WITH ITS NEWEST ROLE of middleware patch, Extensible Markup Language (XML) is emerging as a kind of industrial-strength duct tape to fix cracks and fissures throughout an enterprise's application foundation.

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XML is not replacing synchronous object request brokers (ORBs) or asynchronous message-queuing products, which still form the bricks and mortar of interoperability. But XML is playing out as a fast, convenient way to add a loosely coupled Internet conduit to swap data in and out of disparate back-end systems -- including incompatible Microsoft and CORBA-based components.

Last week, Rogue Wave Software said it will deliver the Nouveau ORB in November, a CORBA object request broker that will support Microsoft's Windows DNA 2000 development platform, providing another means of interoperability with Microsoft platforms.

With Rogue Wave's new ORB ready to support Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM) and its Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) for exchanging XML data, XML can soon be used to link Windows 2000 to CORBA services -- a key linkage in enterprise systems, Rogue Wave officials said.

"You'll use a Visual Basic tool to output to SOAP as XML on top of HTTP, and then Nouveau will take the XML data and allow that to connect to CORBA environments -- all in an Internet architecture," (see chart below) said Bob Rentsch, Noveau product manager at Rogue Wave, in Southborough, Mass.

Rogue Wave is not alone. ORB makers IBM, Iona Technologies, and Inprise have said they have plans to deliver XML support in their brokers to allow an XML-level of communication in addition to the component and wire protocol level.

The catch is that the ORBs need to handle XML in a similar way to foster broad interoperability. And that is why the Object Management Group (OMG) last week announced that it is working more closely with the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, an XML standards body.

The OMG will also deliver in February a standard way for XML to be used in ORBs in order to support CORBA services.

"This is another way to do COM-to-CORBA bridging, but I don't know why we need to have another way to do that. Why reinvent all that stuff? ... We'll find out how to treat XML documents as any other CORBA type," said Richard Soley, chairman and CEO of the OMG, in Framingham, Mass.

Iona will wait for Microsoft's SOAP to emerge and for the OMG's XML standard to arrive in Feb. 2000, but the middleware maker thinks having two ways to link COM to CORBA is a good thing.

"I can see where both would be good. Traditional COM-to-CORBA bridging is for Visual Basic developers to tap CORBA services, but the Internet can be isolated over HTTP," said Ronan Bradley, vice president of product management at Iona, in Waltham, Mass.

XML, it should be noted, is not a replacement but an adjunct to an overall integrated architecture, said Ed Acly, an analyst at International Data Corp., in Framingham, Mass.

"XML does deliver some capability for application integration, but it's not the whole story. It's a muddy set of waters," Acly said.