Characteristics of XML
- Based on SGML, as is HTML
- Can create your own elements (tags) and attributes
- Specification is strict, so that machines can efficiently read and interpret XML
Related Specifications
- Document Type Definition (DTD): specifying structure of XML documents
- XML Schema: specifying structure of XML documents
- Extensible Stylesheet Language – Transformation (XSLT): specifying the display of an XML document
- XML Query: extracting and combining XML document components
Uses for XML
- For displaying documents in multiple formats
- For exchanging information between computers
Uses of XML Programming
- Transforming XML documents on the server before delivering them to browsers.
- Combining XML documents from various servers before delivering combined results to browsers.
- Creating your own XML authoring and editing tools, for example, allowing authors to enter content using HTML forms.
- Validating XML documents when document authors publish them to the server.
- Using XML as a tool to assist in other programming tasks.
Using XSLT Instead of Programming
- Supports selection and re-ordering of elements, counters, conditional statements, inserting additional content.
Tree-Traversal and Event-Driven Models
- Tree traversal approaches reads entire document into a tree data structure and provides mechanisms for navigating through the tree an altering the tree.
Standard: Document Object Model (DOM) - Event driven approaches scan the document, triggering events specified by the programmer.
Standard: Simple API for XML (SAX)
