The XML Backplane: Pluggable Elements of the XML Interactive Architecture

XML defines an extensible syntax mechanism that allows you to combine
markup from different XML applications; but if those applications are
not semantically compatible, it becomes very hard to effectively
combine them.

The XML Backplane is an effort ongoing at W3C to identify common
architectural features of several existing XML applications, such as
SMIL, XForms, Voice XML and XHTML, and define these features
independently and consistently to allow them to be adopted in these
and other applications, ensuring consistency across applications, and
making user agents that combine different applications easier to
write.

An example feature is submission, where data must be selected,
serialised in one of several ways, sent to the server, and the reply
dealt with in one of several different manners; but others include the
handling of events in general, the definition of abstract or
device-independent events, document navigation, and data storage.

The collection of these features creates a common infrastructure for
both imperative and declarative application architectures,helping to
align and integrate these approaches as necessary.

This talk gives an overview of the backplane and the efforts ongoing
to define it.

--

The Backplane is a W3C effort to identify common architectural
features of XML applications, and define them independently and
consistently ensuring consistency across applications.