A talk given by Aaron Crane (<aaron.crane@gbdirect.co.uk>) of GBdirect for WYLUG on 14 May 2002.
Aaron has given updated versions of the same talk at other venues since then. The first was after the AGM of the UK Unix User Group, in a joint event with the UKUUG's London Unix User Group, on 26 September 2002. This time, the title was ‘Coping with XML’:
The most recent version of the talk was given at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in New York on 24 January 2003. The talk had another change of title, this time to ‘Doing Useful Work with XML and Open-Source Software’:
The changes in title represent a change in focus of the talk. The earliest version merely identified some of XML's problems, finishing with the observation that it's extremely hard not to use XML in some situations. The later versions, on the other hand, make some attempt at constructively suggesting ways of dealing with XML's deficiencies when you do you find yourself in such situations.
If you're wondering which version to look at, I recommend the middle one — the arguments were fine-tuned somewhat from the earliest version, but (unlike the LinuxWorld version) I left some of the jokes in.
It's worth pointing out that despite the subject of this talk, XML was used to prepare the slides.