XML – the heart of the future CMS Infrastructure

Content, by definition, is difficult to categorize and provide structure; and XML technology, by definition, is a general-purpose markup language and is classified as an extensible language because it allows its users to define their own tags. The flexibility offered by XML technology makes it a natural fit for the complexity posed by the Content Management Systems.

Mark Logic has been very successful in the past few years, which uses the XML based server at its heart. They provide a great solution for publishing requirements and the underlying XML technology makes it easily scalable. Any performance related concerns were wiped clean, when compared with the other leading CMS‘s in market today, with their state of the art XML Content Server. The Content Management leader, (EMC’s) Documentum, already offers XML infrastructure, neatly aligned to enhance its Document Management features. The move last month by EMC to acquire Netherlands based X-Hive signifies that the core of the Content Management architecture is going to be XML in the future. O’Kelly, an analyst with the Burton Group, said the acquisition is a clear signal that EMC intends to become a leading competitor in next-generation content management. And the fact that SDL acquired Tridion (offers XML-enabled CMS), reiterates the fact.

Alfresco – founded by a team of content management veterans which includes the co-founder of Documentum and former COO of Business Objects. The Technical Staff of its Web Content Management is John Cox – who led the implementation of Interwoven’s templating system, which represented the industry’s first available XML publishing framework.

The future of CMS definitely seem to going towards XML technologies and it also sounds like the right path.