get X to work with Y. Or trying to find some way to make X work on top of Y. Or trying to figure out why X works on its own but as soon as you add in Y, X magically stops working ... It is amazing we get anything done at all really.

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I am always amused when I read stats of the form: "X percent of IT projects fail". It would be funny if it wasn't so misleading. "That darned IT stuff.", the subtext goes. "It has failure written all over it..."

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I sell widgets. You rent apartments. My business is not in competition with yours. Your business is not in competition with mine. We both have front doors through which our customers walk. Some customers that come in my door are interested in renting apartments. When that happens, I point them to your door once they have finished with me. Some customers of yours are interested in buying widgets. When that happens, you point them at my door once you have finished with them.

One of the timeless truths about personal change - of any sort - is that it is always the small things that you really notice.

In the unimaginably distant future, a digital paleontologist specializing in the history of the Web will write a research grant application to the Galactic Federation. That application will concentrate on a defining moment in the evolution of the Web. A moment that happened in the early 21st century. Here is an extract from that application as I imagine it might look...

I am six foot three (and a bit) tall. How tall is that in meters? I weight just under fifteen stone. What is that in pounds? What is that in kilograms? Today, it is about 14 degrees Centigrade. What is that in Fahrenheit?

I have two words for you this bright spring morning. They are real words, but the definitions I will use for them, are not to be found in any dictionary. I have slanted the definitions to meet my specific purposes. I have done so without damaging the true meaning of the words.

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In the beginning there was the URL. A harmless, unremarkable naming convention which, in a very short period of time, has become as commonplace as a telephone number. The very structure and shape of a URL speaks to us. It whispers - no, that is too weak a statement - it positively shouts 'CLICK ME! CLICK ME WHY DON'T YOU! Click me and see what happens. Click me because chances are, something interesting will happen. Go on, click me...'

The term 'database' has more facets to it than the gaudiest of fake diamonds. Somehow, somewhere along the line, swathes of otherwise sane individuals have learned to read way too much goodness into terms like 'in the database' and 'on the database'.

In a recent fit of de-cluttering, I scoured my office for print publications to dump. Some stuff had been sitting in a 'read this as soon as possible pile' for literally years. Yes, I leave a lot to be desired on the self-organization front but, in my defense, the world has moved on. I read a lot. I need to, in order to keep current. It is just that these days, the vast bulk of my reading is online. During that de-cluttering, it occurred to me that it has been about four years since anything I have written has appeared formally in the traditional print media. Yet, I appear to be writing more stuff than ever before. These days, end-to-end electronic text is where it is at. Writing for the web - often directly on the web itself - is where it is at. The world has truly moved on.

What is a CPU? It is a thing in the logical center of a computer that does the vast bulk of the number crunching involved in running programs. The 'C' stands for 'central'.

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