Here's a nifty XML scripting idea, by way of Collaxa's Blog (thanks, Edwin):
Several companies have been collaborating to create a technology we call native XML scripting to do just that. BEA is the first to include native XML scripting in their products, but you will be seeing a lot more of it. In fact, ECMA plans to include it in future versions of the popular ECMAScript language (a.k.a. JavaScript). BEA Dev2Dev
Cool. Six months ago, I noted that Adam Bosworth was thinking about this idea:
We need a language that can natively support XML as a data type and yet can gracefully integrate with the world of objects (Java or otherwise) and can take advantage of the self-describing nature of XML by supporting querying of its own variables. This language as used by humans will look like a programming language, not an XML grammar. This is the language we will use to convert from one XML format to another. This is the language we will use to synthesize complex XML documents for multiple sources and Web services. This is the language we will use to mediate between the world of XML messages and the world of Java or C# processes. [ XML Magazine ]
I guess he wasn't just idly speculating!
Former URL: http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/2002/09/20.html#a417