The vast potential benefits of XML, however, stay much degraded by a problem which Lexikos is working to help solve: independent data bases invariably adopt differing formats and models for data, so data exchanges mean field-translator programs must be built and maintained, typically using XSLT. That costs time, money and disagreements over who does what.

A better solution is metadata - XML variations kept so general that they can be almost freely exchanged. If two IT groups must swap data, they can map it independently to and from metadata, then swap that instead. This saves 90% of the costs, since now nobody must learn or support a foreign data base. Multiply the savings by how often such problems recur, and IT could save huge piles of dollars annually, plus gain benefits of data exchanges sooner.

This neat solution is now blocked, however, by missing standards, tools and training. XML metadata is a new idea, and W3C's RDF remains held up by standards for ontologies. Meanwhile, useful tools for it are delayed. To most American IT shops, metadata seems too futuristic to be practical today.

Lexikos will help change that with a simple, open-source Java toolkit for XTM 1.0, a metadata standard from ISO stable since 2000. It is becoming well known in Europe, where several firms sell award-winning tools based on it, mostly in content management. XTM is primed for wide usage here.

XTM is simpler than RDF, yet compatible, and is used commercially today under ontologies that are more intuitive to construct, and partly built in. So recently I designed a new toolkit for authoring XTM data dictionaries, which can greatly ease the XML conversion problems above.

I call this toolkit Modeler. As its summary describes, a first release can be built soon by extending free, open-source Java tools. All it takes is skilled developers to help test it, plus a few man-months of R&D funding.