Does anyone know why XML was so hyped when it came out? I remember reading article after article about how great it was and how it was going to revolutionize everything.
The Java->XML->XSLT->HTML or Java->XML->Webservice framework was pretty big news in 2001. It meant you could transfer data between any number of services using the same data set. You could take that XML and send it to a java servlet or you could render it to html using xsl and give it to the users. You could also flat out dump XML and have other services use it. It was the first generally accepted webservice standard done over http.
Before XML exploded information was transferred between companies (that I worked for) by moving CSVs around, then putting the csv into the database, then reading the database back out... compared to that xml was an absolute godsend.
It was that great. It got us away from the era when everybody would make up binary formats to store data, into the era where you can debug by eyeball instead of with a hex dump utility, and use off-the-shelf parsers as a bonus. That's plenty enough revolution for one generation of technology. Everything after that is gravy.
Looking back on it, it all seems kind of silly.