Infoworld's Tom Yager examines and rates a wide variety of mostly W3C-based XML specifications for "Relevance, Acceptance, and Standards Prospects".

The article has some confused moments - notably when it states that "Internet Explorer has a built-in XSL style sheet that formats XML files for display" and gives XSL high marks without noting either the nonstandard nature of the Internet Explorer implementation of XSL or the unfinished status of the XSL specification itself.

The article explores several categories of specifications - Parser APIs, XML Document Linking, Schema and Structure, Searching and Transformation, and Remote Object Access - using a red-yellow-green light indicator to indicate the writer's opinion about their status.

While any project of this kind is likely to provoke strong dissenting opinions about particular statements, this article marks a serious move forward from XML 1.0 and vocabularies into examination of the supporting standards.