Microsoft Corporation opened the second day of its TechEd developer's conference with a keynote address by VP Paul Maritz that focused on the next generation of the World Wide Web. Maritz calls the next-gen Web an "application integration architecture" where businesses transactions dominate the scene. And Microsoft is positioning the Extensible Markup Language (XML) as the key player in its vision of the future. XML is a markup language similar to HTML that supplements rather than replaces HTML with a way to deliver and describe data.
"The third generation of the Internet will change the way we build applications in as significant a way as the Internet already has over the past five years," Maritz said. "As far as we think we've come, we're really only at the beginning. This is a great time to be in this industry, and we are excited about the opportunity to take the industry to the next level."
Maritz also outlined Microsoft's new commitment to developers with plans to build software development products that can facilitate this new vision. The company revealed its BizTalk framework, an XML design framework that is designed to accelerate the adoption of XML. For more information about this new initiative, please visit the BizTalk Web site
