My WMS Versus XML

XML is one of many way applications may talk to another. I have seen a lot of applications talking propretary languages like byte or ASCII telegramms. In myWMS we have a package regarding communications (de.mywmw.communitcation). myWMS itself talks objects, carrying the informations in a native Java way. An underlying Protocol converts informations (objects) into the language any communication interface specification should define, and vice versa. Changing the Protocol means changing the language. One of the supported languages is XML. This makes myWMS highly fexible in integration with other applications.

The concept used in myWMS is not limited to WMS. In fact we did use it in other projects and we plan to continue using it.

--Olaf Krause

We are using XML as a possibility to talk to extern devices and extern programs. XML is a very good way to communicate with the outer world, but consider, that XML is not known to all the outer world and can so only be one possibility of communication.

With some of the machines, that are rather simple like the materialflowcontroll computers (the SPSes), it is more reasonable to talk in the conventional telegram--style, to work with fixed fields and well-defined orders.

On the other hand, to communicate in XML is one possibility that we use to serialize our communication-objects. Successfully we worked with stylesheets to convert from one XML to another.

To come to your first question: "What is the relationship between myWMS and XML?" I guess the best answer is: "Both are tools". myWMS is a toolkit to assemble WMSes. To reach this, myWMS uses also XML as one of many possibilites for the communication.

Ulrich Franzke