http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/news/0504/04xml.html
"XML has a chance to do what no other Web technology
preceding it has done: supplant EDI as the preferred
means of conducting business-to-business commerce
online."
The article goes on to claim that XML can deliver EDI
functions in a cheaper, more flexible, and more interactive way.
Interestingly enough, one quote describes EDI as a "...dead
animal just lying there You are sending dead animals back
and forth. With XML, you have a live, interactive animal
doing whiz-bang things."
What's interesting from the SWAP perspective is, these live,
whiz-bang things are workflow processes. To me, this reinforces
the idea that XML is the mechanism that describes the format
of the data and SWAP is the protocol that describes the
interaction. This also re-enforces the need to have a standard
process interchange format, presumably XML-based also, so you have
both process and data encoding.
Greg