Data flow based system design techniques have taken a back seat over the last twenty years thanks to the growth in popularity of object oriented design. XML has emerged in the last few years as a lingua franca for structure data flow, while Web Services are emerging as a lingua franca for atomic function description, discovery and invocation.

Taken together, XML and Web Services create a fertile ground for the re-emergence of data flow based- rather than object oriented system design. In this presentation, an XML/Web Services based approach to data flow design is presented. Particular emphasis will be given to showing how on-the-fly XML transformation and routing trumps re-visiting object interfaces when creating true interoperable, flexible system infrastructures.

Examples will be presented, showing how this approach has been implemented in telecommunications and e-Government scenarios.

Finally, an architecture for a highly scaleable XML transformation technology known as XPipe (http://xpipe.sourceforge.net) will be discussed,including a proposal for a Java based XML transformation component technology known as XComponent. A sketch of a grid technology implementation of an XML transformation server based on the XPipe approach will be presented.