THE XML REVOLUTION - TECHNOLOGIES FOR THE FUTURE WEB

Combining XML documents

To enhance reuse and modularity, a technique for constructing new XML documents from existing ones is desirable.

XInclude provides a simple inclusion mechanism.

Why yet another specification?

many XML documents and languages can benefit from modularity
as for the namespace solution, a generic approach can be implemented in generic tools

Application conformance: Think of XML as if Namespaces, XInclude, and XML Base were parts of the basic XML specification. (Caveat: the latter two are not widely implemented yet.)