The XML Metalanguage

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1 The XML Metalanguage Mika Raento University of Helsinki Department of Computer Science Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage p.1/

2 Preliminaries Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Preliminaries p.2/

3 Preliminaries Motivation Practicalities Course Overview Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Preliminaries p.3/

4 Motivation XML is used to Publish documents (Linux documentation in DocBook, Reference works such as Dictionaries) in several formats from the same contents Publish news items on the web via RDF (for example: Slashdot, CNN, Mozillazine) that can be incorporated to other web sites or client software Store program settings and preferences (Gnome) Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Preliminaries p.4/

5 Motivation XML is used to Exchange business documents, such as invoices and inventories (ebxml new standard for EDI, for example Finnish customs documents) Make remote procedure calls over the Internet (SOAP=Web Services allows calling Google from your code) Build message-based large-scale software (SAP R/3 integration, Ascade Cockpit application) Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Preliminaries p.5/

6 Motivation XML is Fairly easy to learn Human and machine-readable Lightweight for processing easy to find software for Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Preliminaries p.6/

7 Practicalities 2 study weeks 8 2 hours lectures 8 2 hours exercises Lecturer Mika Raento, D419, available Thu Lectures in Finnish, material in English, one exercise group in English One course exam on Nov 10th Literature: The XML Companion, 3rd edition by Neil Bradley or use the web Course web site on Newsgroup news:hy.opiskelu.tktl.xml Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Preliminaries p.7/

8 Practicalities Exam + project work Two ways to complete project work: Exercises + smaller project that will be partially done at the exercises. You are allowed to miss at most two exercises. OR Larger standalone project work (details at the course web page) So: cancel your registration at an exercise group, if you don t think you ll be able to attend Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Preliminaries p.8/

9 Practicalities Grading maximum 60 points Exam 30 points, 15 points minimum to pass Project work 30 points, 15 points minimum to pass (10 points from exercise attendance, 20 points from work OR 30 points from larger project work) 3 extra points (above 60) for exercises attended after the minimum six No exercise points taken into account if you take the separate exam Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Preliminaries p.9/

10 Course Overview 1. Introduction. History. Motivation 2. From HTML to XML. Well-formedness and validity. 3. DTD basics. Document modelling with DTDs. 4. DTD limitations. Alternatives 5. Namespaces. XML processing. 6. XSLT transformations, XPath. Mind set. Techniques, strength. 7. FO. Basics, mind set, more advanced topics. 8. Combining. Wrapup. Related standards. Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Preliminaries p.10/

11 Introduction Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.11/

12 Introduction What is XML? What does it look like? What does metalanguage mean? XML-processors DTDs Transformations Style definitions Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.12/

13 extensible Markup Language W3C recommendation Version 1.0 (1.1 candidate recommendation) 1st edition , 2nd (current) ed An agreed-upon textual format for representing tree-structured data For storing, combining, exchanging and publishing information Human- and machine-readable Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.13/

14 XML document instance  <university> <department> <name> Department of Computer Science </name> <address> Teollisuuskatu 23 </address> </department> </university> Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.14/

15 XML document instance  <university> <department> tag <name> Department of Computer Science </name> <address> Teollisuuskatu 23 </address> </department> tag </university> Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.14/

16 XML document instance  <university> <department> <name> Department of Computer Science element </name> <address> Teollisuuskatu 23 </address> </department> </university> Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.14/

17 XML document instance  comment <university> <department> <name> Department of Computer Science </name> <address> Teollisuuskatu 23 </address> </department> </university> Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.14/

18 XML document instance Actual document contents, that have been marked up in an agreed way Self-describing (for humans) tags Elements and nested elements, meaningful units of information Text within elements Comments Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.15/

19 Logical vs. physical structure Logical structure Logical relationships and constraints Describes the structure of the information content Physical structure Entities Characters and character set Files Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.16/

20 XML Processors XML parser Finds errors Provides information to applications Entity (document part) management Combines entities to documents Combines physical files Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.17/

21 Metalanguage XML XML provides a general syntax for tree structured data Users provide a application-specific grammar for this syntax Element names Element order and nesting Certain reserved words This grammar is called a Document Type Definition, DTD Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.18/

