ISOM

Standards in Information
Management: XML
Arijit Sengupta

Learning Objectives
ISOM

Learn what XML is

Learn the various ways in which
XML is used
Learn the key companion
technologies
See how XML is being used in
industry as a meta-language

Agenda
ISOM

Overview
Syntax and Structure
The XML Alphabet Soup
XML as a meta-language

Overview
What is XML?
ISOM

A tag-based meta language

Designed for structured data representation
Represents data hierarchically (in a tree)
Provides context to data (makes it meaningful)
Self-describing data

Separates presentation (HTML) from data (XML)

An open W3C standard
A subset of SGML
vs. HTML, which is an implementation of SGML

Overview
What is XML?
ISOM

XML is a use everywhere data

specification
XML

XML

Application X
Documents

XML

Repository

XML

Database

Configuration

Overview
Documents vs. Data
ISOM

XML is used to represent two main

types of things:
Documents
Lots of text with tags to identify and
annotate portions
of the document

Data
Hierarchical data structures

Overview
XML and Structured Data
ISOM

Pre-XML representation of data:

PO-1234,CUST001,X9876,5,14.98

XML representation of the same data:

<PURCHASE_ORDER>
<PO_NUM> PO-1234 </PO_NUM>
<CUST_ID> CUST001 </CUST_ID>
<ITEM_NUM> X9876 </ITEM_NUM>
<QUANTITY> 5 </QUANTITY>
<PRICE> 14.98 </PRICE>
</PURCHASE_ORDER>

Overview
Benefits of XML
ISOM

Open W3C standard

Representation of data across
heterogeneous environments
Cross platform
Allows for high degree of interoperability

Strict rules
Syntax
Structure
Case sensitive

Overview
Who Uses XML?
ISOM

Submissions by
Microsoft
IBM
Hewlett-Packard
Fujitsu Laboratories
Sun Microsystems
Netscape (AOL), and others

Technologies using XML

SOAP, ebXML, BizTalk, WebSphere, many
others

Agenda
ISOM

Overview
Syntax and Structure
The XML Alphabet Soup
XML as a meta-language

Syntax and Structure

Components of an XML Document
ISOM

Elements
Each element has a beginning and ending tag
<TAG_NAME>...</TAG_NAME>

Elements can be empty (<TAG_NAME />)

Attributes
Describes an element; e.g. data type, data range, etc.
Can only appear on beginning tag

Processing instructions
Encoding specification (Unicode by default)
Namespace declaration
Schema declaration

Syntax and Structure

Components of an XML Document
ISOM
<?xml version=1.0 ?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl href=template.xsl"?>
<ROOT>
<ELEMENT1><SUBELEMENT1 /><SUBELEMENT2 /></ELEMENT1>
<ELEMENT2> </ELEMENT2>
<ELEMENT3 type=string> </ELEMENT3>
<ELEMENT4 type=integer value=9.3> </ELEMENT4>
</ROOT>

Elements with Attributes

Elements
Prologue (processing instructions)

Syntax and Structure

Rules For Well-Formed XML
ISOM

There must be one, and only one, root element

Sub-elements must be properly nested
A tag must end within the tag in which it was started

Attributes are optional

Defined by an optional schema

Attribute values must be enclosed in or

Processing instructions are optional
XML is case-sensitive
<tag> and <TAG> are not the same type of element

Syntax and Structure

Well-Formed XML?
ISOM

No, CHILD2 and CHILD3 do not

nest properly
<xml? Version=1.0 ?>
<PARENT>
<CHILD1>This is element 1</CHILD1>
<CHILD2><CHILD3>Number 3</CHILD2></CHILD3>
</PARENT>

Syntax and Structure

Well-Formed XML?
ISOM

No, there are two root elements

<xml? Version=1.0 ?>
<PARENT>
<CHILD1>This is element 1</CHILD1>
</PARENT>
<PARENT>
<CHILD1>This is another element 1</CHILD1>
</PARENT>

