XML and Service Oriented Architecture

This article states that Con-Way Transportation's service oriented architecture still relies on XML feeds for interaction between its seven different business functions.  The article states that four years ago, XML was the only reliable web-service standard available, while nowadays there are new technologies such as WSDL (web-service definition language), SOAP (simple object access protocol), and UDDI (universal description, discovery and integration).

So it's been difficult enough learning XML, but I realize that there are numbers of other applications out there being used for application to application communication.