Introduction to XML

• XML Defined
• Benefits of Using XML, comparison to HTML
• SGML and the origins of XML.
• The XML standard and how it relates to the other standards (XSL, XPath, DOM, SAX, etc).
• Some real life XML applications.

The XML Document

• Structure of the XML document.
• The document body
• Elements, tags, and attributes.
• Prolog, XML Declaration and PIs.
• Entities, CDATA
• Well-formed XML
• XML syntax and parsing.

Namespaces

• The Motivating Problem
• The Namespace Solution (Definition, qualified names, URIs, prefixes)
• Namespace scope and overriding
• Default Namespaces
• Namespaces and Attributes

Valid XML Documents

• Definition of a valid document
• Definition of a schema
• Schema Languages

XML Schema

• General Form of an XML Schema
• Elements, Attributes and Types
• Element Definitions
• Simple Types
• Primitive and Derived Datatypes
• Complex Types - Sequence, Choice, All
• Element Occurrence Constraints
• Attribute Definitions
• Attribute Occurrence Constraints
• SimpleContent Type
• Using XML Schema with Namespaces

The Document Type Definition (DTD) Overview

• The role and functions of a DTD.
• Specifying internal and external DTDs.
• Overview of DTD structure
• Specifying internal and external entities.
• Comparison of XML Schema to DTD
• Since DTDs are being phased out in favor of XML Schemas, we present only an overview here

XML Schema Advanced Topics

• Element and Attribute Group Definitions
• Defining New Types
• Facets
• Defining new Simple Types by Restriction, Enumeration, List, Union
• Defining new Complex Types by Extension and Restriction
• Generic Types

XPath (XML Path Language)

• Overview of the XPath standard.
• XPath data model – why we need it.
• Tree addressing and node types.
• XPath Expressions
• Working with location paths – step by step.
• Absolute and relative location paths
• Axis specifiers, predicates, and functions
• Lab: Node Trees, Names, String-values
• Lab: Location Paths and Axes
• Lab: Predicates, Functions, Operators

XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) Basics

• XSLT Overview and History
• Stylesheets, Templates, and the XSLT Process
• Processing child nodes
• Default templates
• Writing templates – xsl:template
• Continuing Processing – xsl:apply-templates
• Lab: Default Template Rules
• Lab: Writing Templates

Transforming XML to XML

• xsl:copy-of
• xsl:copy
• Pruning the result tree
• Attribute Value Templates
• Controlling output with xsl:output
• Whitespace handling
• Lab: Pruning the Source Tree
• Lab: Creating a summary XML document

Transforming XML to HTML

• Fundamental approach
• HTML elements in an XML document
• Basic HTML Tables
• Considerations in generating tables
• Lab: Transforming an XML order document to HTML

Conditional Processing

• Overview
• xsl:if
• xsl:choose, xsl:when, xsl:otherwise
• Lab: Using Conditional Processing