Syntax and Structure

Well-Formed XML?
ISOM

Yes
<xml? Version=1.0 ?>
<PARENT>
<CHILD1>This is element 1</CHILD1>
<CHILD2/>
<CHILD3></CHILD3>
</PARENT>

Syntax and Structure

An XML Document
ISOM
<?xml version='1.0'?>
<bookstore>
<book genre=autobiography publicationdate=1981
ISBN=1-861003-11-0>
<title>The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin</title>
<author>
<first-name>Benjamin</first-name>
<last-name>Franklin</last-name>
</author>
<price>8.99</price>
</book>
<book genre=novel publicationdate=1967 ISBN=0-201-63361-2>
<title>The Confidence Man</title>
<author>
<first-name>Herman</first-name>
<last-name>Melville</last-name>
</author>
<price>11.99</price>
</book>
</bookstore>

Syntax and Structure

Namespaces: Overview
ISOM

Part of XMLs extensibility

Allow authors to differentiate between tags of the
same name (using a prefix)
Frees author to focus on the data and decide how to
best describe it
Allows multiple XML documents from multiple authors
to be merged

Identified by a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier)

When a URL is used, it does NOT have to represent
a live server

Syntax and Structure

Namespaces: Declaration
ISOM

Namespace declaration examples:

xmlns: bk = http://www.example.com/bookinfo/
xmlns: bk = urn:mybookstuff.org:bookinfo
xmlns: bk = http://www.example.com/bookinfo/

Namespace declaration

Prefix

URI (URL)

Syntax and Structure

Namespaces: Examples
ISOM

<BOOK xmlns:bk=http://www.bookstuff.org/bookinfo>
<bk:TITLE>All About XML</bk:TITLE>
<bk:AUTHOR>Joe Developer</bk:AUTHOR>
<bk:PRICE currency=US Dollar>19.99</bk:PRICE>
<bk:BOOK xmlns:bk=http://www.bookstuff.org/bookinfo
xmlns:money=urn:finance:money>
<bk:TITLE>All About XML</bk:TITLE>
<bk:AUTHOR>Joe Developer</bk:AUTHOR>
<bk:PRICE money:currency=US Dollar>
19.99</bk:PRICE>

Syntax and Structure

Namespaces: Default Namespace
ISOM

An XML namespace declared

without a prefix becomes the default
namespace for all
sub-elements
All elements without a prefix will
belong to the default namespace:
<BOOK xmlns=http://www.bookstuff.org/bookinfo>
<TITLE>All About XML</TITLE>
<AUTHOR>Joe Developer</AUTHOR>

Syntax and Structure

Namespaces: Scope
ISOM

Unqualified elements belong to the

inner-most default namespace.
BOOK, TITLE, and AUTHOR belong to
the default book namespace
PUBLISHER and NAME belong to the
xmlns=www.bookstuff.org/bookinfo>
default publisher namespace

<BOOK
<TITLE>All About XML</TITLE>
<AUTHOR>Joe Developer</AUTHOR>
<PUBLISHER xmlns=urn:publishers:publinfo>
<NAME>Microsoft Press</NAME>
</PUBLISHER>
</BOOK>

Syntax and Structure

Namespaces: Attributes
ISOM

Unqualified attributes do NOT

belong to any namespace
Even if there is a default namespace

This differs from elements, which

belong to the default namespace

Syntax and Structure

Entities
ISOM

Entities provide a mechanism for textual

substitution, e.g.

Entity

Substitution

&lt;

<

&amp;

&

You can define your own entities

Parsed entities can contain text and markup
Unparsed entities can contain any data
JPEG photos, GIF files, movies, etc.

Agenda
ISOM

Overview
Syntax and Structure
The XML Alphabet Soup
XML as a meta-language

The XML Alphabet Soup

ISOM

XML itself is fairly simple

Most of the learning curve is
knowing about
all of the related technologies

The XML Alphabet Soup

ISOM
XML

Extensible Markup
Language

Defines XML documents

Infoset

Information Set

Abstract model of XML data;

definition of terms

DTD

Document Type
Definition

Non-XML schema

XSD

XML Schema

XML-based schema language

XDR

XML Data Reduced

An earlier XML schema

CSS

Cascading Style Sheets Allows you to specify styles

XSL

Extensible Stylesheet
Language

Language for expressing

stylesheets; consists of XSLT and
XSL-FO

XSLT

XSL Transformations

Language for transforming XML

documents

XSL-FO

XSL Formatting Objects Language to describe precise layout

of text on a page

The XML Alphabet Soup

ISOM
XPath

XML Path Language

A language for addressing parts of

an XML document, designed to be
used by both XSLT and XPointer

XPointer

XML Pointer
Language

Supports addressing into the

internal structures of XML
documents

XLink

XML Linking
Language

Describes links between XML

documents

XQuery

XML Query Language

(draft)

Flexible mechanism for querying

XML data as if it were a database

DOM

Document Object
Model

API to read, create and edit XML

documents; creates in-memory
object model

SAX

Simple API for XML

API to parse XML documents;

event-driven

Data Island XML data embedded in a HTML page

Data
Binding

Automatic population of HTML elements from XML data

The XML Alphabet Soup

Schemas: Overview
ISOM

DTD (Document Type Definitions)

Not written in XML
No support for data types or namespaces

XSD (XML Schema Definition)

Written in XML
Supports data types
Current standard recommended by W3C

The XML Alphabet Soup

Schemas: Purpose
ISOM

Define the rules (grammar) of the document

Data types
Value bounds

A XML document that conforms to a schema

is said to be valid
More restrictive than well-formed XML

Define which elements are present and

in what order
Define the structural relationships of elements

The XML Alphabet Soup

Schemas: DTD Example
ISOM

XML document:
<BOOK>
<TITLE>All About XML</TITLE>
<AUTHOR>Joe Developer</AUTHOR>
</BOOK>

DTD schema:
<!DOCTYPE
<!ELEMENT
<!ELEMENT
<!ELEMENT
]>

BOOK
BOOK
TITLE
AUTHOR

[
(TITLE+, AUTHOR) >
(#PCDATA) >
(#PCDATA) >

The XML Alphabet Soup

Schemas: XSD Example
ISOM

XML document:
<CATALOG>
<BOOK>
<TITLE>All About XML</TITLE>
<AUTHOR>Joe Developer</AUTHOR>
</BOOK>

</CATALOG>

The XML Alphabet Soup

Schemas: XSD Example
ISOM

<xsd:schema id="NewDataSet targetNamespace="http://tempuri.org/schema1.xsd"

xmlns="http://tempuri.org/schema1.xsd"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/1999/XMLSchema"
xmlns:msdata="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xml-msdata">
<xsd:element name="book">
<xsd:complexType content="elementOnly">
<xsd:all>
<xsd:element name="title" minOccurs="0" type="xsd:string"/>
<xsd:element name="author" minOccurs="0" type="xsd:string"/>
</xsd:all>
</xsd:complexType>
</xsd:element>
<xsd:element name=Catalog" msdata:IsDataSet="True">
<xsd:complexType>
<xsd:choice maxOccurs="unbounded">
<xsd:element ref="book"/>
</xsd:choice>
</xsd:complexType>
</xsd:element>
</xsd:schema>

The XML Alphabet Soup

Schemas: Why You Should Use XSD
ISOM

Newest W3C Standard

Broad support for data types
Reusable components
Simple data types
Complex data types

Extensible
Inheritance support
Namespace support
Ability to map to relational database tables
XSD support in Visual Studio.NET

The XML Alphabet Soup

Transformations: XSL
ISOM

Language for expressing document

styles
Specifies the presentation of XML
More powerful than CSS

Consists of:
XSLT
XPath
XSL Formatting Objects (XSL-FO)

The XML Alphabet Soup

Transformations: Overview
ISOM

XSLT a language used to

transform XML data into a different
form (commonly XML or HTML)
XML
XML,
HTML,

XSLT

The XML Alphabet Soup

Transformations: XSLT
ISOM

The language used for converting XML

documents into other forms
Describes how the document is transformed
Expressed as an XML document (.xsl)
Template rules
Patterns match nodes in source document
Templates instantiated to form part of result
document

Uses XPath for querying, sorting, etc.

The XML Alphabet Soup

XPath (XML Path Language)
ISOM

General purpose query language for

identifying nodes in an XML document
Declarative (vs. procedural)
Contextual the results depend on
current node
Supports standard comparison,
Boolean and mathematical operators
(=, <, and, or, *, +, etc.)

The XML Alphabet Soup

XPath Operators
ISOM

Operator Usage Description

/

Child operator selects only immediate children

(when at the beginning of the pattern, context is root)

//

Recursive descent selects elements at any depth

(when at the beginning of the pattern, context is root)

Indicates current context

..

Selects the parent of the current node

Wildcard

Prefix to attribute name (when alone, it is an attribute

wildcard)

[ ]

Applies filter pattern

The XML Alphabet Soup

XPath Query Examples
ISOM

./author

(finds all author elements within current context)

/bookstore (find the bookstore element at the root)

/*

(find the root element)

//author

(find all author elements anywhere in document)

/bookstore[@specialty = textbooks]
(find all bookstores where the specialty
attribute = textbooks)
/book[@style = /bookstore/@specialty]
(find all books where the style attribute = the
specialty attribute of the bookstore element
at the root)

More XPath Examples

ISOM
Path Expression

Result

/bookstore/book[1]

Selects the first book element that is the child of the

bookstore element

/bookstore/book[last()]

Selects the last book element that is the child of the

bookstore element

/bookstore/book[last()-1]

Selects the last but one book element that is the child of
the bookstore element

/bookstore/book[position()<3]

Selects the first two book elements that are children of the
bookstore element

//title[@lang]

Selects all the title elements that have an attribute named

lang

//title[@lang='eng']

Selects all the title elements that have an attribute named

lang with a value of 'eng'

/bookstore/book[price>35.00]

Selects all the book elements of the bookstore element

that have a price element with a value greater than
35.00

/bookstore/book[price>35.00]/title

Selects all the title elements of the book elements of the

bookstore element that have a price element with a
value greater than 35.00

XPath Functions
ISOM

Accessor functions:
node-name, data, base-uri, document-uri

Numeric value functions:

abs, ceiling, floor, round,

String functions:
compare, concat, substring, string-length,
uppercase, lowercase, starts-with, endswith, matches, replace,

Other functions include functions on

boolean values, dates, nodes, etc.

The XML Alphabet Soup

Data Islands
ISOM

XML embedded in an HTML document

Manipulated via client side script or data
binding
<XML id=XMLID>
<BOOK>
<TITLE>All About XML</TITLE>
<AUTHOR>Joe Developer</AUTHOR>
</BOOK>
</XML>
<XML id=XMLID src=mydocument.xml>

The XML Alphabet Soup

Data Islands
ISOM

Can be embedded in an HTML

SCRIPT element
XML is accessible via the DOM:
<SCRIPT language=xml id=XMLID>
<SCRIPT type=text/xml id=XMLID>
<SCRIPT language=xml id=XMLID
src=mydocument.xml>

The XML Alphabet Soup

XML-Based Applications
ISOM

Microsoft SQL Server

Retrieve relational data as XML
Query XML data
Join XML data with existing database tables
Update the database via XML Updategrams
New XML data type in SQL 2005

Microsoft Exchange Server

XML is native representation of many types of data
Used to enhance performance of UI scenarios (for
example, Outlook Web Access (OWA))

Agenda
ISOM

Overview
Syntax and Structure
The XML Alphabet Soup
XML as a meta-language

XML as a Meta-Language
ISOM
SAX

DOM

A Language to
create Languages

CSS
DSSL
XSL

XML/DTD

XLL

XSLT
GO

XSchema

CML
XPath
MathML
XPointer

XQL

WML

BeanML

Gene Ontology (GO)

ISOM

Describing and manipulating information about the

molecular function, biological process and cellular
component of gene products.
Gene Ontology website:
http://www.geneontology.org

