XML - an Overview
Everyone is talking about XML but what is it and, more importantly, what
will it do for us? The following
sections give an overview of XML and what Polaris are doing with it.
Contents
The following areas are
covered in this document:
The Standards Initiative
Polaris XML-RTE Integration
What Is
XML?
XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a way of representing
structured data. It was born out of the
deficiencies of developing web pages using HTML (Hyper Text Markup
Language). Consequently, the structure
of XML is similar to that of HTML in that they are both text based and their
syntax uses tag names and attributes in exactly the same way. However, XML is "extensible", in
that users can define their own tag names and attributes. This is not true of HTML which has a fixed
set of tags and attributes predefined by W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) e.g.
<h1>, <p>, <br>, ALIGN, SIZE, HREF. etc
HTML tags and attributes
tell the user nothing about the data in the document other than how to format
it for presentation on a browser or for printing. XML tags on the other hand provide meaning to the data. Users can develop complex structures that
encapsulate business context. For
example, a motor insurer may define the following structure:
<Vehicle>
<RegistrationNumber>ABC 123</RegistrationNumber>
<Manufacturer>Ford</Manufacturer>
<Model>Mondeo Estate</Model>
<EngineSize>2.0</EngineSize>
</Vehicle>
Because XML is text based
and its syntax is simple, it is easy to understand and easy to process. All computers can understand text files, so
its pretty much platform independent.
XML gives us the opportunity
to share and exchange information between multiple applications and multiple
computer systems. Associated
technologies such as CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) and XSL (Extensible
Stylesheet Language) allow XML documents to be rendered or displayed over the Internet,
on PC screens, on digital TV or on mobile devices using WAP (Wireless
Application Protocol).
XML's flexibility not only allows organisations to use it to
present a common interface to the outside world, but provides a flexible
framework for internal application to application communications.
How can we make it work for us?
The promise of XML is that you will be able to exchange
information easily and cost effectively with your trading partners. XML will
allow us to develop messages to convey the information required to support
almost every business transaction we care to think of - but there's a BUT......
If software developers
create their own additions or variations to the syntax or if everyone who wants
to use XML goes off and develops their own XML structures, the promise will not
be realised. You can imagine that if
one organisation calls a car by the tag <Car>, another by the tag
<Vehicle>, another by the tag <Automobile> and so on, the
advantages of XML would soon be diminished.
To make it work, it's clear
that we need standards.
The
Standards Initiative
W3C is progressing the
technical specification standard to ensure different software vendors’ products
can talk to each other, but to get the most out of this technical work it needs
to be matched by business standards.
Some of the work to develop business standards is happening centrally
within an organization called ebXML but most of the work needs to happen in
industry specific groups.
Within the insurance
industry, Polaris and Instep have the responsibility for defining standards for
electronic trading for UK domestic insurance, excluding Life and London
Market. We have been and will continue
to liaise with ACORD (in the USA) and eEG7 (in Europe) to ensure that wherever
possible, a common approach is adopted.
The implementation of XML
will demand both commonality and flexibility.
Although e-trading may be easier to achieve if everyone used just one
set of ‘global’ common tags this is probably neither practical nor achievable.
We expect that those pieces
of information which can be truly universal like name and address will become
defined as such but each industry will define its own specific information
needs as appropriate.
Additionally any company or trading partnership will have
the ability to add their own unique requirements and/or specify the tags they
wish to use – indeed XML has some concepts such as XML namespaces, which allows
you to mix and match tag names from different applications. The key thing is that all parties involved
must know, and agree, the definition of the tags used so that they may
correctly interpret the information contained therein. In this way a suitable standard encompassing
the flexibility described should be produced which satisfies everyone’s needs.
There will continue to be a requirement to ‘map’ information
from one set of tag names to another e.g. your post code might be your trading
partner’s zip code, and tools which comply with the W3C standards have and will
continue being developed to assist with this process.
Global agreement will take some time to achieve and
e-trading is impatient to move on as fast as possible. Polaris is therefore progressing a UK
solution to allow this. To date, the
solution has involved two areas of work.
Initially, Polaris were asked by their members to develop an XML
interface to our software. Latterly, Polaris and Instep have taken on the role
of developing the UK message standards.
Polaris XML-RTE Integration
XML messages have been
developed at the ‘business’ transaction level which integrators can use to
speed up and simplify their integrations with the Polaris RTE (Run Time
Environment). This implementation is
based on a Polaris dictionary specific set of tags.
Previously, integrators of
the RTE had to set up many calls to populate the information needed by the RTE
and execute the schemes to achieve the desired transaction, e.g. New Business
Quote. The new facility will allow
integrators to pass all the necessary information via a single XML message to
the RTE, which will execute the necessary processing for the quote, and pass
back all the results in one go.
The XML interface is a purely optional facility which
integrators can choose to use as and when they desire. The current RTE calls will continue to be
supported and therefore existing integrations will not be affected. Once the true insurance industry XML
standards have been developed Polaris will implement support for these -
probably as a ‘wrapper’ round the initial implementation. Again integrators will have the choice of
if, and when they wish to use those standards.
This approach will provide
the ultimate flexibility for integrators to adopt XML in the best way for
themselves.
Standards
Development
The initial message
standards and software were released in July 2000, but as part of a continuing
effort to make our message standards as open as possible, Polaris are working
to enhance our previous messages and XML interface to take advantage of other
emerging standards – for example, we have produced an initial proposal for the
Polaris utilisation of the ebXML Message Services Specification (Transport,
Routing & Packaging) work. Our
document is available on this site and we would welcome your comments.
We are also working to provide standard data capture
definitions which we expect integrators will wish to use to drive their risk
data capture process and which will form the basis of line of business,
transaction specific XML messages. The initial results of this work are also
available for review on this site, and we will post new work plus any updates
as and when they become available.
Further information
The following web sites are
useful sources of information and news about XML: