XML Course Overview
Michael B. Spring
Department of Information Science and Telecommunications
University of Pittsburgh
spring@imap.pitt.edu
http://www.sis.pitt.edu/~spring
XML Course Overview 1
Motivation for XML
Increased semantics
Author in <author> not <center>
Robust decentralized data interchange
Adequate abstract data type (ADT) language
Capability for meta-information
Increased processing efficiency
Author is child 2 of element 2 of root
Authoritative source with multiple derivative transformations
Rendering as a transformation to a style standard
Linking improvements
Extended and external links
Non-intrusive pointers
September 4, 2001 XML Course Overview 2
Course Overview
An introduction to structured documents
An overview of XML
XML
XPath and XSLT
XSLT and Rendering (formatting objects)
Schema and Document Definition
Namespaces
Datatypes
XPointer and XLink
Programmatic Processing of XML
DOM and SAX
September 4, 2001 XML Course Overview 3
What is not covered
Metadata models for XML
Models
RDF
Topicmaps
Implementations
Dublin Core/Warwick Framework
PICS
Analysis and Design using XML
Document Content Models
Transformation and Specialized Applications (WAP)
Business Processes and Object Access
Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)
Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI)
September 4, 2001 XML Course Overview 4
Resources
Books
XML Bible, Elliotte Harold, (2001) ISBN: 0764547607
Professional XML, (2000) Wrox Press; ISBN: 1861003110
Beginning XML, (2000) Wrox Press; ISBN: 1861003412
Tools
LT XML version 1.2 (a development tool set)
http://www.ltg.ed.ac.uk/software/xml/
The Apache XML Project (Xerces & Crimson - XML parsers
; Xalan - XSLT processor; FOP - XSL formatting objects;
SOAP - Simple Object Access Protocol)
http://xml.apache.org/
September 4, 2001 XML Course Overview 5
A Word of Preparation
XML is a set of specifications or standards
While most have achieved some level of stability,
There are still competing approaches
Some evolution of the specification is normal
The standards are defined with an eye to extensibility
Even with stable standards, tools need to implement the
specification and it is likely:
Some tools will be non- or minimally compliant
Some tools will implement supersets of functionality
September 4, 2001 XML Course Overview 6