I have talked about our experimentation with XML as a file format. This is going very well. Since we started working with XML and its related technologies, other ideas started popping up. It’s not like XML is some magic concept, but it does open your mind enough to see other opportunities. Like creating a centralized Web Service to act as a repository for projects. You don’t need XML to do something like that, but since XML and Web Services go together, it’s easier to visualize how a service like that could be built off of (or into) our persistence system.
I think it’s because there are so many examples of XML being used for various things. Anytime you see XML being used for some purpose, you can ask yourself if your use of XML, whatever that may be, can be applied the way someone else uses XML. Another example could be syndication. RSS and Atom are XML-based syndication formats. Can I syndicate our file format? Maybe just modifications. I’ll have to float that one internally…