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XML is evolving. On one hand, that's good, because the Internet is also growing and changing. But on the other hand, it makes the standard difficult to master. The W3C Web site lists about 67 working drafts and 40 recommendations, in various stages of approval. A majority deal with XML or related specifications. In this Special Report, we examine some of these key W3C recommendations while taking a look at XML's past and present. We also give you a peek at the exciting future of dynamic Web content delivery, courtesy of XML.

When first introduced in 1996, XML was dubbed the "HTML killer." Instead of killing HTML, however, XML shines behind the scenes, in content-management systems, EDI and SOAP, and as a general enabler of e-business.

On the Web front, HTML 4.0 is now expressed using XML, in what is known as XHTML. The beauty of XHTML is that it does not allow the invalid HTML code now abundant on the Internet -- no misplaced tags, invalid nesting of tags or missing closing tags. In addition, the DOM allows programmatic access to HTML and XML elements used to liven up Web sites. And lest we forget styles, XML provides us with the XSL, allowing us to post-process XML elements, thus producing portable and functional HTML output.

As for the future of the spec, we take a look at MathML 2.0, XForms and Microsoft's SOAP. MathML can make your software packages whizzes at handling user input. SOAP affords developers impressive new capabilities for data interchange on the back end, while XForms represent the next generation of Web forms, providing an enhanced mechanism for collecting and submitting data to your server.

Then there's XML's starring role, as an enabler of e-business. One key element of a good Web site is dynamic, data-driven content; after all, if your customers can't access accurate product information on the fly, sales go out the window. New and evolving XML publishing frameworks will enable you to separate the user interface from the content, letting your precious human resources spend their time controlling the content -- not the mechanics of the publishing process.

Individually, Microsoft, Oracle and the open-source Cocoon Project from Apache are developing impressive XML publishing frameworks. These frameworks empower site developers to use XML to tap into the power of relational databases and serve up customized, up-to-date content.

Throughout this package you'll find links to let you further explore areas of interest. It's a lot of ground to cover, but after reading this report, you will find yourself with a strong grounding in XML and with a new sense of excitement about the future of the Web.