Advanced Web Programming

XML

XML Dr. Mbale J. 1

What Is XML?
• eXtensible Markup Language
• A simplified version of SGML
• Maintains the most useful parts of SGML
• Designed so that SGML can be delivered over the
Web
• More flexible and adaptable than HTML
• XHTML -- a reformulation of HTML 4 in XML 1.0

XML Dr. Mbale J. 2

What is XML? (contd.)
• A markup language is used to provide
information about a document.
• Tags are added to the document to provide
the extra information.
• HTML tags tell a browser how to display
the document.
• XML tags give a reader some idea what
some of the data means.

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What is XML Used For?
• XML documents are used to transfer data from one
place to another often over the Internet.
• XML subsets are designed for particular
applications.
• One is RSS (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple
Syndication ). It is used to send breaking news
bulletins from one web site to another.
• A number of fields have their own subsets. These
include chemistry, mathematics, and books
publishing.
• Most of these subsets are registered with the
W3Consortium and are available for anyone‟s use.

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Advantages of XML
• XML is text (Unicode) based.
 Takes up less space.
 Can be transmitted efficiently.
• One XML document can be displayed
differently in different media.
 Html, video, CD, DVD,
 You only have to change the XML document in
order to change all the rest.
• XML documents can be modularized. Parts
can be reused.

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Difference between XML and HTML

XML was designed to carry data, not displaying data

• XML is not a replacement for HTML.

• Different goals:
XML was designed to describe data and to focus on what data is.
HTML was designed to display data and to focus on how data
looks.

• HTML is about displaying information, XML is about

describing information.

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 Difference Between HTML and XML (contd.)

• HTML tags have a fixed meaning and browsers

know what it is.
• XML tags are different for different applications,
and users know what they mean.
• HTML tags are used for display.
• XML tags are used to describe documents and
data.

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XML comes from SGML

• Standard Generalized Markup Language

 Based on IBM‟s GML (Goldfarb, et al.)
 ISO standard since 1989
 Used for large-scale document management
(Boeing 747 user‟s manual)

 Expensive, complex to implement

 Not Web-friendly (no “well-formed” SGML)
 Too many options (e.g., tag minimization)

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XML, HTML, & XHTML

• HTML—display-oriented, SGML-based
scheme for making Web pages
 Syntax & allowed elements (semantics) are fixed

• XML—set of rules for defining markup

schemes
 Element set is fully extensible
 Syntax is fixed

• XHTML—HTML modified to be XML-

compliant (not just SGML-compliant)
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Markup languages compared
• XML syntax is stricter than HTML or SGML
 Must explicitly close all elements
 Attributes must be enclosed in quotes
 All markup is case-sensitive
• XML & SGML: no fixed tags, no predefined
style
• XML & SGML are extensible
 Fixed elements (HTML) vs. rules (XML, SGML)
 HTML elements describe how to present content
 XML elements can describe the content itself

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 A different XML for every
community

• XML is a set of rules used for defining &

encoding intellectual structures
• XML is extensible & customizable
 Its greatest strength
 Its greatest weakness
• HTML was invented by physicists
 What if it had been lawyers, or teachers, or
bureaucrats, or librarians, or …?

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XML Rules
• Tags are enclosed in angle brackets.
• Tags come in pairs with start-tags and end-tags.
• Tags must be properly nested.
 <name><email>…</name></email> is not allowed.
 <name><email>…</email><name> is.
• Tags that do not have end-tags must be terminated
by a „/‟.
 <br /> is an html example.

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More XML Rules
• Tags are case sensitive.
 <address> is not the same as <Address>
• XML in any combination of cases is not
allowed as part of a tag.
• Tags may not contain „<„ or „&‟.
• Tags follow Java naming conventions,
except that a single colon and other
characters are allowed. They must begin
with a letter and may not contain white
space.
• Documents must have a single root tag
that begins the document.

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 Encoding
• XML (like Java) uses Unicode to encode characters.
• Unicode comes in many flavors. The most common
one used in the West is UTF-8.
• UTF-8 is a variable length code. Characters are
encoded in 1 byte, 2 bytes, or 4 bytes.
• The first 128 characters in Unicode are ASCII.
• In UTF-8, the numbers between 128 and 255 code for
some of the more common characters used in
western Europe, such as ã, á, å, or ç.
• Two byte codes are used for some characters not
listed in the first 256 and some Asian ideographs.
• Four byte codes can handle any ideographs that are
left.
• Those using non-western languages should
investigate other versions of Unicode.

