Page 30 - GAO-02-327 Electronic Government: Challenges to Effective Adoption of the Extensible Markup Language

Chapter 1: Background: Features and Current
Federal Use of XML

Table 3: Comparison of EDI and XML

EDI XML
Differences Is based on industrywide EDI business standards, such as Lacks a complete set of business standards to support
EDIFACT and ANSI X12, that are well-established, XML-based electronic transactions that are broadly
providing standard electronic formats for electronic agreed upon.
transactions.
Uses highly structured predefined formats that have Has the flexibility to allow new vocabularies to be defined
specific, narrowly defined purposes. to meet changing business needs.
Originally designed to rely on private networks known as Designed to take advantage of the Internet’s capabilities
“value-added networks” for data exchange. and existing protocols for data exchange.
Supports data exchange only. In addition to data exchange, supports other data handling
functions, such as content management and sophisticated
Web searches.
Similarities Both standards are freely available and nonproprietary.
Both facilitate data exchange between disparate computer applications.
Both allow developers to add proprietary extensions to their specific implementations.

Federal XML Projects XML is being broadly implemented, both commercially and within
government. In the private sector, the Giga Information Group published
Vary in Size and the results of a survey to gauge the adoption of XML among its client base
7
Scope in April 2001. Based on responses from 80 businesses ranging from
banking and insurance to health care and manufacturing, 81 percent said
they had begun using XML in their organizations. Of the 18 percent of
respondents who said they had not, 76 percent planned to use XML within
the next year. The primary reported uses of XML were for enterprise
application integration and business data exchange. Other areas of usage
included data integration, publishing, content management, portals, and
application development.

Federal XML projects undertaken to date have varied significantly in size
and scope. In some cases, agencies have used XML to enhance data
exchange within relatively narrow communities of interest with well-
defined data exchange requirements. The Securities and Exchange
Commission’s (SEC) Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval
(EDGAR) system and Amtrak’s reservation system are two examples. In a
few other cases, concerted efforts have been made to define XML-related
data standards—or design a process for doing so—for larger communities

7
Giga Information Group, Giga Survey: XML Achieving Mainstream Usage (April 30,
2001).

Page 26 GAO-02-327 Electronic Government