A consumer viewpoint on "Mediator languages—a proposal for a standard"

These consumers are interested in standards that add power to their information systems, not in better mediators. They avoid most query language debates, accepting the current standard. Once persuaded, these agencies may require use of the standard. However, they first must be helped to see how incremental changes to their installed base of legacy systems will yield short or medium term benefits.1 We wrote this response to illustrate the additional arguments needed to motivate such agencies.