XML-Centric Application Development

XML has become an important standard for exchanging structured data between applications, but XML increasingly penetrates applications and is thus also becoming an important part of application development. The current state of XML specifications and technologies provides support in many aspects of application development, while other aspects are still only poorly supported. We describe as an example the development of an XML-centric application and identify and describe the areas where today's support for application developers could and should be improved. This case study thus can help developers to focus on the problem areas of today's support for XML-centric application development, and may also serve as an agenda for areas where more research and tools are required to improve the development of XML-centric applications.