ShaRef: XML-Centric Software Design

In this paper, we describe a real-life application which has been designed around an XML data model and various XML technologies. We describe the rationale behind this design, and the benefits from the information system design point of view. We believe that XML-centric design has a lot of benefits, and that future developments in the area of XML technologies will better support this design style and help to make it even more advantageous. XML-centric design allows to leverage an ever-increasing number of XML-based technologies. We describe some of the XML technologies that helped us implementing some of the core parts of the software, and point out some others that we do not yet use, but are actively investigating for possible future developments.