Letter to the Editor

To quote Larry Stevens' article "XML: Immature But Growing" on June 4, 2001: "As far as I know, there are no major government XML-based systems in production."

This is not quite accurate. The Defense Information Systems Agency's Defense Information Infrastructure Common Operating Environment Consortium includes an organization known as SHared Data Engineering (SHADE). They have established a DII COE XML Registry, which constitutes guidance in the generation and use of XML within the COE v4.x data environment and is the authoritative source for registered XML data and metadata components.

There are already a dozen Defense Department namespaces (collections of shareable data constructs) with close to 10,000 data items registered. More information is available at the XML registry Web site at diides.ncr.disa.mil/xmlreg/index.cfm.

While no actual "systems" may be in production yet, XML standards are being developed to ensure XML among the DOD commanders in chief, services and agencies is structured for compatibility, interoperability and collaborative use.

Kim Frisby
U.S. Joint Forces Command