The World Wide Web Consortium last month gave standards approval to a technology for designing Web-based forms used to collect, input and extract native XML data from enterprise systems and business applications. The specification called XForms was released by the W3C as a Candidate Recommendation, the group’s official language that signifies a specification is ready for implementation.
XForms is intended to make it easier for companies to build Web-based forms and to gather data from those forms.
XForms separates the content displayed in the forms – such as a price list – from the presentation, allowing users to design forms once and display them on a variety of devices while importing data from a multitude of dynamic sources.
But perhaps the most important development is that corporations will now have a way to capture data in native XML format, which can then be stored and shared among any systems that supports XML.
But perhaps the most important development is that corporations will now have a way to capture data in native XML format, which can then be stored and shared among any system that supports XML. It allows the previously missing interacting the XML documents.
A range of vendors are already supporting XForms in current or upcoming products, including Adobe, AOL/Netscape, Cardiff, Computer Associates, IBM, Novell, NTT DoCoMo, Openwave, Oracle, PureEdge Solutions, Mozquito Technologies, Sony/Ericsson and Xerox.