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An example of XML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-
1"?>
<note>
<to>Tove</to>
<from>Jani</from>
<heading>Reminder</heading>
<body>Don't forget me this weekend!</body>
</note>

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 Overview of Main Features XML
XML DTD HTML DTD
<!ELEMENT Book (Each)+> <!ELEMENT Table (Tr, Td )*>
<!ELEMENT Each (Title, Abs)> <!ELEMENT Tr (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT Title (#PCD ATA)> <!ELEMENT Td (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT Abs (#PCDATA)>
<!ATTLIST Abs Lang (K|E|O) ”K">
HTML File
XML File <table>
<tr>
<Book> <td>Dr.Q</td>
<Each> <td>aaaaaa</td>
<Title Lang=“K”> Dr.Q</Title> </tr>
<Abs Lang=“E”>aaaaaa </table>
</Abs>
</Each>
</Book>
HTML Browser

DB/Application XML Browser

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Why Is XML Important?
• Plain Text
 Easy to edit
 Useful for storing small amounts of data
 Possible to efficiently store large amounts of
XML data through an XML front end to a
database
• Data Identification
 Tell you what kind of data you have
 Can be used in different ways by different
applications

XML Dr. Mbale J. 17

Why Is XML Important? (contd.)
• Stylability
 Inherently style-free
 XSL---Extensible Stylesheet Language
 Different XSL formats can then be used to display the
same data in different ways

• Inline Reusabiliy
 Can be composed from separate entities
 Modularize your documents without resorting to links

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Why is XML important? (contd.)
• Linkability -- XLink and XPointer
 Simple unidirectional hyperlinks
 Two-way links
 Multiple-target links
 “Expanding” links

• Easily Processed
 Regular and consistent notation
 Vendor-neutral standard

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Why is XML important? (contd.)
• Hierarchical
 Faster to access
 Easier to rearrange

XML Dr. Mbale J. 20

Markup Language
A markup language must specify
• What markup is allowed
• What markup is required
• How markup is to be distinguished from text
• What the markup means

*XML only specify the first three, the fourth is specified by DTD

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SGML(ISO 8879)
• Standard Generalized Markup Language
• The international standard for defining descriptions of
structure and content in text documents

• Interchangeable: device-independent, system-independent

• tags are not predefined

• Using DTD to validate the structure of the document

• Large, powerful, and very complex

• Heavily used in industrial and commercial for over a decade

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HTML(RFC 1866)
• HyperText Markup Language

• A small SGML application used on web (a DTD and

a set of processing conventions)

• Can only use a predefined set of tags

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XML Specifications
• XML 1.0
Defines the syntax of XML

• XPointer, XLink
Defines a standard way to represent links between resources

• XSL
Defines the standard stylesheet language for XML

XML Dr. Mbale J. 24

 Ordered hierarchies of content objects
• Premise: A text is the sum of its component
parts
 A <Book> could be defined as containing:
<FrontMatter>, <Chapter>s, <BackMatter>
 <FrontMatter> could contain:
<BookTitle> <Author>s <PubInfo>
 A <Chapter> could contain:
<ChapterTitle> <Paragraph>s
 A <Paragraph> could contain:
<Sentence>s or <Table>s or <Figure>s …
• Components chosen should reflect anticipated
use

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 Ordered hierarchies of content
objects
• OHCO is a useful, albeit imperfect, model
 Exposes an object‟s intellectual structure
 Supports reuse & abstraction of components
 Better than a bit-mapped page image
 Better than a model of text as a stream of
characters plus formatting instructions
 Data management system for document-like
objects
 Does not allow overlapping content objects
 Incomplete; requires infrastructure
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Content objects in a book
Book
FrontMatter
BookTitle
Author(s)
PubInfo
Chapter(s)
ChapterTitle
Paragraph(s)
BackMatter
References
Index

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 Content objects in a catalog card
Card
CallNumber
MainEntry
TitleStatement
TitleProper
StatementOfResponsibility
Imprint
SummaryNote
AddedEntrySubject(s)
Added EntryPersonalName(s)

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 A simple XML fragment
<Book>
<FrontMatter>
<BookTitle>XML Is Easy</BookTitle>
<Author>Tim Cole</Author>
<Author>Tom Habing</Author>
<PubInfo>CDP Press, 2002</PubInfo>
</FrontMatter>
<Chapter>
<ChapterTitle>First Was SGML</ChapterTitle>
<Paragraph>Once upon a time …</Paragraph>
</Chapter>
</Book>

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Terminology
• Document instance
• Document class
• Document Type Definition (DTD), or
schema
• Well-formed XML
• Valid XML
• Stylesheets
• XML Transformations
• Document Object Model (DOM)

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 What‟s it good for?
Discussion points:
• Smarter documents
• Full text
• Metadata
• Machine-to-machine interactions

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 Using XML for metadata

• Consistency in applying schema

 Optional versus required elements
 Consistent use of elements
 Granularity & depth of information
• XML schemas still evolving
 Attributes versus elements
 Mixing namespaces
 Schema languages
 Philosophical issues

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Machine-to-machine interactions

• Web services
 Facilitating machine-to-machine communications
via XML
 Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP)
 XML Protocol Working Group
• Semantic Web
 Abstract representation of data on the Web
• XML and Databases

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 How does it work?
In XML, there‟s content and there‟s markup.
• Markup
 Elements
 Attributes
 Comments
 Processing instructions
• Content
 Entities
 Encoded (Unicode) characters

XML
Dr. Mbale J.
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Elements
Elements are markup that enclose content
• <element_name>…</element_name>
or <element_name />
• Content models
 Parsed Character Data Only
 Child Elements Only
 Mixed

<author>Cole, T</author>

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Elements (contd.)
• Element
Delimited by angle brackets
Identify the nature of the content they
surround
General format: <element> … </element>
Empty element: </empty-Element>

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Attributes

Associate a name-value pair with an element

• <tag name1="value1"
name2='value2'>…</tag>
 Can be used to embellish content…
 or to associate added content to an element

<author order='1'>Cole, T</author>

<author name='Habing, T' />

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 Attributes (contd.)

• Attribute
Name-value pairs that occur inside start-tags after
element name, like: <element attribute=“value”>

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Comments
Human-readable annotations
• Can be inserted anywhere after headers
• Not part of the document structure
• Usually ignored by XML parsers
• Do not have to be passed to application

<!-- This is a comment -->

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Processing instructions
Machine-readable & application-specific
• Must be passed through by XML Parsers
• XML Declaration is a special PI
• XML Declaration is always first line in file

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' ?>

<?MyApp indent='on' linefeeds='off' ?>

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 Entities
• Placeholders for internal or external content
 Placeholder for a single character…
 or string of text…
 or external content (images, audio, etc.)
• Implementation specifics may vary

<!ENTITY copyright "&#xA9;" >

&copyright; is replaced by ©
<!ENTITY pic SYSTEM "mugshot.gif" NDATA gif >
&pic; is replaced by graphic image

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 Character Encoding Issues

• XML Parsers must accept UTF-8 & UTF-16

• Also must accept &#nnnn; or &#xhhhh;
• MARC-8 encodings must be converted to
Unicode for use in XML

http://lcweb.loc.gov/marc/specifications/specchartables.
html

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 XML schema language

• New in XML
 Uses XML syntax
 Supports datatyping
 Richer and more complex
<book xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation='HTTP://…'>
<xsd:element name='Book'>
<xsd:complexType>
<xsd:sequence>
<xsd:element name='Front' minOccurs='1'
maxOccurs='1'
type='frontType'/>…

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Namespaces

• Qualify element and attribute names

• Allows modularization of schemas
 Mix and match elements from multiple schemas
in document instances
 Import or include from one XML Schema into
another

<oai:metadata xmlns:oai='http:…' xmlns:oai_dc='…'

xmlns:dc='…'>
<oai_dc:dc>
<dc:title>…</dc:title>
<dc:creator>…</dc:creator>

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 XML & Cascading Style Sheets

