Breathing life into legacy

The Internet makes it imperative to unlock legacy data. Three technologies may let companies dust off legacy code and make it work with the Web: Extensible Markup Language, or XML, describes data through the use of tags, eliminating the need to conform to a specific programming infrastructure; Web services let companies wrap software and tailor its distribution, allowing innovative code configurations; and wireless technology offers the ability to get legacy content to mobile workers and clients. Each technology is part of the new arsenal for leveraging existing applications and data, perhaps realizing the elusive goal of anywhere, anytime services.