22 Example DTD <!-{}- Document Type Definition (DTD) example --> <!ELEMENT university (department+)> <!ELEMENT department (name, address)> <!ELEMENT name (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT address (#PCDATA)> Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.19/

23 DTD Defines the type of the document, or its structure One rule per element Name of the element Allowed content Grammar for document instances Regular expressions for element content (may be recursive) not required in XML Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.20/

24 Advantages of using DTDs Allows a validating parser Checks that the document instance corresponds to the DTD Consistent use of the tags Standard DTDs for specific applications A common vocabulary Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.21/

25 Descriptive (declarative) markup Generalized markup (no formatting (information necessarily)) syntactic form without semantics however includes element names that describe content In addition we need a way to describe formatting and e.g. links so that we can present the information to humans Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.22/

26 Descriptive vs. procedural markup Descriptive Categorises the document into parts logical (logical parts and their relations) self-describing content and format separated E.g. XML Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.23/

27 Descriptive vs. procedural markup Procedural Defines what processing is to be carried out on the document Visible (e.g. L A TEX) or invisible (e.g. Word) Formatting information Content and format mixed This distinction is neither clear-cut (e.g. L A TEX with only \section, \subsection etc., or applications of XML such as XSL) nor all-encompassing, but provides a useful starting point Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.24/

28 Stylesheets Defines the presentation (output) format Possibly several per DTD and/or document instance Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) XML Stylesheet Language (XSL) (DSSSL, not covered in this course) Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.25/

29 Other applications of XML Data transfer Subsets (views) of relational databases EDI (Electronic data interchange) Message-based applications Coarse-grained RPC Publishing Documents Metadata Etc. Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.26/

30 Publishing process XML document Formatting Formatted document XSL/CSS stylesheet Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.27/

31 History of XML SGML Standard Generalised Markup Language Based (in part) on IBM s GML (1969) Introduced in 1974, ISO standard 1986 Large and complicated Tools correspondingly large and complicated few and expensive XML has basically the same expressive power (almost a proper subset) Still widely used in publishing of very large documents/ document collections Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.28/

32 History of XML HTML HyperText Markup Language (first proposal , HTML 2.0 IETF (RFC) standard 1995) Huge success, basis for the web Non-standard extensions problematic (although nowadays mainly in javascript/dom) Lots of tools available Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.29/

33 History of XML HTML An SGML DTD + predefined semantics Practical when the only purpose is to present information Easy and pleasing presentation in a browser Focuses on tags for book-like document structure, presentation and linking Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.30/

34 XML SGML HTML XML combines good features from both SGML (expressiveness, extensibility) and HTML (simple, easy to understand) Lots of tools available XHTML is HTML cast into an XML DTD (instead of SGML) SGML may still be the best format for very large documents XML does not solve all problems All three languages are needed Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.31/

35 XML Design principles 1. XML shall be straightforwardly usable over the Internet 2. XML shall support a wide variety of applications 3. XML shall be compatible with SGML 4. It shall be easy to write programs which process XML documents 5. The number of optional features in XML is to be kept to the absolute minimum, ideally zero Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.32/

36 XML Design principles 6. XML documents should be human-legible and reasonably clear 7. The XML design should be prepared quickly 8. The design of XML shall be formal and concise 9. XML documents shall be easy to create 10. Terseness is of minimal importance Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.33/

37 Related standards XLink hyperlinking for XML XPath locating and selecting XML document parts XPointer The reference language for XLink XSL XML stylesheet language XSLT XSL transformations SAX stream-oriented XML API DOM tree-oriented XML API Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.34/

38 On this course Introduction, motivation, background XML documents (XML) XML DTDs (XML) XML transformations (XSLT) Stylesheets (CSS, XSL) Some tools Related information (XML Schema, XPath, XML Namespaces) Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.35/

39 Literature Bradley : The XML Companion Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.36/

40 This lecture in literature Bradley: 2, 3, 31 or XML in 10 points, Norman Walsh, a Technical Introduction to XML, upto Entity References Greg Meyer: An Overview of the XML..., Connolly et.al, The Evolution of Web Documents, Mika Raento The XML Metalanguage Introduction p.37/

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