• Attach styling instructions directly to XML

files
 <?xml-stylesheet href=“http:…" type="text/css" ?>
 Supported by newest browsers: IE5+, Mozilla, Opera
• Can style but not rearrange elements
 Block or inline style
 Bold, italic, underline, font, color, etc.
 Margins, positioning
 Generated content (browser support not good)

front author {color:red; font-weight:bold; font-

family:serif;}

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 XSLT — Transforming Stylesheets

Language for transforming XML documents

 Into HTML, Text, or other XML documents
 Supported in new browsers (IE5+, Mozilla; not
Opera)
 Usually applied on the server or in batch mode
• Valuable for interoperability or reusability
<xsl:template match='//author'>
<xsl:element name='dc:creator'>
<xsl:value-of select='lastname'/>
<xsl:text>, </xsl:text>
<xsl:value-of select='firstname'/>
</xsl:element >
</xsl:template>

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 XPath, XPointer, & XLink

• XPath
 Allows addressing of parts of an XML document
 Used in XSLT, XPointer, and XQuery
 /document/front/author/@number
• XPointer (working draft)
 Used as a fragment id in an XML URI reference
 http://.../some.xml#xpointer(/document/front/author)
• XLink
 Creates and describes extended or simple links between resources
 Used for HTML-style hrefs or imgs, tables of contents, etc.

<aulink xlnk:type="simple" xlnk:href="…"

xlnk:actuate="onRequest">
Cole, T
</aulink>

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 XQuery (XML query language)

• Treat an XML document or collection of

documents as a database
• Equivalent to SQL SELECT statements,
only for XML
• Some support in XML databases
(but working draft only)

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Programming standards
• “Platform- and language-neutral interfaces that allow
programs and scripts to dynamically access and update the
content, structure, and style of XML documents.”
• Document Object Model (DOM)
 Object-based
 Better for complex documents
 High memory usage, slower
 Documents can be updated
• Simple API for XML (SAX)
 Event-based
 Better for simple documents
 Low memory usage, faster
 Documents cannot be updated

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 Other XML-related standards
• XBase
• XForms
• XML Encryption
• XML Signature
• Many more …

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XML authoring tools
• XML editors
 XMetaL (Corel/SoftQuad)
 Epic Editor (Arbortext)
 TurboXML (Tibco Extensibility)
• Standard Office Tools
 WordPerfect 2002 (Corel)
 Microsoft Office XP
 OpenOffice
• Plain Text Editors

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Other XML tools
• Validating parsers & transformation tools
 MSXML (Microsoft)
 Xerces, Xalan (Apache Software Foundation)
 XSV (U. of Edinburgh)
• Document management & database tools
 Tamino (Software AG)
 XMLCanon/Developer (Tibco/Extensibility)
 DLXS/XPAT (U. of Michigan/OpenText)
• XML-aware browsers

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XML resources on the Web

• World Wide Web Consortium

• OASIS
• Microsoft Developer Network
• Sun Microsystems
• Apache XML Project
• XML.COM (O‟Reilly)
• XML.ORG (OASIS)
• ZVON.ORG

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 The infrastructure of XML

• Required to make it work…

 DTDs & schemas: defining
document classes
 Reusing & integrating schemas
(using namespaces)
 Stylesheets for presentation
& transformation
 Standards for linking, querying,
& pointing
 Programming standards

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 Document Type Definitions (DTD)

• Legacy from SGML; part of XML standard

<!DOCTYPE Book SYSTEM 'http://…'>

<!ELEMENT Book (Front, Chapter+, Back?)>
<!ATTLIST Book
type (series|monograph) #REQUIRED>

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Document Type Definitions (contd.)
• A DTD describes the tree structure of a document
and something about its data.
• There are two data types, PCDATA and CDATA.
 PCDATA is parsed character data.
 CDATA is character data, not usually parsed.
• A DTD determines how many times a node may
appear, and how child nodes are ordered.

