At a glance
Introduction to XML
Overview
XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is becoming the standard for document management and publishing, data exchange and electronic business on the internet. It is a meta-language with which we can create structured (data) documents, allowing easy automated processing.
This course provides an introduction to XML, describing the rules and structure of XML documents and the issues that impact on the design of those documents. In addition, an overview is provided on several of the more significant technologies built on the XML platform. These technologies cover issues such as formally documenting an XML document structure, creating output presentations from XML documents, accessing XML data from a program and linking XML documents.
Intended For
This course is intended for anyone who wants to understand and use XML and its related technologies.
Prerequisites
None
Learning outcomes
The purpose of this course is to provide an understanding of XML and an overview of some related technologies that build on XML.
By the end of this course participants will be able to:
- Describe the context for and use of XML in a business.
- Create a well-formed XML document.
- Justify the design decisions such as attributes v. elements.
- Describe the benefits of having common XML formats.
- Illustrate the benefits and use of XSL.
- Explain the need for namespaces.
- Describe the processing models of DOM and SAX.
- Explain the principles of linking XML documents together.
- Illustrate the benefits of XForms.
- Formally describe the structure of XML documents using XML Schema (optional module).
- Formally describe the structure of XML documents using DTDs (optional module).
Content
Introduction
Understanding the context out of which XML arose helps to explain the nature of XML. This includes the automated document processing (SGML) and separation of content, structure and presentation (SGML, HTML before it was corrupted).
Against this background, the use and future of XML can be understood, along with its related technologies.
XML Syntax
The different parts of an XML document are introduced, along with the requirements for an XML document to be considered well-formed. Design issues are also considered.
Overview of DTD and XML Schema
The concept of a valid (as opposed to well-formed) XML document is introduced, and the need for a formal definition of the structure is considered. DTDs and XML Schema are introduced in terms of their capabilities, advantages and disadvantages, but the detail is left for later modules.
Also discussed is the advantage of having common/standard formats, and some of these formats are introduced as well as repositories of these formats.
Presentation of XML
Stylesheets are introduced as the presentation layer in the separation of content, structure and presentation. CSS is introduced as an attributive language, XSL is introduced as a pattern matching programming language.
Also covered is the different output types of XSL and their use, including formatting objects.
Namespaces
Namespaces are introduced as a means to distinguish between different XML structures when they are mixed, such as HTML or XML elements included within an XSL stylesheet.
Processing XML
The two processing styles of DOM and SAX are described and compared at a high level - the implementation detail is outside the scope of this course.
Linking XML Documents
This module covers the nature and format of the different ways to link XML documents.
DTD
DTDs are introduced as a way to formally describe the structure of document-centric XML documents.
Method Used
This is primarily a theory course with a few paper-based exercises.
