There are a number of technologies maturing that we want to integrate to extend how we publish further in the future.

XML

We already use XML extensively to store "data blobs" since we find that users need to be able to vary what meta-data they store without adapting the database schema. In the future, we intend to make the XML and RDBMS integration more pervasive and flexible.

XSLT

You don't need an XSLT processor if your native programming language (Perl, Java, Python, etc) can express all of the data structures and logic needed to apply formatting. However, perhaps we'll want to abstract out our API's so that they can work with not only mod_perl and our repertoire of Perl libraries but Java and EJBs, Python or someother language. XSLT opens us up our "best of breed" pursuit to these other technologies

What about Java?

We anticipate being able to leverage the things that Java is good at and integrating it into the publishing system.