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DTD for address Example (contd.)
<!ELEMENT address (name, email, phone, birthday)>
<!ELEMENT name (first, last)>
<!ELEMENT first (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT last (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT email (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT phone (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT birthday (year, month, day)>
<!ELEMENT year (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT month (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT day (#PCDATA)>

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 Revision

XML Dr. Mbale J. 58

XML Syntax
• All XML elements must have a closing tag
• XML tags are case sensitive
• All XML elements must be properly nested
• All XML documents must have a root tag
• Attribute values must always be quoted
• With XML, white space is preserved
• With XML, a new line is always stored as LF
• Comments in XML: <!-- This is a comment -->

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XML Elements

• XML Elements are Extensible

XML documents can be extended to carry more information

• XML Elements have Relationships

Elements are related as parents and children
• Elements have Content
Elements can have different content types: element content,
mixed content, simple content, or empty content and attributes

• XML elements must follow the naming

rules

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XML Attributes
• Located in the start tag of elements
• Provide additional information about elements
• Often provide information that is not a part of data
• Must be enclosed in quotes
• Should I use an element or an attribute?
metadata (data about data) should be stored as attributes, and that
data itself should be stored as elements

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XML Validation
• "Well Formed" XML document
--correct XML syntax
• "Valid" XML document
 “well formed”
 Conforms to the rules of a DTD (Document Type
Definition)
• XML DTD
 defines the legal building blocks of an XML document
 Can be inline in XML or as an external reference
• XML Schema
 an XML based alternative to DTD, more powerful
 Support namespace and data types

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 Applications

• Data exchange applications

 EDI , RDF , MCF ...
• Document publishing applications
 semi-structured data의 markup

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 Data exchange application

account 332 DB
<telephone number=“332”>
R&D 567 <dept>account</b>
<person>Peter</person>
Peter 332 <person>Jim</person>
</telephone>
332
Jim 332
account
Sue 912 peter,Jim
RDB 567
R&D

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 ASP, Java, VB
Events
SAX
XML DBMS

Parser

XSL Processor
DOM API
DOM
Tree
DTD HTML
Browser

DOM(Document Object Model)

SAX(Simple APIs for XML)
XSL(eXtensible Stylesheet Language)
ASP(Active Server Page)

Data exchange applications

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Displaying XML
• XML documents do not carry information about
how to display the data

• We can add display information to XML with

 CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)
 XSL (eXtensible Stylesheet Language) --- preferred

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XML Application1—Separate data
XML can Separate Data from HTML
• Store data in separate XML files
• Using HTML for layout and display
• Using Data Islands
• Data Islands can be bound to HTML elements

Benefits:
Changes in the underlying data will not require any changes
to your HTML

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XML Application2—Exchange data
XML is used to Exchange Data
• Text format
• Software-independent, hardware-independent
• Exchange data between incompatible systems, given that
they agree on the same tag definition.
• Can be read by many different types of applications

Benefits:
• Reduce the complexity of interpreting data
• Easier to expand and upgrade a system

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XML Application3—Store Data
XML can be used to Store Data
• Plain text file
• Store data in files or databases
• Application can be written to store and retrieve information
from the store
• Other clients and applications can access your XML files as
data sources

Benefits:
Accessible to more applications

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XML Application4—Create new
language
XML can be used to Create new Languages
• WML (Wireless Markup Language) used to markup Internet
applications for handheld devices like mobile phones (WAP)
• MusicXML used to publishing musical scores

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XML support in IE 5.0+
Internet Explorer 5.0 has the following XML support:
• Viewing of XML documents
• Full support for W3C DTD standards
• XML embedded in HTML as Data Islands
• Binding XML data to HTML elements
• Transforming and displaying XML with XSL
• Displaying XML with CSS
• Access to the XML DOM (Document Object Model)

*Netscape 6.0 also have full XML support

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Microsoft XML Parser
• Comes with IE 5.0
• The parser features a language-neutral
programming model that supports:
 JavaScript, VBScript, Perl, VB, Java, C++ and more
 W3C XML 1.0 and XML DOM
 DTD and validation

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Java APIs for XML
• JAXP: Java API for XML Processing
• JAXB: Java Architecture for XML Binding
• JDOM: Java DOM
• DOM4J: an alternative to JDOM
• JAXM: Java API for XML Messaging
(asynchronous)
• JAX-RPC: Java API for XML-based Remote
Process Communications (synchronous)
• JAXR: Java API for XML Registries

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Conclusion
• XML is a self-descriptive language
• XML is a powerful language to describe structure
data for web application
• XML is currently applied in many fields
• Many vendors already supports or will support
XML

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