The skeleton in the XML closet

By Eugene Kuznetsov, founder and CTO of DataPower Technology

COMMENTARY-- XML is quickly becoming the "lingua franca" for electronic communications and is the backbone of all Web services protocols. Some analysts are projecting that XML will comprise as much as 60 percent of network traffic next year. Unfortunately, network infrastructure is blind to XML traffic, leading to performance bottlenecks and security holes.

Important e-content and business documents are increasingly transmitted as XML encoded network streams, whether it's ebXML, RosettaNet or new Web services. Solutions that work well for accelerating web content--such as HTTP load balancers, content cache devices or SSL accelerators--aren't able to accelerate XML traffic and processing. Until now, XML transformation (using XSLT) has often proven too slow for production systems. A typical XSLT transaction crawls along at several hundred kilobytes per second---a fraction of the speed required.

Let's look at two real-world examples. An automaker's online portal fails to achieve the desired results because it encounters enormous performance problems with page load times. Another company, a large manufacturer, undertakes a major integration project but is stymied by huge problems transforming XML files. In both cases, the benefits of being able to share data are not fully realized because the existing infrastructure has no way of inspecting, routing, securing or accelerating XML traffic.

Rise of XML-aware networking
The increased processing resources consumed by XML applications force many companies into deploying more servers, which are expensive both in up-front cost and ongoing maintenance. In addition to being too expensive, this approach still does not meet the minimum latency requirements of real time enterprise or web applications.

Organizations need to address the XML performance problem directly at the network level, with technologies designed from the ground up to deal with XML traffic. A new generation of XML-aware network equipment is emerging. These solutions make it possible to manage, process, secure and accelerate XML data streams.

Here's how they work: XML-aware devices off-load the XML networking stack from general purpose servers onto dedicated hardware. While the application and business process rules stay on the main application server, the XML-aware device sits in a data center rack and handles the XML transport, acceleration and security functions. The resulting improvements in performance and operating costs can be extraordinary. These solutions can take many forms: low-end switches, intelligent routers and even purpose-built devices that focus on one element (like security) or combine acceleration, security and other functions in a single solution.

Don't panic. Companies don't have to give up their existing investment in networking equipment to create an XML-aware network infrastructure--they just need to give XML a little boost. But before you jump on the bandwagon, you need to evaluate these solutions and make sure they deliver the wire-speed performance that your users expect from a production network.

A typical XML transaction crawls along at several hundred kilobytes per second. Some XML-devices can improve this by 30 percent to 50 percent. But that's not enough. Make sure you choose one that provides wire-speed performance---100 megabits per second. Why wire-speed? That is the minimum performance standard for enterprise networks today and XML needs to keep pace with all the systems XML touches. This order-of-magnitude difference means a single XML accelerator can do the processing work of multiple servers—an exceptional immediate return of investment.

A second key element to look for in XML-aware solutions is the ability to leverage the core XML processing technology for more than a single task. During XML parsing, the device can offer a whole range of benefits, maximize the opportunity. Don't add a single solution that only offers acceleration or security--pick an integrated, purpose-built device that offers wire-speed acceleration, enhanced security and intelligent XML router management features.

Another key area is security. In the rush to adopt XML, too many companies have focused on functionality, without enough regard to the security of the transactions. Legacy IP firewalls and intrusion detection systems do not protect against attacks at the XML-level of the network. While unwilling to acknowledge this publicly, some companies are reluctant to introduce additional XML filtering and cryptography capability because it bogs down their systems. Wirespeed XML-aware networking solutions provide an opportunity to introduce new security measures at a granular bit level, including message-level security, routing and validation, without a significant impact on performance.

XML-aware network devices will inevitably become a vital fabric of the network infrastructure, following a familiar pattern of network devices moving up the stack, migrating from a software function on the app server into the data center, just like VPN hardware, server load balancing, content caching, firewalls and IP routers. As XML-based business processes proliferate, XML-aware networking will be right at their side to remove the performance and management headaches that could bring the whole Web services revolution to a grinding halt.

Eugene Kuznetsov is founder and CTO of DataPower Technology. Previously, he led the Java JIT Compiler effort for the Macintosh version of Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 and he was involved in three different optimized Java VM implementations. Kuznetsov holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from MIT.