XML Introduction

Audience

Traditional application developers and Web site developers who wish to use XML as a data storage and exchange mechanism. Analysts, technical managers and system architects/designers with responsibility for projects that incorporate XML data structures will also benefit.

Prerequisites

An understanding of HTML and a Web scripting Language such as JavaScript or VBScript is ideally required. Alternatively, knowledge of a programming language such as Java, C or C# will suffice. Whilst knowledge of OO theory would be an advantage it is not a necessity.

Duration

2 days. Hands on.

Course Objectives

By the end of the course students will be equipped with the knowledge to build real world applications using XML documents as a data source for Web, e-commerce and traditional output formats. The objectives of the Introduction to XML course are to provide the student with:

• An understanding of the capabilities of XML technology.
• An explanation of where XML fits in with current Internet application development strategies.
• Experience of developing XML based applications for Web and traditional environments.
• The knowledge to create XML data files with associated Document Type Definitions.
• The ability to create scripting programs that navigate their way through an XML data file and process the data contained within it.
• The ability to restructure XML data using XSL style sheets.
• An appreciation of some of the future directions of XML technology as defined by the W3C and interested commercial organisations.

Course Content

Introduction to XML
What is XML ?
XML document structure
XML usage scenarios
The XML standard
XML Design goals

XML Document Syntax and Rules
The ?xml Declaration
The Root element
Tags, elements and attributes
Predefined entities
Element vs Attribute usage
Physical vs Logical Structure
Well formed documents
White space issues
Unicode Compliance
Development standards

The XML Parsing Process
Purpose of the parser
Document validation
Java/C++ vs Scripting Parsers
The MS XML parser in ASP, VB, and scripting environments
Java parsers

The Document Object Model (DOM) and DOM Navigation
DOM objects
The class hierarchy
Document object structure
The Document object, Root element and child elements
Principal methods and properties
The Node, Document, Element and Attribute classes
The NodeList and NamedNodeMap classes
Character data classes
Element navigation
Text processing
Attribute processing
Reference tables

Document Updating
Creating and inserting elements
Adding child elements
Adding element text
Adding attributes
Updating text and attributes
Deleting elements, text and attributes
Persisting data

Introduction to Transformations – The XSLT Language
XSLT processing architectures
Understanding the transformation process
Generating HTML and SQL
XSLT Elements
Namespaces
Declarations – stylesheet and template
Control instructions – apply-templates and for-each
Output instructions – value-of
Sorting instructions – sort
Conditional instructions – if, choose, when and otherwise
Multiple templates
Further XSLT declarations and instructions

The Document Type Definition
Purpose of the DTD
The DOCTYPE declaration
Element and Attribute declarations
Character data
Element structure control
Content Models
Mixed content model
External and Internal DTDs

Additional Topics
XML and XHTML
XML Schemas The 'X' family of W3C standards
The Simple API for XML – SAX
XML Development Tools
XML Reference Sites