GO DTD:
ftp://ftp.geneontology.org/pub/go/xml/dtd/go.dtd

GO Browsers and tools:

http://www.geneontology.org/#tools

GO Resources and samples:

http://www.geneontology.org/#annotations

Math ML
ISOM

Describing and manipulating mathematical

notations
MathML website
www.w3.org/Math

MathML DTD
www.w3.org/Math/DTD

MathML Browser
www.w3.org/Amaya

MathML Resources
www.webeq.com/mathml see sample documents here

Chemical ML
ISOM

Representing molecular and chemical information

CML website
www.xml-cml.org

CML DTD
www.xml-cml.org/dtdschema/index.html

CML Browser and Authoring Environment

www.xml-cml.org/jumbo.html

CML Resources
www.xml-cml.org/chimeral/index.html
see sample documents here
some require plug-in downloads, can be slow

Wireless ML
ISOM

Allows web pages to be displayed over mobile devices

WML works with WAP to deliver the content
Underlying model: Deck of Cards that the User can sift
through
WAP/WML website
www.wapforum.org

WML DTD
www.wapforum.org/DTD/wml_1.1.xml

WAP/WML Resources
www.oasis-open.org/cover/wap-wml.html
www.w3scripts.com/wap Tutorial on WML, also see WAP Demo

Scalable Vector Graphics

ISOM

Describing vector graphics data for use over the web

Rendering is done on the browser
Bandwidth demands lower, scaling easier
SVG website
www.w3.org/Graphics/SVG

SVG Plug-Ins
www.adobe.com/svg

SVG Resources
www.irt.org/articles/js176 1999 article and good, brief tutorial
planet.svg An Example from Deitel

Bean ML
ISOM

Describing software components such as Java Beans

Defines how the components are interconnected and
can be used
Bean ML Specs and Tools
www.alphaworks.ibm.com/aw.nsf/techmain/bml

Bean ML Resources
www.oasis-open.org/cover/beanML.html
With Bean ML
You can mark-up beans using Bean ML
And invoke different operations on Beans
Includes BML Scripting Framework

XBRL
ISOM
Extensible Business Reporting Language
Capturing and representing financial and accounting information
Variety of situations
e.g. publishing reports, extracting data for analysis, regulatory forms
etc.

Initiated under the direction of AICPA

XBRL website
www.xbrl.org

XBRL DTDs and Schemas

http://www.xbrl.org/Core/2000-07-31/default.htm

Demos and Tools

http://www.xbrl.org/Demos/demos.htm
http://www.xbrl.org/Tools.htm

News ML
ISOM

Designed to be media-independent
Initiated by International Press
Telecommunications Council
Enables tracking of news stories over time
NewsML website
www.newsml.org

NewsML DTD
http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/newsML.html

SportsML DTD Derived from NewsML DTD

http://xml.coverpages.org/sportsML.html

cXML
ISOM

CommerceXML from Ariba plus 40 other companies

cXML website
www.cxml.org

Primary Set of Tools/Implementations to support

cXML
http://www.ariba.com/solutions/solutions_overview.cfm
See also Whitepapers link explaining how these can be
used for
E-procurement
E-fulfillment
And others ..

xCBL
ISOM

xCBL from Microsoft, SAP, Sun

xCBL website
www.xcbl.org
Marketed as XML component library for B2B
e-commerce

Available Resources (see internal links)

DTDs and Schemas
XDK: SOX Parser and an XSLT Engine
Example Documents

ebXML
ISOM
UN/CEFACT: the United Nations body whose mandate covers
worldwide policy and technical development in the area of trade
facilitation and electronic business.
www.uncefact.org

ebXML website
www.ebxml.org

Current Endorsements
http://www.ebxml.org/endorsements.htm
Still needs buy-in from the larger IS/IT vendors

Related Effort: RosettaNet

http://www.rosettanet.org/rosettanet/Rooms/DisplayPages/LayoutInitial
Business Processes for IT, Component and Chip companies

Conclusion
ISOM

Overview
Syntax and Structure
The XML Alphabet Soup
XML as a meta-language

Resources
ISOM

http://www.xml.com/
http://www.w3.org/xml/
http://www.w3schools.com/
http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml/