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XML.com content from 1998 to 2008 is licensed from and © 1998 - 2008 O'Reilly Media, Inc.

Under the Hood: Oracle Berkeley DB XML

Deepak Vohra

May 7, 2008

XML Databases, coupled with the power of XQuery, offer a potentially paradigm-changing way of dealing with data. The Oracle Berkeley DB XML database provides a rich XQuery-based engine that can be manipulated via XQuery, opening up possibilities for any web developer.


Introducing E4X

Kurt Cagle

November 30, 2007

Kurt Cagle introduces us to E4X, an XML library for JavaScript, and argues that XML and JSON are both indispensable parts of the web app developer's toolkit.


Data Sources as Web Services

Kyle Gabhart

October 25, 2007

Kyle Gabhart describes WS02's Data Services, a new feature in WS02 that allows for rapid creation of web services wrapping relational, Excel, CSV, and JNDI data sources quickly and easily.


XForms Thick Clients

Jack Cox

October 19, 2007

Jack Cox explains an approach to building XForms client applications that work in a disconnected environment.


jQuery and XML

Uche Ogbuji

October 15, 2007

Uche Ogbuji returns with a new Agile Web column to explain how to use jQuery to process XML in JavaScript web applications.


Extended XQuery for SOA

Dino Fancellu and Edmund Gimzewski

September 14, 2007

Web service orchestration is an important part of web services and service oriented architecture. Gimzewski and Fancellu argue that XQuery is especially well-suited as an implementation language for service orchestrator components.




XQuery, libferris, and Virtual Filesystems

Ben Martin

July 27, 2007

Ben Martin returns with another look at his fascinating system, libferris, which turns everything into a filesystem, that is, a hierarchical data store. This time Ben shows us how to use XQuery with libferris as a kind of universal data access language. Good stuff!


Introducing OpenSearch

Uche Ogbuji

July 24, 2007

Uche Ogbuji's Agile Web column returns with an introduction to OpenSearch, an Atom-friendly format for describing and discovering search engines and query endpoints on the Web in a RESTful way.


XQuery and Data Abstraction

Kurt Cagle

July 12, 2007

In his most recent column Kurt Cagle explains the utility of XQuery for increased data abstraction and why XQuery is XPath plus some useful missing bits.


Getting Productive with XMLMind

James Elliott and Marc Loy

June 21, 2007

In the area of technical publishing, there are still challenges to be faced when creating large, complex documents using XML. This week Jim Elliott and Marc Loy provide an excellent introduction to XMLMind, an XML editing environment optimized for complex technical documents.




XML Parser Benchmarks: Part 2

Matthias Farwick and Michael Hafner

May 16, 2007

In the golden days, XML parser performance was a perpetually hot topic. And today it's still worth knowing which modern parsers offer the best performance. In this second of a two-part series, object parsers are compared.


XML Parser Benchmarks: Part 1

Matthias Farwick and Michael Hafner

May 10, 2007

In the golden days, XML parser performance was a perpetually hot topic. And today it's still worth knowing which modern parsers offer the best performance. In this first of a two-part series, event-based parsers are compared; in the next part, object parsers are compared.



Which XML Technologies Are Beautiful?

Michael Day

April 18, 2007

Michael Day asks an interesting question: which XML technologies are beautiful and why? He answers with some candidates. Which XML technologies do you think are most beautiful?


A Smoother Change to Version 2.0

Marc de Graauw

April 11, 2007

Marc de Graauw follows up David Orchard's recent piece about versioning XML vocabularies with a piece about the Capability Compatibility Design Pattern, including code for achieving forward and backward compatibility between XML vocabulary revisions.


Introducing RDFa, Part Two

Bob DuCharme

April 4, 2007

In this second part of a two-part series, Bob DuCharme concludes his introduction of RDFa--a new, XHTML-friendly standard syntax for RDF metadata that allows you to embed RDF metadata into the Web in a novel way.


XInclude Processing in XSLT

Erik Wilde

March 28, 2007

Continuing our mini-series on XSLT 2.0, Erik Wilde describes XIPr, an XInclude Processor implemented as a single XSLT 2.0 stylesheet, for using in document inclusion processing tasks.


The Future of XSLT 2.0

Kurt Cagle

March 21, 2007

Kurt Cagle provides some compelling arguments for the importance of XSLT 2.0 in XML applications as we move forward.


A Relational View of the Semantic Web

Andrew Newman

March 14, 2007

Andrew Newman describes SPARQL as a kind of relational query language over the Web itself; or, at least, over RDF and any data that can be mapped into RDF. He suggests that SPARQL is an excellent candidate Web 2.0 technology.


Enterprise SOA the Apache Way

Kyle Gabhart

March 7, 2007

SOA is just a bunch of silly three-letter acronyms, right? Well, maybe not: Apache has more than enough real-tech credibility to make the SOA doubters take another look when they learn that Apache and SOA go together very nicely. In this article Kyle Gabhart explains how to do SOA with Apache.




Introducing RDFa

Bob DuCharme

February 14, 2007

In this first part of a two-part series, Bob DuCharme introduces us to RDFa, a new, XHTML-friendly standard syntax for RDF metadata that allows you to embed RDF metadata into the Web in a novel way.


XUL-Enhanced Web Apps

Cedric Savarese

February 6, 2007

Cedric Savarese offers an interesting guide to using XUL to enhance web apps on Mozilla-compatible browsers. He very helpfully includes performance numbers, including comparisons to equivalent JavaScript widgets.




Is XML 2.0 Under Development?

Micah Dubinko

January 10, 2007

In Micah Dubinko's return to the XML Annoyances banner, he speculates as to whether the W3C is already considering whether to start work on XML 2.0. Read this piece and decide for yourself.



A Theory of Compatible Versions

David Orchard

December 20, 2006

Creating XML languages that are compatible and extensible is a difficult problem. This week David Orchard argues for a theory of compatibility in which he describes some of the conditions for creating compatible XML languages.




XSLT as Pretty Printer

Hew Wolff

November 29, 2006

Hew Wolff discusses some of the issues surrounding an XSLT style sheet that will pretty print arbitrary XML and includes the style sheet itself.


Music and Metadata

Chris Mitchell

November 22, 2006

Chris Mitchell offers an interesting take on music and the Semantic Web, using metadata to find a club with the right style of music.



Migrating to XForms

Paul Sobocinski

November 1, 2006

Paul Sobocinski explains how to start using XForms now by showing PHP code that will convert from XHTML to XForms and back to XHTML.



Introducing OpenLaszlo

Sreekumar Parameswaran Pillai

October 11, 2006

This week, Sreekumar Pillai begins a two-part series on OpenLaszlo, a zero-install platform for rich web applications. In this first part, Pillai introduces the OpenLaszlo Hello World app.




Profiling XML Schema

Paul Kiel

September 20, 2006

Five years after XML Schema's release, it has matured into a key XML technology, despite its warts and arguably superior competitors. But how are people actually using it? Paul Kiel's article this week answers that question.







What Is RDF

Joshua Tauberer

July 26, 2006

Joshua Tauberer updates the classic XML.com article "What Is RDF" by rewriting it from scratch. Tauberer claims that RDF is more relevant than ever in the world of Web 2.0.



Google Web Toolkit

Bruce Perry

July 12, 2006

Bruce Perry's latest piece introduces GWT, the Google Web Toolkit, which is a kind of Java to Ajax compiler. It's a very interesting new development in the world of very interactive web apps.



Flash to the Rescue

Jason Levitt

June 28, 2006

Using Flash, Jason Levitt shows another variation of a workaround to the limitations of XMLHttpRequest object, the foundation of Ajax.


Scaling Up with XQuery, Part 2

Bob DuCharme

June 21, 2006

In Part 2 of this article, Bob DuCharme covers the eXist and Berkeley DB XML implementations of XQuery, showing us how to use them to query a large XML data collection.


Scaling Up with XQuery, Part 1

Bob DuCharme

June 14, 2006

In Part 1 of this two-part article, Bob DuCharme shows us how to use three popular XQuery implementations to access and query large XML document collections, which is, as he says, "where the real fun begins."




Dynamic News Stories

Adrian Holovaty

May 17, 2006

Adrian Holovaty, one of a new generation of geek-journalists and a main developer of Django, offers some suggestions for XML elements that could be used to make news stories more dynamic and more machine-readable.



An AJAX Caching Strategy

Bruce Perry

May 3, 2006

Bruce Perry returns with another AJAX hack; this time he shows us how to use HTTP caching to support an AJAX-enabled web client.


Microformats in Context

Uche Ogbuji

April 26, 2006

Uche Ogbuji takes a careful look at microformats and concludes that while, in practice, they suffer from serious non-trivial problems, the basic idea offers an interesting basis upon which to build interesting data formats, particularly in conjunction with complementary technologies.


Putting REST on Rails

Dan Kubb

April 19, 2006

Rails is as hot as any web technology, and REST is heating up again. Dan Kubb demonstrates his Rails plugin for building RESTful web apps and services.


Query Census Data with RDF

Joshua Tauberer

April 12, 2006

In his second Hacking Congress column, Joshua Tauberer shows us how to query open data from the U.S. Census Bureau using RDF and Python's RDFLib.




RSS Feeds for FTP Servers

Mark Woodman

March 22, 2006

Mark Woodman returns with another interesting RSS application: he describes a PHP library for creating RSS feeds for FTP sites. Old-school FTP meets new-school RSS!


The Next Web?

Simon St. Laurent

March 15, 2006

Simon St. Laurent steps up to ask which of the competing visions for the next stage of the Web's development have borne fruit, including the latest contender: Web 2.0 and AJAX.


The Emerging Art of Agile Publishing

Michael Fitzgerald

March 8, 2006

Michael Fitzgerald returns us to a core XML mission: publishing. The technical questions are mostly well rehearsed, but what about the process questions? Is your publishing process as agile as it could be? Michael gives us some insights into agile publishing.




Hacking the XML in Your TiVo

Bob DuCharme

February 15, 2006

Bob DuCharme's latest article shows us how to query a networked TiVo for XML using a REST interface over HTTP. Bob then shows us how to use Atom to syndicate our TV habits and integrate them with our weblogs via the "TiVoRoll."



The Power of No

Micah Dubinko

February 1, 2006

In his latest XML Annoyances column Micah Dubinko examines a common force behind the good and bad aspects of XML.









Catching Up with the Atom Publishing Protocol

Joe Gregorio

December 7, 2005

Joe Gregorio's latest Restful Web column brings us up to date with Atom Publishing Protocol. Fast on the heels of the Atom Syndication Format becoming an internet standard, it's time to see where the APP stands.



Tuning AJAX

Dave Johnson

November 30, 2005

AJAX is all the rage and it's being used for non-trivial applications. But do you know what's fast and what's slow in AJAX? Get ready to tune your AJAX apps.





REXML: Processing XML in Ruby

Koen Vervloesem

November 9, 2005

Ruby web apps, including those built with Rails, don't always use XML to represent data. But sometimes you just don't have a choice. Koen Vervloesem shows us how to process XML in Ruby using Ruby Electric XML (REXML).



REST on Rails

Matt Biddulph

November 2, 2005

Ruby on Rails is an increasingly popular framework for building web applications. Matt Biddulph shows us how good the fit is between Rails and lightweight REST web apps and services.


What Is Atom

Ben Hammersley

October 26, 2005

So, what are the main differences between Atom and RSS? Apart from the process used to build the specification and the rigor of the documentation, Ben Hammersley writes in this introduction to the Atom Syndication Format that the two substantive differences are preservation of metadata and the concept of constructs. Ben is the author of Developing Feeds with RSS and Atom.


Google Sitemaps

Uche Ogbuji

October 26, 2005

Uche Ogbuji's new XML.com column, "Agile Web," explores the intersection of agile programming languages and Web 2.0. In this first installment he examines Google's Sitemaps schema, as well as Python and XSLT code to generate site maps.


Microformats and Web 2.0

Micah Dubinko

October 19, 2005

Micah Dubinko begins a new column, XML Annoyances, which will explore what's happening to and with XML, and beyond, as the era of core XML specifications comes to a close. Micah will be paying special attention to the parts of XML that don't seem to work as well as they should--or just the parts that are the most annoying. In this first column, he looks at the role of microformats in Web 2.0 apps and services.


What Is Web Analytics

Eric T. Peterson

October 12, 2005

More and more, companies are re-examining their investment in web analytics and working to determine how to get more out of the money they spend. To accomplish this successfully, your company needs good resources. Eric Petersen has put together a comprehensive guide to web analytics resources, from the books you should read to the tools you should use, and more. Eric is the author of Web Site Measurements Hacks.


Is AJAX Here to Stay?

Jordan Frank

October 5, 2005

Jordan Frank takes a high-level look at the way AJAX is changing the Web and whether it's a technology that's going to stick around.




Processing Atom 1.0

Uche Ogbuji

September 14, 2005

In his final Python-XML column, Uche Ogbuji shows us three ways to process Atom 1.0 feeds in Python.


The More Things Change

Micah Dubinko

September 14, 2005

In the final XML-Deviant column, Micah Dubinko offers a retrospective of XML and discusses some of the enduring topics of debate in the XML-developer community.


Automating Stylesheet Creation

Bob DuCharme

September 7, 2005

Bob DuCharme shows how an XSLT stylesheet can read simplified XML-conversion instructions and create a new, working XSLT stylesheet from those instructions.


Agile XML

Micah Dubinko

August 31, 2005

Micah Dubinko catches up with the XML-developer community with an examination of the Agile XML manifesto.


Should Python and XML Coexist?

Uche Ogbuji

August 24, 2005

In his latest Python and XML column, Uche Ogbuji claims that the costs of using XML as a little language in a Python application may outweigh the benefits of doing so.


Remote Scripting with AJAX, Part 2

Cameron Adams

August 22, 2005

In part one of this two-part series, Cameron Adams created an example application that showed how to use remote scripting to implement the AJAX XMLHttpRequest protocol. Now, in part two, he shows how to create a usable interface for the example app.


Remote Scripting with AJAX, Part 1

Cameron Adams

August 19, 2005

In this two-part series, Cameron Adams demonstrates the advantages of using remote scripting with the AJAX XMLHttpRequest protocol to create web apps and improve website functionality. Here in part one, he creates an example application that shows how to implement XMLHttpRequest. Stay tuned for part two, where he'll show how to create a usable interface for the example app.



Build AJAX-Based Web Maps Using ka-Map

Tyler Mitchell

August 10, 2005

By using AJAX, Google's maps draw and zoom quickly, pan smoothly, and can be extended to display a wide variety of information. This article by Tyler Mitchell shows how to make similar AJAX-based web mapping sites using an open source toolkit called ka-Map. Tyler is the author of Web Mapping Illustrated.



On the Extreme Fringe of XML

Roger Sperberg

August 3, 2005

Roger Sperberg describes Extreme Markup Languages 2005, which is ongoing this week in Montreal. Extreme plays an important role in the XML conference ecosystem, as Sperberg explains.


Appreciating Libxslt

Bob DuCharme

August 3, 2005

In this month's Transforming XML column, Bob DuCharme introduces libxslt, a very performant and feature-rich XSLT processor with roots in the GNOME world.



Analyzing the Web

John E. Simpson

July 27, 2005

In his latest XML Tourist column John E. Simpson asks whether XML has a role to play in reporting website traffic statistics. He finds two applications that use XML to analyze website traffic.


Composition

Micah Dubinko

July 20, 2005

In his latest XML-Deviant column, Micah Dubinko suggests that composing independent specifications is trickier than it seems.



Apple Watch

Micah Dubinko

July 13, 2005

Micah Dubinko examines how Apple is influencing XML and RSS, for better and for worse.



Push, Pull, Next!

Bob DuCharme

July 6, 2005

Bob DuCharme compares the push and pull styles of XSLT stylesheet architectures and looks at two new XSLT 2.0 instructions that aid push-style development.



Padded Downloads

John E. Simpson

June 29, 2005

John E. Simpson's XML Tourist column returns this month with a look at an XML format with roots that stretch back to the hallowed days of BBSes.


Life After Ajax?

Micah Dubinko

June 29, 2005

Micah Dubinko says that the way Ajax technologies are presently deployed will eventually run into complexity barriers. It's time, he claims, for more declarative, markup-based alternative strategies.



Introducing SKOS

Peter Mikhalenko

June 22, 2005

Peter Mikhalenko introduces SKOS, a W3C standard for using RDF to represent thesauri, taxonomies, and other information space structures.


More Unicode Secrets

Uche Ogbuji

June 15, 2005

In this month's Python and XML column, Uche Ogbuji continues his discussion of Unicode secrets with regard to XML processing in Python, especially BOMs and stream objects.


Specification Proliferation

Micah Dubinko

June 15, 2005

Micah Dubinko examines the problem of specification proliferation and looks to a similar area — open source software licensing — for possible solutions.


Just Use Media Types?

Joe Gregorio

June 8, 2005

In his latest Restful Web column, Joe Gregorio implements a set of Python functions for doing the right thing--analyzing, parsing, and matching--with HTTP request media types.



TMQL: A Brief Introduction

Robert Barta

June 1, 2005

The world of Topic Maps is destined to play a role in the Semantic Web; but nearly all serious TM applications require a query language. Robert Barta introduces TMQL.


XTech 2005

Micah Dubinko

June 1, 2005

Micah Dubinko's XML-Deviant column summarizes the highpoints of XTech 2005, the recent European XML conference.


Hacking Election Maps with XML and MapServer

Simon St. Laurent

May 31, 2005

By day Simon St. Laurent plays editor of such recent books as Mapping Hacks and Web Mapping Illustrated, but at night he runs a weblog about his town's politics. His day job taught him a number of ways to hack political maps using XML and MapServer. In this article, Simon shows how he colored America's red-blue political map in a new shade. If you want to see how mapping and location technologies are being used right now, check out O'Reilly's upcoming Where 2.0 Conference.


Going Native, Part 3

Ronald Bourret

May 25, 2005

Ronald Bourret, acknowledged XML database expert, concludes a three-part series that makes the case for native XML databases--this time focusing on schema evolution, web services, and hierarchical data.



SOA Made Real

Rich Salz

May 18, 2005

In his latest column, Rich Salz puts his money where his mouth is by showing how to use his style of WSDL and XML schema to build the client side of a geolocation web service.


Unicode Secrets

Uche Ogbuji

May 18, 2005

In his latest Python-XML column, Uche Ogbuji delves broadly and deeply into the world of Unicode, especially with regard to processing XML in Python.


Forming Consensus

Micah Dubinko

May 11, 2005

In his latest XML-Deviant column, Micah Dubinko outlines a plan for combining the XForms and Web Forms 2.0 communities.


Errors and AJAX

Joshua Gitlin

May 11, 2005

AJAX is hot, but is it real? How mature are the techniques, and can you use them right now? Joshua Gitlin offers a method for trapping client-side JavaScript errors and logging them, server-side, with AJAX.




The Path of Control

Bob DuCharme

May 4, 2005

In his latest Transforming XML column, Bob DuCharme examines the potential contribution of XPath 2.0's new control structures to XSLT 2.0 stylesheets.



Not Quite Restful

John E. Simpson

April 27, 2005

In his latest XML Tourist column, John E. Simpson explores some web services that aren't fully RESTful, including Google Maps.





April Fool's Wisdom

Micah Dubinko

April 13, 2005

In this week's XML-Deviant column, Micah Dubinko reminds us that even playful messages to the XML-DEV mailing list have a serious footing.



Going Native, Part 2

Ronald Bourret

April 13, 2005

Ronald Bourret, acknowledged XML database expert, continues a three-part series that makes the case for native XML databases--this time focusing on data integration and semistructured data management.


On Practical Elegance

Micah Dubinko

April 6, 2005

In his latest XML-Deviant, Micah Dubinko investigates the hidden meaning behind several permathreads found on the XML-DEV mailing list.


Constructing or Traversing URIs?

Joe Gregorio

April 6, 2005

In his latest RESTful Web column, Joe Gregorio turns to an important design question: how will clients figure out the URIs of important resources in a Web service or app?


Using Stylesheet Schemas

Bob DuCharme

April 6, 2005

In this month's Transforming XML column, Bob DuCharme asks what a DTD or schema for XSLT stylesheets can add to your XSLT development and deployment.



SOA Made Simple

Rich Salz

March 30, 2005

Rich Salz shows us how to create WSDL descriptions of web services simply and easily, using rather a lot of boilerplate.



Hacking Oscar!

Howard Katz

March 23, 2005

In this first part of a two-part series, Howard Katz, XQuery guru to the stars, uses XQuery to build a database of trivia related to the Academy Awards.





Writing and Reading XML with XIST

Uche Ogbuji

March 16, 2005

In Uche Ogbuji's latest Python and XML column he introduces XIST, which has been called "object-oriented XSLT for Python" -- a framework for manipulating XML Pythonically.



Comparing XSLT and XQuery

J. David Eisenberg

March 9, 2005

J. David Eisenberg asks, and answers, a vital question: if I already know XSLT, should I also learn XQuery? Get up to speed on the W3C's XML native programming language.


Models with Character

Micah Dubinko

March 9, 2005

Micah Dubinko tallies up the score in the new W3C specification, called "charmod" colloquially, about the use of Unicode in XML applications.


XML on a Chip

Jimmy Zhang

March 9, 2005

Jimmy Zhang asks whether custom processors can speed XML applications, and whether they can speed them enough to be worth the effort.


Show Me the Code

Joe Gregorio

March 2, 2005

Joe Gregorio returns with another Restful Web column, taking up the issue of designing a REST protocol for your application.




The xml:id Conundrum

Rich Salz

February 23, 2005

Rich Salz asks how the xml:id conundrum, and the interaction with XML Canonicalization, should be solved.



Sarissa to the Rescue

Emmanouil Batsis

February 23, 2005

Want to build very dynamic web interfaces like Google? Then you'll need to manage cross-browser XML compatability issues. And you'll need Sarissa.


What Next, XML?

Micah Dubinko

February 16, 2005

Micah Dubinko debuts as the new XML-Deviant columnist with a look at the recent debate about the future of XML. Will there ever be an XML 2.0?



REST Reporting

Eric Gropp

February 16, 2005

Eric Gropp describes the design of a REST web service for creating paper reports using XSLT and XSLFO.






The Silent Soundtrack

John E. Simpson

February 2, 2005

In this installation of XML Tourist, John E. Simpson presents an overview of the types of sound-to-text captioning available. Pinpointing closed captioning as the most suitable for use with computerized multimedia, he then explains how XML-based solutions address synchronization issues.









Freeze the Core

Rich Salz

January 12, 2005

Rich Salz explains how and why the web services stack is ready now, and why we should leave good enough alone.


Introducing Comega

Dare Obasanjo

January 12, 2005

Dare Obasanjo explains some of the ways in which Comega--a new language from Microsoft Research--makes XML processing easier and more natural.



Amazon's Simple Queue Service

Joe Gregorio

January 5, 2005

In Joe Gregorio's latest Restful Web column, he explains that Amazon's Simple Queue Service, a web service offering a queue for reliable storage of transient messages, isn't as RESTful as it claims.



Extending XSLT with EXSLT

Bob DuCharme

January 5, 2005

In this month's Transforming XML column, Bob DuCharme reports happily that the promise of XSLT extensibility via EXSLT has become a reality.


XQuery's Niche

Edd Dumbill

December 29, 2004

XQuery has been much hyped, but is it sufficiently different from XSLT to be successful? Edd Dumbill follows a debate looking for XQuery's niche.


Mapping and Markup, Part 2

John E. Simpson

December 29, 2004

In the final part of his XML Tourist column's exploration of GML, John E. Simpson introduces us to the component schema parts as well as to some GML software.



Telnet and REST Web Services?

Bob DuCharme

December 15, 2004

Telnet isn't the most efficient way to send GET, PUT, POST, and DELETE commands to an HTTP server, but once you've done it by hand, you'll have a better understanding of the core HTTP method.


The Cost of XML

Edd Dumbill

December 15, 2004

The apparent overhead of using XML is once more in the spotlight, as is the financial overhead of using eBay's web services. Edd Dumbill reports.




On Folly

Edd Dumbill

December 8, 2004

XML-oriented programming languages? Crazy! The Semantic Web? Nuts! Or perhaps not. Edd Dumbill on how the crackpots were right all long.




How to Create a REST Protocol

Joe Gregorio

December 1, 2004

In his first installment of XML.com's new column, The Restful Web, Joe Gregorio, one of the people behind Atom, explains how to use REST to create an application protocol in four easy steps.


Faster, Faster!

Edd Dumbill

December 1, 2004

Edd Dumbill reports on debate about making XML faster and leaner and offers the opportunity to send nominations for this year's XML Anti-Awards.



Location, Location, Location

Uche Ogbuji

November 24, 2004

Uche Ogbuji's Python and XML column this month describes some techniques for determing node or parse event locations, expressed in XPath, when parsing XML with DOM or SAX.





XML, the Web, and Beyond

Edd Dumbill

November 10, 2004

XML community coverage; browser technology and open content join traditional XML topics in the new-look XTech 2005 conference; plus debate on when multiple schemas are the best way forward.


Using Customized Schema Constraints

Bob DuCharme

November 10, 2004

In the return of Bob DuCharme's Transforming XML column, he discusses ways to add customized constraints to schemas and how you can use XSLT as a bridge to implement them.


Introducing del.icio.us

Matt Biddulph

November 10, 2004

Matt Biddulph introduces del.icio.us, the social bookmarks manager, by showing us how to interact with it programmatically via Python.


Hacking iTunes

Niel Bornstein

November 3, 2004

Niel Bornstein, Mono and C# hacker extraordinaire, returns with a look at Apple's iTunes service and XML vocabulary, connecting iTunes to Google and Amazon.


Of Presidents and Ontologies

Paul Ford

November 3, 2004

At the pinnacle of election season in the U.S., Paul Ford returns with another Hacking Congress column. This time, Ford says things about the President using RDF and explains why the Semantic Web is about more than ontologies.


How Do I Hate Thee?

Edd Dumbill

November 3, 2004

Find out everyone's top five dislikes about XML, and get to the bottom of exactly why namespaces tops the list.


Linkin' Park

Edd Dumbill

October 27, 2004

One of the original trinity of XML specs, XML linking has largely failed. Can, and should, we fix it?



The Dance of Markup

John E. Simpson

October 27, 2004

In his latest XML Tourist column, John E. Simpson visits a little-known XML vocabulary for representing reels -- that is, country folk dances.




Notes and XQueries

Edd Dumbill

October 20, 2004

Why is XQuery taking seven years to develop? And what's an XML spec worth these days, anyway? Lively debate from the world of XML.


Stuck in the Senate

Paul Ford

October 13, 2004

Paul Ford discovers that creating a clean RDF representation of the United States Senate is harder than he thought, and goes back to fix his mistakes, delving into the mysterious world of URNs along the way.


SVG At the Movies

Antoine Quint

October 13, 2004

Antoine Quint returns with a new column about SVG -- this time he focuses on the interesting new features for video integration in SVG 1.2.



Not Evil, Just Smelly

Edd Dumbill

October 6, 2004

Hypertext guru Ted Nelson reckons XML is evil. XML folk reckon Nelson is mad. But is there truth in what he says?




Lady and the Tramp

Edd Dumbill

September 29, 2004

If XML's the Lady, then RSS is the Tramp. But while RSS is energetically being refined and embraced, the Lady's ossifying rapidly.


Rainy Day XML

John E. Simpson

September 29, 2004

In John E. Simpson's latest XML Tourist column he explains how to use XML to survive yet another Florida hurricane.


XMP Lowdown

Bob DuCharme

September 22, 2004

Bob DuCharme introduces XMP, Adobe's RDF-based specification for embedding metadata into digital artifacts. Get ready to mark up your photos and images with Adobe tools.


Introduction to Device Independence, Part 1

Peter Mikhalenko

September 22, 2004

The W3C is working on standards related to device independence, which will allow an optimal web-browsing experience across the diversity of web-capable devices. Peter Mikhalenko introduces us to this new, exciting area.


RDF Roundup

Edd Dumbill

September 22, 2004

Edd Dumbill's report on XML community discussions covers how to write XML documents as RDF models and more incredulity at the WS-* web services specifications.


Hacking XML

Michael Fitzgerald

September 15, 2004

Among author Mike Fitzgerald's favorite hacks in XML Hacks are two that use SP, James Clark's free, open-source SGML-parser package. The first hack shows how to convert a minimally tagged document to well-formed XML. The second shows how to convert a Wiki format to XML via SGML and SP tools.



Uncle Sam's Semantic Web

Paul Ford

September 15, 2004

Paul Ford comes to Washington, D.C., to report on the Semantic eGov conference, where he discovers that Uncle Sam has plans for the Semantic Web.



Wrestling HTML

Uche Ogbuji

September 8, 2004

Uche Ogbuji's Python and XML column returns with a look at techniques for converting arbitrary and invalid HTML into XHTML.



Screenscraping the Senate

Paul Ford

September 1, 2004

In Paul Ford's first Hacking Congress column, he shows us how to turn information on the U.S. Senate site into RDF.


Converting XML to RDF

Bob DuCharme

September 1, 2004

Bob DuCharme explains how to convert XML into RDF -- using the XML returned by Amazon's REST web service -- in this month's Transforming XML column.


Fallacy and Lunacy

Edd Dumbill

September 1, 2004

In his regular look at the world of XML, Edd Dumbill uncovers the fallacies of XML Schema usage, and scoffs at the lunacy of SOAP.



Checkmate XML

John E. Simpson

August 25, 2004

In John E. Simpson's first XML Tourist column, he leads us on a tour of the world of XML-based chess applications.



Mobile SVG

Antoine Quint

August 18, 2004

Antoine Quint returns with a look at the growing market for implementations of the SVG Mobile specification.



Identifying Atom

Mark Pilgrim

August 18, 2004

In his latest Dive into XML column, Mark Pilgrim reports on some of the hot topics in the IETF's development of Atom.


All Roads Lead to RDF

Edd Dumbill

August 11, 2004

A recent article by Mark Nottingham suggests that RDF may well be the answer to the difficulties inherent in specifying web services with W3C XML Schema. Edd Dumbill reports.



Practical SAX Notes

Uche Ogbuji

August 11, 2004

Uche Ogbuji follows up on some of the practical aspects and implications of his latest Python and XML columns, including SAX and namespace issues.





Caveat Incumbent

Edd Dumbill

July 28, 2004

Is XHTML an evil intrusion into the Web by religious lunatics from the cult of XML? And does XML-ification really help anyway?


From English to Dutch?

John E. Simpson

July 28, 2004

In John Simpson's final XML Q&A column, he explains how to use XML to facilitate phrase translation in multilingual apps, and announces his forthcoming new XML.com column.





Introducing o:XML

Martin Klang

July 21, 2004

o:XML is an innovative object-oriented programming language in which XML is a first class type and also provides the concrete syntax.




Browser Boom

Edd Dumbill

July 14, 2004

Edd Dumbill reports on the boom in web-browser innovation as well as Mozilla and Opera's mysterious desertion of the W3C as a forum.


Eternal Refactoring

Edd Dumbill

July 7, 2004

A summary of the latest happenings in the XML and RDF developer communities: refactoring specifications, Amazon wishlists in RDF, and XML as art.












Standards Selection is Vendor Selection

Jo Rabin

June 23, 2004

Just as the open source movement has changed attitudes to software and software vendors, so phenomena like RSS may be changing attitudes to the creation and maintenance of industry standards.





The Atom Link Model

Mark Pilgrim

June 16, 2004

In Mark Pilgrim's latest Dive Into XML column he explains the Atom linking model, which is based on the familiar HTML linking model but is more expressive and more flexible.


XML and Dreamweaver

Kevin Ruse

June 9, 2004

Our brief tour of the XML features of Dreamweaver MX 2004 demonstrate how to read, write and manipulate XML.


Tomorrow's Web Today

Daniel Zambonini

June 9, 2004

How today's web technologies enable the sci-fi scenarios of the future, and how something as simple as using XHTML can let you play a part.




Putting ISBNs to Work

Kendall Grant Clark

June 2, 2004

Continuing his "Hacking the Library" series, Kendall Clark starts the implementation of a web service tool to retrieve Library of Congress identifiers given the ISBN of a book.
















Politics By Any Other Name

Kendall Grant Clark

May 12, 2004

The recent News.com interview with Bob Glushko spawned a rash of debate among XML developers. The topic? Standards, of course! Kendall Clark offers his own views, and reports on the surrounding community debate.


XML Europe 2004: Refactoring XML

Eric van der Vlist

May 5, 2004

The recent XML Europe 2004 conference showed that it's time to use the experience gained in the last 6 years to optimize the use of XML. Eric van der Vlist reports on sessions from the show.





From One String to Many

John E. Simpson

April 28, 2004

In John Simpson's latest XML Q&A column he describes several ways, including those for XSLT/XPath 2.0 and EXSLT, to tokenize strings.



The State of XML

Edd Dumbill

April 21, 2004

In this closing keynote speech to XML Europe 2004, Edd Dumbill summarizes XML's recent changes and enduring strengths.





An Atom-Powered Wiki

Joe Gregorio

April 14, 2004

As an example of implementing the Atom content management API, we set up a Wiki that can be accessed via Atom.


From P2P to Web Services: Trust

Andy Oram

April 14, 2004

In the second and final part of Andy Oram's series he explains how web service researchers might learn valuable lessons from the P2P movement.


SVG and Typography

Fabio Arciniegas A.

April 7, 2004

Few things have as much power to make or break a visual work as typography. This article demonstrates good-look and appropriate use of typography within SVG.




Utility Stylesheets

Bob DuCharme

April 7, 2004

In Bob DuCharme's latest Transforming XML column he shares several small stylesheets that follow a common design pattern.




Using libferris with XML

Ben Martin

March 31, 2004

The libferris library is a hierarchical data interface, providing uniform access to relational data, XML and the filesystem. This article explores the possibilities of its use with XML.




Tunneling Variables

Bob DuCharme

March 24, 2004

In Bob DuCharme's latest Transforming XML column he explains the use and virtues of XSLT 2.0's tunneled variables.





The Beauty of REST

Jon Udell

March 17, 2004

Through his LibraryLookup project, Jon Udell finds that you don't need to understand what REST is in order to benefit from its use in a system.







Using XML Catalogs with JAXP

Tom White

March 3, 2004

XML Catalogs offer a way to manage local copies of public DTDs, schemas, or any XML resource that exists outside of the referring XML instance document. Find out how to use them in Java with JAXP.



Getting Reacquainted with dbXML 2.0

Tom Bradford

February 25, 2004

The second version of dbXML is much improved over its predecessor, offering transactions, security features, new APIs and query mechanisms. Tom Bradford gives us an update.



Little Back Corners

John E. Simpson

February 25, 2004

In this month's XML Q&A column John E. Simpson examines some of the back corners of XPath processor namespace handling.


Community Developments

Kendall Grant Clark

February 25, 2004

After its long focus on the W3C TAG, the XML-Deviant returns its gaze to the XML developer world, taking in developments in RDDL and the new "genx" project.


Lightweight XML Search Servers, Part 2

Jon Udell

February 18, 2004

Jon Udell enhances his lightweight XML search server by adding database backed storage, using the Berkeley DB XML database, and retrieving and indexing all of the weblogs he reads.


Television Listings and XMLTV

Kyle Downey

February 18, 2004

On a quest to build a DIY personal video recorder, Kyle Downey gets to grips with XMLTV, a toolkit for screen-scraping TV listings data into XML.


Geeks and the Dijalog Lifestyle

Kendall Grant Clark

February 18, 2004

Much as we'd like, our personal media collections will never be purely digital. Kendall Clark embarks on a new column dedicated to the application of geek know-how to managing the hybrid analog and digital media collections that we own.


Googling for XML

Bob DuCharme

February 11, 2004

Google's index includes well over a million XML files. Bob DuCharme shows some strategies for using Google to find the XML, RSS and RDF files that you want.




Introducing PyRXP

Uche Ogbuji

February 11, 2004

In Uche Ogbuji's latest Python and XML column he examines PyRXP, discovering that it's not a conformant XML parser. He recommends the use of the PyRXPU variant instead.


An Introduction to FOAF

Leigh Dodds

February 4, 2004

Friend-of-a-friend, FOAF, is an RDF vocabulary for machine-readable homepages. It enables the expression of decentralized social networks akin to the centralized ones seen in Friendster and Orkut. Leigh Dodds provides an introduction to FOAF and its use.


Opening Open Formats with XSLT

Bob DuCharme

February 4, 2004

In Bob DuCharme's latest Transforming XML column he finds that four-year old XSLT 1.0 is solving more and more problems as more data becomes available in XML.


Web Architecture Review: Representation

Kendall Grant Clark

February 4, 2004

Kendall Clark continues his look at the W3C Technical Architecture Group's "Architecture of the World Wide Web." This time he examines the third of the key architectural principles set forth in this document: data formats.


Atom API Update

Joe Gregorio

February 3, 2004

The grassroots technology for weblog authoring, Atom, is undergoing rapid development. This article reviews the eighth revision of the specification for the Atom API.


The Ox Documentation Tool

Michael Fitzgerald

January 28, 2004

Ox is a simple documentation tool for people who regularly work at the shell or command-prompt level: a Java program that accepts a keyword or term as input and then returns documentation for that term.


Binary Waltz, Play On

Robin Berjon

January 28, 2004

Robin Berjon argues that work at the W3C on binary XML must press on, in order to avoid the proprietary chaos that will result from a lack of standards in this area.



A Confusion of Styles

John E. Simpson

January 28, 2004

In John E. Simpson's latest XML Q&A column he discusses various styling options and alternatives for a nonstandard HTML variant.



Multimodal Interaction on the Web

Peter Mikhalenko

January 21, 2004

The W3C's Multimodal Interaction Activity is developing specifications to support multiple forms of input and output with web applications. This report describes the purpose of the activity and outlines the two major vocabularies under development, InkML and EMMA.





Character Repertoire Validation for XML

Erik Wilde

January 14, 2004

This article presents a schema language for limiting the range of characters permitted in an XML document. It can be used to protect legacy applications or to enforce restrictions in document workflows.



Building Dictionaries With SAX

Uche Ogbuji

January 14, 2004

In Uche Ogbuji's latest Python and XML column he describes an optimization technique for speeding up Python XML applications by using SAX to build specialized Python dictionaries.


Translating XML Documents with xml:tm

Andrzej Zydron

January 7, 2004

In order to reduce translation costs in an environment where documentation can change frequently the best answer is the use of translation memory, which works by aligning previously translated text in a target language with the source language. This article describes an improvment, known as "text memory", which allows translation and source text to reside in the same XML document.




DOM for Web Services, Part 3

Faheem Khan

January 6, 2004

In the final part of his series on processing SOAP using W3C DOM, Faheem Khan covers Apache Xerces-J and explains when using DOM is appropriate.



From Word to XML

John E. Simpson

December 30, 2003

In the year's last Q&A column John E. Simpson discusses some of the issues surrounding the conversion of MS Word documents to XML.


The Social Life of XML

Jon Udell

December 23, 2003

In this write-up of his keynote address to the XML 2003 conference, Jon Udell explains that the key thing about XML is the way anXML document can become a shared construct, a tangible thing that processes and people can pass around and interact with.



xmltramp and pxdom

Uche Ogbuji

December 17, 2003

In the latest installment of Uche Ogbuji's Python and XML column, he examines two different means of parsing XML documents in Python: xmltramp and pxdom.


Atom Authentication

Mark Pilgrim

December 17, 2003

Mark Pilgrim explains why the Atom developers are using a new kind of authentication scheme, and he explains why it's necessary.



The TAG's Town Hall

Kendall Grant Clark

December 10, 2003

Kendall Clark reports from the public question and answer session with the W3C's Technical Architecture Group, which took place as part of the XML 2003 conference.



Building a Security Infrastructure

Rich Salz

December 9, 2003

In his latest column Rich Salz continues with the implementation of an XKMS web service; in this installment he focuses on the public key infrastructure.


Making Web Services Work at Amazon

Edd Dumbill

December 9, 2003

Jeff Barr, Amazon's web services evangelist, presented Tuesday at XML 2003, explaining the decisions involved in making Amazon's puiblic web services strategy a success.


Styling RDF Graphs with GSS

Emmanuel Pietriga

December 3, 2003

Visualising RDF graphs is a hard problem, as they can quickly become unwieldy. This article introduces a solution in the form off GSS (Graph Style Sheets), an RDF vocabulary for describing rule-based style sheets used to modify the visual representation of RDF models represented as node-link diagrams.


Versioning XML Vocabularies

David Orchard

December 3, 2003

A whitepaper presenting best practices for versioning W3C XML Schema based XML vocabularies, describing techniques to achieve more effective loose coupling between systems by increasing the possibility for backwards- and forwards-compatible changes to occur when related systems evolve.


Trees, Temporarily

Bob DuCharme

December 3, 2003

In his latest Transforming XML column Bob DuCharme explains XSLT 2.0's Temporary Trees, and then he demonstrates how to use them.


Five XSLT Basics

Michael Fitzgerald

November 26, 2003

You've just inherited a new project at work that requires you to learn XSLT, but you don't have a clue where to start. This article by Michael Fitzgerald should give you a leg up over the wall. It covers five basics of XSLT 1.0--from what it is to how to get it to work--information you'll also find in the first chapter of Michael's book, Learning XSLT.





Developing a X-KRSS Web Service

Rich Salz

November 25, 2003

In his latest column Rich Salz begins to discuss the implementation of a web service for doing key management with the W3C's X-KRSS standard.


Working with Bayesian Categorizers

Jon Udell

November 19, 2003

Bayesian classification has proved a powerful weapon against spam. Jon Udell tries to find out whether it can be put to use in other spheres of content categorization.


Creating an SVG Wiki

Danny Ayers

November 19, 2003

Wikis are a popular way of text-based collaboration on the web. Danny Ayers shows how to add SVG support to wikis, in order to share diagrams as well as text.


Binary Killed the XML Star?

Kendall Grant Clark

November 19, 2003

The results of the W3C's workshop on binary XML are less than satisfactory, says Kendall Clark. He also covers a recent and pertinent conversation on XML-DEV about SAX interfaces to binary formats.



An Introduction to Schematron

Eddie Robertsson

November 12, 2003

The Schematron schema language differs from most other XML schema languages in that it is a rule-based language that uses path-expressions instead of grammars. A Schematron schema makes assertions applied to a specific context within the document. This article introduces Schematron and its use.


More Gems From the Mines

Uche Ogbuji

November 12, 2003

In his latest Python and XML column Uche Ogbuji presents new gems from the archives of the main Python-XML mailing list, again focusing on XML output.


DOM for Web Services, Part 2

Faheem Khan

November 11, 2003

This article shows how to use Microsoft's Document Object Model (DOM) implementation to create a user interface for a web service from a WSDL file, with examples both in Internet Explorer and using ASP.NET. It provides a gentle introduction to the programmatic use of the DOM.


XSLT Reflection

Jirka Kosek

November 5, 2003

Reflection enables a programming language to inspect and modify its own code. XSLT, being expressed in XML, comes with this built in. This article shows how XSLT can be used to process XSLT to solve real problems.



The Long, Long Arm of SGML

Kendall Grant Clark

November 5, 2003

Commenting on Tim Bray's "UTF-8+names" proposal for creating memorable shortcuts for some Unicode code points, Kendall Clark sees the effort as part of XML's continuing struggle against the legacy of its SGML ancestry.



XForms and Microsoft InfoPath

Micah Dubinko

October 29, 2003

Micah Dubinko, author of XForms Essentials, compares W3C XForms and Microsoft InfoPath, the data gathering technology shipping with Microsoft Office 2003.



The Impact of Site Finder on Web Services

Steve Loughran

October 28, 2003

VeriSign's recently Site Finder service, now temporarily suspended, caused many problems for internet users and web applications. Particularly at risk from the Site Finder changes are web services applications. This article examines the difficulties caused by Site Finder, and what users and developers of web services can do about it.


Web Services Security for Java

Bilal Siddiqui

October 28, 2003

This first article in a new column by Bilal Siddiqui embarks upon deploying web services security. Siddiqui introduces the use cases for a Java web service security API, and begins its implementation.


A Web of Rules

Kendall Grant Clark

October 23, 2003

In his second report from the International Semantic Web Conference, Kendall Clark discusses the importance of rules to the deployment of the Semantic Web, and highlights the importance of interaction between the academic and free software communities.


Commercializing the Semantic Web

Kendall Grant Clark

October 22, 2003

In the first of his reports from the 2nd International Semantic Web Conference, Kendall Clark discusses the path forward for successfully selling and developing Semantic Web technology into industry.



microdom: an XML DOM Designed For HTML

Itamar Shtull-Trauring

October 15, 2003

As the migration from broken HTML to XHTML continues on the web, we need tools that are capable of processing both. This article covers one such tool, microdom, that is capable of supporting legacy HTML both in input and output.


The Atom API

Mark Pilgrim

October 15, 2003

In his latest Dive into XML column Mark Pilgrim explains the basic operations of the Atom API, with special reference to the precedent APIs.


Three More For XML Output

Uche Ogbuji

October 15, 2003

In his latest Python and XML column Uche Ogbuji introduces three more tools for creating correct XML output in Python programs.


DOM for Web Services, Part 1

Faheem Khan

October 14, 2003

In this first part of a three-part series, Faheem Khan introduces the application of the W3C's Document Object Model in processing web services. He also gives an overview of the main two DOM processors in use, Apache Xerces and Microsoft's MSXML.



Diagramming the XML Family

Daniel Zambonini

October 8, 2003

A graphical overview of the main members of the XML technology family, entirely produced using XML technologies: XML, Namespaces, RDF, SVG, XSLT and XSL-FO.


Interactive Microcontent

Jon Udell

October 8, 2003

Adding behavior to data can make it a lot smarter. In this article, Jon Udell explores and experiments with the DOM API for making small sections of web pages and XML documents interactive and productive.



XQuery Implementation

Ivelin Ivanov

October 1, 2003

Though not yet a W3C Recommendation, XQuery has been around for a long time now. This article looks at the trends in its deployment, and predicts the big opportunity for XQuery in web services integration.



Taking the Pulse of XML Editing

Kendall Grant Clark

October 1, 2003

Reporting from a recent vendor conference on XML authoring tools, Kendall Grant Clark presents highlights of interesting tools and an assessment of current trends in XML content creation.


What Is Service-Oriented Architecture

Hao He

September 30, 2003

Service-Oriented Architecture underpins most modern web services. It aims to achieve loose coupling between interacting software agents in order to preserve the benefits of reusability, extensibility and simplicity.


Integrating Services with XSLT

Will Provost

September 30, 2003

For all the magic that XML, SOAP, and WSDL offer in allowing businesses to interoperate, they do not solve the more traditional problems of integrating data models and message formats. This article shows how XSLT can be used to integrate data models across web services.


Web Disservices: Microsoft's Misstep

Mark Pilgrim

September 24, 2003

In this month's Dive Into XML column, Mark Pilgrim takes a look at Microsoft's new Microsoft.com web service, suggesting that it might be improved by becoming more like the Web itself.


ISO to Require Royalties?

Kendall Grant Clark

September 24, 2003

The ISO, a worldwide standards body, is proposing to charge fees for commercial usage in software of their standardized country, language and currency codes. This would have a wide-ranging negative effect on the infrastructure of the web and related standards. Kendall Grant Clark explains the situation and argues against the ISO's proposal.


Marking Up Bureaucracy

Paul Ford

September 24, 2003

Needing to cope with its enormous needs for document and data exchange, the United States is looking more and more to XML. Paul Ford explains what happens when Washington meets markup.


Language Instincts

Jon Udell

September 17, 2003

There'll be no master plan to the Semantic Web, says Jon Udell, just a lot of talking, listening and imitating.


An Introduction to StAX

Elliotte Rusty Harold

September 17, 2003

StAX, the Streaming API for XML, is a new API for pull-parsing of XML, developed under the Java Community Process as JSR 173. O'Reilly author Elliotte Rusty Harold gives an introduction to this API, which combines the efficiency of SAX with the ease of use of tree-based APIs.


Using XPath with SOAP

Massimiliano Bigatti

September 16, 2003

There are many approaches to processing SOAP data, some more complex than others. One lightweight way is by using XPath to extract the items of interest. This article demonstrates a Java web service and client based around the Jaxen XPath API.


A Preview of WS-I Basic Profile 1.1

Anish Karmarkar

September 16, 2003

The WS-I Basic Profile is a set of guidelines on using web services specifications to maximize interoperability. This article from a WS-I BP working group member previews the changes to the Basic Profile being incorporated in the 1.1 revision of the specification.


An XQuery Update

Per Bothner

September 10, 2003

A report on the changes made to the W3C's XML Query Language in the recent August 2003 XQuery drafts.


Ten Favorite XForms Engines

Micah Dubinko

September 10, 2003

The author of O'Reilly's XForms Essentials describes ten software packages that implement the W3C's XForms specification, seen as the XML-friendly successor to HTML forms.





What Interoperability Isn't

Will Provost

September 2, 2003

The buzzword "interoperability" has grown to encompass a broad range of problems and is no longer a precise term. This article challenges several apparent interoperability problems in web services, many of which are really solved problems from other domains.


Typeless Schemas and Services

Rich Salz

September 2, 2003

Strange as it may seem, top thinkers in web services are moving away from strongly typed models of data into a more document-centric service oriented model. Rich Salz charts this change in thinking.


A Compact Syntax for W3C XML Schema

Erik Wilde

August 27, 2003

One of the problems when working with W3C XML Schema is the fact that it uses an XML syntax, which makes schemas verbose and hard to read. This article describes a compact text-based syntax for W3C XML Schema, called XML Schema Compact Syntax (XSCS).



Nobody Asked Me, But...

John E. Simpson

August 27, 2003

In this month's XML Q&A column John Simpson once again asks and answers questions which no one has asked, once again renewing his interest in obscuring XML instances.



Escaped Markup Considered Harmful

Norman Walsh

August 20, 2003

How do you carry HTML or XML around inside an XML document? Not by using CDATA sections or escaping special characters, says Norm Walsh. Find out why embedding markup this way is wrong, and what alternatives there are.


Should Atom Use RDF?

Mark Pilgrim

August 20, 2003

In this month's Dive Into XML column Mark Pilgrim explains the uses and abuses of RDF for the new Atom syndication format.



Low Bandwidth SOAP

Jeff McHugh

August 19, 2003

Using web services on low resource J2ME devices is possible through Enhydra.org's KSOAP classes. This article shows you how to create lightweight web service clients and servers.



DocBook for Eclipse: Reusing DocBook's Stylesheets

Jirka Kosek

August 13, 2003

Using a standard documentation vocabulary such as DocBook makes it easy to integrate your documentation into the Eclipse development platform, as well as many other HTML-based help systems. This article shows how to reuse DocBook's XSLT stylesheets to achieve this.


Introducing Anobind

Uche Ogbuji

August 13, 2003

In his latest Python and XML column Uche Ogbuji introduces anobind, a Python-XML data binding library which is driven by declarative rules.


Binary XML, Again

Kendall Grant Clark

August 13, 2003

The old chestnut of a binary encoding for XML has cropped up once more, this in time in serious consideration by the W3C. Kendall Clark comments on the announcement of the W3C's Binary XML Workshop.


EXSLT for MSXML

Dimitre Novatchev

August 6, 2003

Once thought an impossible task, MSXML now has EXSLT support, thanks to Dimitre Novatchev. In this fascinating article, the author explains the obstacles he overcame and how he implemented EXSLT.


Extensible 3D: XML Meets VRML

Len Bullard

August 6, 2003

A comprehensive introduction to X3D, the XML-based successor to the Virtual Reality Markup Language. This article explains the history of X3D, the tools available to use it, and provides an introduction to X3D's XML markup.


New and Improved String Handling

Bob DuCharme

August 6, 2003

In this month's Transforming XML column Bob DuCharme explains some of the new and improved string handling functions -- for concatenation, search, and replace -- in XSLT/XPath 2.0.


WSDL Tales From the Trenches, Part 3

Johan Peeters

August 5, 2003

This third and final part of WSDL Tales from the Trenches concentrates on the data aspects of web services. It discusses the type definitions and element declarations in the types element of a WSDL document. Such types and elements are used in the abstract messages in web service descriptions.


UML for Web Services

Will Provost

August 5, 2003

How can web services development be given a proper design process? Enter the Unified Modeling Language, or UML, which is the whiteboard notation for object-oriented analysis and design, and offers a natural fit to RPC-style service design.


A Weblog API For the Grassroots

Rich Salz

August 5, 2003

In his latest column Rich Salz discusses the grassroots weblog API, variously known as "Atom" and "Echo", and makes substantive suggestions for how it should be changed to use SOAP.


RDF: Ready for Prime Time

Shelley Powers

July 30, 2003

Shelley Powers, author of the recently released Practical RDF, discusses a few noteworthy examples of RDF applications, vocabularies, tools, and services that are up and running. In particular, she focuses on those that work with other RDF-based services.


XML Source Highlighting

Kyle Downey

July 30, 2003

When writing documents in XHTML, getting XML examples and other source code neatly is vital for a well-presented document. Kyle Downey presents a tool for doing just that.



Why Choose RSS 1.0?

Tony Hammond

July 23, 2003

Part of RSS 1.0's value is in retaining its roots as primarily a metadata specification. A journal publisher explains why they chose RSS 1.0 as the basis for distributing RSS feeds of their publications.


Social Meaning and the Cult of Tim

Kendall Grant Clark

July 23, 2003

Tim Berners-Lee's decision to take the "social meaning of RDF" issue into the W3C TAG and away from the Semantic Web Coordination Group has proved controversial. Kendall Clark reports on the debate between Pat Hayes and Berners-Lee, and asks if the "cult of Tim" is obscuring rational judgment on this issue.


Extending RSS

Danny Ayers

July 23, 2003

The RDF foundations of the RSS 1.0 specification make it easy to extend and mingle with other RDF vocabularies. This article shows how, and explains how these benefits can be reaped in RSS 2.0 feeds as well.


Web Services and Sessions

Sergey Beryozkin

July 22, 2003

Saving state in web services interactions is an important capability. This article reviews the various approaches to maintaining sessions in web services.


WSDL First

Will Provost

July 22, 2003

If you're serious about developing RPC-style Web services, you should know WSDL as well as you know W3C XML Schema, and be creating and editing descriptors frequently. Furthermore, your WSDL should be the starting point in your development process.


Web Services Security, Part 4

Bilal Siddiqui

July 22, 2003

In this fourth and final part of our series on web services security, we put all the pieces together to demonstrate how the XML Signature, XML encryption, Web Services Security, and SAML specifications work together.


Understanding the node-set() Function

Jirka Kosek

July 16, 2003

In XSLT some surprisingly trivial requirements cannot be expressed in a straightforward way. This article describes how to overcome these problems by using the powerful node-set() extension function.


An XML Fragment Reader

William Brogden

July 16, 2003

Despite many potential uses of XML using fragments of XML text, not complete documents, XML parsers require complete documents to do their jobs properly. This article develops an XML fragment reading class for Java.


SVG: A Sure Bet

Paul Prescod

July 16, 2003

In this article based on his keynote at the SVG Open Conference, Paul Prescod explains why he thinks SVG is set to be as ubiquitous as IP networking.




The Document is the Database

Jon Udell

July 9, 2003

When we convert to a database-backed Web application in order to solve problems of shared editing and presentation-oriented file formats, we trade away the convenience of the file-oriented approach. Can we have our cake and eat it too?




Self-Enhancing Stylesheets

Manfred Knobloch

July 2, 2003

Developing new stylesheets can be a chore. So why not let XSLT take the load? This article shows how to easily check the coverage of your XSLT and create skeleton stylesheets.






Finding IDs

John E. Simpson

June 25, 2003

In this month's XML Q&A column, John E. Simpson answers questions about XPath, XSLT, and ID attributes, as well as updates last month's column about the XML Resume Library.


Rendezvous with Web Services

Massimiliano Bigatti

June 24, 2003

ZeroConf technology, also known as Rendezvous, is a winning combination with web services, says Max Bigatti. He demonstrates an example file sharing application that uses Java, SOAP and Rendezvous.



WS-Trust: Interoperable Security for Web Services

Paul Madsen

June 24, 2003

WS-Trust is a proposal that enables security token interoperability by defining a request/response protocol for SOAP actors to request of some trusted authority that a particular security token be exchanged for another. Paul Madsen provides a detailed explanation of the WS-Trust technology.



CSS 3 Selectors

Russell Dyer

June 18, 2003

The CSS 3 Selectors specification has recently become a W3C Recommendation. Russell Dyer charts the development of CSS selectors, and explains which new features are introduced in CSS 3.




Shortening XSLT Stylesheets

Manfred Knobloch

June 11, 2003

XSLT is often considered to be too verbose. As a stylesheet's code grows, it tends to be unreadable. This is not a fate stylesheet authors have to accept. This article proposes some ways of shortening stylesheets without loss of functionality, including the use of XSLT 2.0 user defined functions.


XML Data Bindings in Python

Uche Ogbuji

June 11, 2003

In the latest Python and XML column Uche Ogbuji considers Python data bindings for XML, including generateDS, a script which builds Python bindings from a WXS instance.


A Community Update

Kendall Grant Clark

June 11, 2003

A bulletin from the XML developer community covering the growth of RELAX NG adoption, discussion on the W3C's approach to criticism and an update on the YAML experiment.


Structured Writing, Structured Search

Jon Udell

June 10, 2003

Jon Udell further explores the benefits of preserving structure in web content, suggesting that the availability of structured search for content could motivate the creation of the structured content itself.


SOAP 1.2

Rich Salz

June 10, 2003

Rich Salz returns to the Web Services columnist field by introducing us to SOAP 1.2, about which Rich is understandably optimistic.


Visualizing XSLT in SVG

Chimezie Ogbuji

June 4, 2003

XSLT stylesheets can rapidly become difficult to understand for anyone but their original author. By using XSLT on itself, this article demonstrates how to create a diagram explaining the flow of control within a stylesheet.




The Architecture of Service

Kendall Grant Clark

May 28, 2003

An introduction to the W3C's Web Services Architecture Working Group, and its role in defining a coherent architecture for the currently chaotic ecology of web services specifications.


XML Power Job Hunting

John E. Simpson

May 28, 2003

In this month's XML Q&A column John E. Simpson introduces the XML Resume Library, an XML vocabulary for creating resume and CV documents.


All Consuming Web Services

Erik Benson

May 27, 2003

By consuming information from multiple web services and then exposing newly processed information in our own web services, we can begin to build complex applications with very few resources required up front. Erik Benson describes the workings of All Consuming.


XML Transactions for Web Services, Part 3

Faheem Khan

May 27, 2003

In the third and final part of our series on web services transactions, Faheem Kham examines the WS-Transaction spec's Business Activities, a way of handling long lived collections of transactions.






Adding SALT to HTML

Simon Tang

May 14, 2003

Introducing Speech Application Language Tags (SALT), an XML application to add speech interaction to other markup languages. Simon Tang shows how to install the Microsoft SALT SDK and add speech to an HTML web page.



Using libxml in Python

Uche Ogbuji

May 14, 2003

In Uche Ogbuji's latest Python and XML column he introduces libxml, a popular and well-designed low-level XML library, paying particular attention to its Python bindings.



Web Services Security, Part 3

Bilal Siddiqui

May 13, 2003

This article discusses XML-based authentication and the sharing of authentication information across different applications, known as Single Sign-on. The Security Assertions Markup Language (SAML) from OASIS provides expression in XML of authentication information.



XSLT 2 and Delimited Lists

Bob DuCharme

May 7, 2003

In his latest Transforming XML column Bob DuCharme begins a multipart expoloration of some of the features of the forthcoming XSLT 2.0 release. In this column DuCharme discusses the new support for tokenizing strings.


Internationalizing the URI

Kendall Grant Clark

May 7, 2003

Kendall Clark describes the hold-ups being suffered by XML due to the transition of URIs to their internationalized replacements, IRIs, as well as reviewing a slew of new XQuery drafts published by the W3C.


DSDL Interoperability Framework

Eric van der Vlist

April 30, 2003

DSDL, Document Schema Definition Languages, is a standard being developed by the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 Working Group 1 to meet the validation needs of document-oriented XML applications. The DSDL Interoperability Framework is the glue that will co-ordinate the various parts of DSDL.



RSS on the Client

John E. Simpson

April 30, 2003

In this month's Q&A column John E. Simpson explains what to do with RSS feeds, reviewing some of the available RSS client applications.


XML Transactions for Web Services, Part 2

Faheem Khan

April 29, 2003

In the second installment of our series on web service transactions, Faheem Khan examines in detail the operation of atomic transactions in an example enterprise application scenario, using the WS-Coordination and WS-Transaction specifications.




At Microsoft's Mercy

Kendall Grant Clark

April 23, 2003

The future of XML editing is pretty much in Microsoft's hands, writes Kendall Grant Clark, reporting on community reaction to the news that Microsoft Office 2003's much-hyped XML features will be restricted to the higher-end versions of the suite.


All That We Can Leave Behind

Mark Pilgrim

April 16, 2003

In Mark Pilgrim's latest Dive Into XML column, he continues the examination of XHTML 2 migration issues, this time looking at the loss of the br element and the style attribute.



Online Magazines with Apache Cocoon

Steve Punte

April 16, 2003

Apache Cocoon makes publishing magazines easy. Steven Punte brings together HTML and RSS documents to show how Cocoon's XML-directed architecture lends itself to elegant publishing solutions.


The Semantic Blog

Jon Udell

April 15, 2003

One of XML's promises is fine-grained, specific searching, but this doesn't come without a lot of effort in data preparation. Jon Udell looks for the sweet spot that marries spontaneity and structure.


XML Transactions for Web Services, Part 1

Faheem Khan

April 15, 2003

This first article in three part series describing transactional web services introduces the service oriented architecture, federation of web services, and the need for coordination and transactions.



Processing RSS

Ivelin Ivanov

April 9, 2003

In the first article of our new XQuery column, Ivelin Ivanov shows how XQuery makes light work of rendering multiple RSS files into a single HTML page.


Gems From the Archives

Uche Ogbuji

April 9, 2003

In this month's Python and XML column Uche Ogbuji hunts for treasures in the archives of the Python XML SIG, locating interesting tidbits for producing and displaying XML.



Fast XSLT

Steve Punte

April 2, 2003

Steven Punte presents a review of the birth and development of the Apache XSLTC compiled-XSLT project and surveys the competition among XSLT processors.


Conditional Execution

Bob DuCharme

April 2, 2003

In Bob DuCharme's latest Transforming XML column, he explains how to use xsl:if and xsl:choose for conditional execution in XSLT transformations.


The Liberty Alliance

Paul Madsen

April 1, 2003

As parts of our lives are increasingly managed via online applications, the resulting morass of different logon and profile information is becoming unmanageable. This is the problem the Liberty Alliance project sets out to solve.


Web Services Security, Part 2

Bilal Siddiqui

April 1, 2003

In the second part of his series on web services security technology, Bilal Siddiqui discusses the role and function of digital signatures and encryption.



Architectural Design Patterns for XML Documents

Kyle Downey

March 26, 2003

No one wants to reinvent the wheel. One way programmers try to reuse good ideas about object design is to look to catalogs of design patterns. In this article, Kyle Downey presents some patterns for designing XML document formats.


XML Standards for Financial Services

Ayesha Malik

March 26, 2003

Ayesha Malik provides an overview of the state of XML standardization in the financial services industry, and explains the benefits it is set to realize from the use of interoperable standards.



The Road to XHTML 2.0: MIME Types

Mark Pilgrim

March 19, 2003

In his latest Dive Into XML column, Mark Pilgrim begins another multipart series by setting out along the road to XHTML 2.0. The first stop is the tricky MIME types issue.



The ebXML Messaging Service

Pim van der Eijk

March 18, 2003

The ebXML Messaging Service specification (ebMS) extends the SOAP specification to provide the security and reliability features required by many production enterprise and e-business applications.


Creating SOAP Services with Cocoon

Steve Punte

March 18, 2003

This article introduces the XmlHttpTransformer component, which allows mid-pipeline Cocoon elements to operate as SOAP clients retrieving information from external services.


Truth in Advertising

Kendall Grant Clark

March 12, 2003

A survey of recent discussion on the XML-DEV mailing list, including controversy about XML subsetting in JSR 172, whether there should be a central namespace registry, and whether XML-DEV should find a new home.





The Social Meaning of RDF

Kendall Grant Clark

March 5, 2003

The W3C is about to undertake a discussion of what the social meaning of RDF is -- what the real world import is of an RDF statement. Kendall Clark previews the debate and recent related discussion.


Using Topic Maps to Extend Relational Databases

Marc de Graauw

March 5, 2003

Relational databases are fast and efficient ways to store data, but they can often be inflexible when application requirements change. Augmenting them with the capabilities of Topic Maps can solve this problem, and enhance interoperability between databases.



Web Services Security, Part 1

Bilal Siddiqui

March 4, 2003

The first in a four part series discussing major issues related to securing web services and covering the emerging XML-based security standards from the W3C and OASIS.



Think Spring

Jon Udell

March 4, 2003

Jon Udell puts together web services, XML, and Amazon to enhance Spring, a "concept-centric" visual organizer for Mac OS X.




XML, SOAP and Binary Data

February 26, 2003

This white paper discusses the architectural issues encountered when using opaque non-XML data in XML applications, including (but not limited to) Web services and SOAP.



XP and XML

Eric van der Vlist

February 19, 2003

Eric van der Vlist argues that the two worlds of XML and Extreme Programming have a lot to learn from each other, and that both could benefit from closer integration.





XML at Five

Edd Dumbill

February 12, 2003

To celebrate five years of XML, Edd Dumbill interviews a selection of XML old-timers and experts about their experiences of XML and hopes for the future.




Applied Network Theory

Jon Udell

February 11, 2003

Jon Udell examines the recent hype over network-based approaches to organization. If, as Jon concludes, the network is not only the computer, but also the operating system and the software development environment, how might this impact your role as a software developer?





XML Forms, Web Services and Apache Cocoon

Ivelin Ivanov

January 29, 2003

Server side business logic is often invariant with respect to the client device. Ivelin Ivanov shows how the Cocoon XMLForm framework addresses the concern of separating the purpose from the presentation of a form, maximizing its reusability for a variety of client devices.



XML Pipelining with Ant

Michael Fitzgerald

January 28, 2003

The Ant build tool is a useful framework for XML pipelining--performing a variety of ordered XML processing in one session. Michael Fitzgerald shows how.


Introduction to XFML

Peter Van Dijck

January 22, 2003

Peter van Dijck introduces XFML -- eXchangeable Faceted Metadata Language -- a lightweight and easy to understand XML language for sharing faceted metadata.



Parsing RSS At All Costs

Mark Pilgrim

January 22, 2003

In his second Dive into XML column, Mark Pilgrim describes his parse-at-all-costs parser of ill-formed RSS feeds, using Python's sgmllib.



Transforming XML Schemas

Eric Gropp

January 15, 2003

Eric Gropp shows how XSLT can be used to transform W3C XML Schemas to create, among other things, HTML input forms, generate query interfaces, and documentation of data structures and interfaces.



Securing Web Services

Rich Salz

January 15, 2003

In this month's Endpoints column, Rich Salz explains what security means in the context of web services, as well as explaining the signing and encrypting of SOAP messages.


Services and Links

Jon Udell

January 13, 2003

Jon Udell shows how Web services--such as Erik Benson's All Consuming book site, or his own project, LibraryLookup--which can express themselves in terms of links, are poised to create powerful affordances for use, for imitation, and for discovery.


The JAXB API

Kohsuke Kawaguchi

January 8, 2003

Koshuke Kawaguchi examines the latest release of Sun's Java Architecture for XML Binding, focusing particularly on the API through which applications use the JAXB-generated code to process XML.


Business at XML 2002

Alan Kotok

January 8, 2003

Rounding up the news from the business side of the recent XML 2002 conference, Alan Kotok reports an increase in government clients for XML businesses.


Generating DOM Magic

Uche Ogbuji

January 8, 2003

In the first Python and XML column of the new year, Uche Ogbuji describes how to use Python generators in DOM processing.


Understanding Overloading in WSDL

Randy J. Ray

January 8, 2003

The initial reference to overloading in the WSDL 1.1 specification is limited, a situation that left many new users of WSDL unsure where to turn to for clarification. Randy Ray, coauthor of Programming Web Services with Perl sheds light on the issue by explaining how to express overloaded interfaces in WSDL.





Generating XML and HTML using XQuery

Per Bothner

December 23, 2002

Often perceived mainly as a query language, XQuery can actually be used to generate XML and HTML. Per Bothner provides a worked example, and compares XQuery with XSLT.


What Is RSS

Mark Pilgrim

December 18, 2002

In Mark Pilgrim's inaugural Dive Into XML column, he reviews the history and technical details of the varieties of RSS on the Web. He also describes a method for parsing most active RSS feeds.


Reports from XML 2002

Eric van der Vlist

December 18, 2002

Eric van der Vlist describes highlights of the XML 2002 conference held in Baltimore, including Microsoft Office 11, OpenOffice, ISO DSDL, schema language techniques and literate programming in XML.


A Data Model for Strongly Typed XML

Dare Obasanjo

December 18, 2002

Many applications that process XML associated datatypes with parts of a document, and would benefit from an XML data model that made available such typing information. Dare Obasanjo discusses the candidates for such a model.



Running Multiple XSLT Engines with Ant

Anthony Coates

December 11, 2002

Tony Coates shows how Ant, the Java-based cross platform build tool, can be used to create sophisticated XML build pipelines, and ensure consistency of operation over multiple XSLT engines.




A Python & XML Companion

Uche Ogbuji

December 11, 2002

In the latest Python and XML column Uche Ogbuji offers a companion to the successful Python & XML book by Drake and Jones.



Using XSLT to Assist Regression Testing

Sal Mangano

December 4, 2002

In the same problem/solution format you'll find in his book, XSLT Cookbook, Sal Mangano presents a situation where colleagues wanted a tool to regression-test code that output XML. Sal explains in this article that all they need to normalize the output XML is a tiny bit of XSLT.


Normalizing XML, Part 2

Will Provost

December 4, 2002

In this second and final look at applying relational normalization techniques to W3C XML Schema data modeling, Will Provost discusses when not to normalize, the scope of uniqueness and the fourth and fifth normal forms.




Getting Started with XOM

Michael Fitzgerald

November 27, 2002

Michael Fitzgerald provides an introduction to the XML Object Model (XOM), a new Java XML API created by noted XML author Elliotte Rusty Harold, and finds it simple and easy to use.


RDF Update

Shelley Powers

November 27, 2002

The W3C's Resource Description Framework (RDF) Working Group recently released a slew of new specifications. Shelley Powers provides an overview of each draft.



XML Versus the Infoset

Rich Salz

November 20, 2002

In his latest Endpoints column Rich Salz opines about the differences between XML specifications based on XML and those based on the XML infoset.




Raising the Bar on RSS Feed Quality

Timothy Appnel

November 19, 2002

Timothy Appnel says we must improve the effectiveness of RSS feeds. He offers recommendations for authoring more useful and effective feeds with an approach that is neutral, practical, and conservative.


Normalizing XML, Part 1

Will Provost

November 13, 2002

Will Provost's XML Schema Clinic series takes a look at the relational features of W3C XML Schema, applying the concepts of relational normalization to schema design.


RDF, What's It Good For?

Kendall Grant Clark

November 13, 2002

Kendall Grant Clark ponders the hidden benefits of RDF, and examines the XML-DEV community response to a recent XML.com article on making XML documents RDF-friendly.


Proper XML Output in Python

Uche Ogbuji

November 13, 2002

In his latest Python and XML column, Uche Ogbuji explores the intricacies of creating proper XML output in Python, including character set and encoding issues.



Ontology Building: A Survey of Editing Tools

Michael Denny

November 6, 2002

Ontologies, structured depictions or models of known facts, are being built today to make a number of applications more capable of handling complex and disparate information. Michael Denny surveys the tools available for creating and editing ontologies.




XML and Web Sites

John E. Simpson

October 30, 2002

In his latest XML QA column John Simpson tackles the issue of using XML to build web sites along the way he includes links to a long list of useful resources.


Community and Specifications

Kendall Grant Clark

October 30, 2002

Kendall Clark surveys recent discussion in the XML community, covering XML 1.1, security considerations with XInclude and whether it takes James Clark to create a successful specification.



Whither Web Services?

Edd Dumbill

October 23, 2002

With the technology press taking a more measured view of web services, does this mean the party's over? Edd Dumbill argues that the future of web services and XML are closely linked, and that the fun's only just beginning



The Digital Talking Book

Ken Pittman

October 16, 2002

An investigation of how XML is being used to implement the Digital Talking Book and enhance talking book facilities available to the visually impaired.


What Is XQuery

Per Bothner

October 16, 2002

XQuery is a language from the W3C designed to query and format XML data. Our overview article gives you the lowdown on XQuery and further resources for learning more about it.


Beep BEEP!

Rich Salz

October 16, 2002

In this month's Endpoints column, Rich Salz concludes his look at methods for transporting binary data in SOAP with an examination of BEEP.


A Tour of 4Suite

Uche Ogbuji

October 16, 2002

In this installment of Python and XML, Uche Ogbuji provides a tour of the core XML processing facilities of 4Suite.



XML Canonicalization, Part 2

Bilal Siddiqui

October 9, 2002

In the second and final article of his series on XML Canonicalization, Bilal Siddiqui shows how to cope with documents that have CDATA sections, processing instructions, external entity references and comments.



Working with a Metaschema

Will Provost

October 2, 2002

W3C XML Schema isn't just for validation -- in this article Will Provost demonstrates how adaptations of the schema for schemas can be used to drive applications.


TAG Rejects HLink

Kendall Grant Clark

October 2, 2002

Kendall Clark reports on the rejection by the W3C's Technical Architecture Group of the XHTML Working Group's HLink linking specification.


TAG's Iron Fist

Edd Dumbill

October 2, 2002

The W3C's Technical Architecture Group's condemnation of HLink has met with an angry response. Edd Dumbill says that the TAG's approach isn't good for the web or for the W3C.


Duplicate and Empty Elements

Bob DuCharme

October 2, 2002

In his monthly Transforming XML column, Bob DuCharme explains how to detect, delete, and create duplicate and empty elements in source and result trees.


A Hyperlink Offering

Micah Dubinko

September 25, 2002

Prompted by recent debate over XHTML 2.0's invention of HLink, Achilles and the tortoise meet to discuss the use of linking in W3C specifications.



Introducing HLink

Kendall Grant Clark

September 25, 2002

Kendall Clark provides an introduction to HLink, the linking language invented by the XHTML 2.0 Working Group as an alternative to XLink.


Introducing PyXML

Uche Ogbuji

September 25, 2002

In the second Python and XML column, Uche Ogbuji introduces PyXML, the add-on XML library which builds upon Python's core XML support.


Dirty XSLT Output

John E. Simpson

September 25, 2002

John Simpson returns to answer more XML questions; this time he tackles a tricky interaction between implicit and explicit XSLT rules.


Euro-XML

Rick Jelliffe

September 18, 2002

The introduction of the Euro currency in Europe has brought about changes in commonly used character sets. Rick Jelliffe discusses the impact on XML applications.


XML Canonicalization

Bilal Siddiqui

September 18, 2002

Bilal Siddiqui explains the process of canonicalizing XML documents, useful in determining the logical equivalence of documents in order to secure XML exchanges.



The State of the Python-XML Art

Uche Ogbuji

September 18, 2002

In the first installment of our new Python-XML column, Uche Ogbuji offers a bird's-eye tour of the Python-XML world, including books, discussion forums, and software packages.


What Are XForms

Micah Dubinko

September 11, 2002

HTML forms have long been a weak link in web interfaces -- now XML comes to the rescue with XForms, the W3C's new web forms technology. Update: 9/11/2002


What Are Topic Maps

Lars Marius Garshol

September 11, 2002

An introduction to XML Topic Maps, an XML standard that can be used to index and capture relationships between concepts, improving the findability of information.


Identity Crisis

Kendall Grant Clark

September 11, 2002

Kendall Clark examines section 2 of the W3C Technical Architecture Groups "Architectural Principles of the World Wide Web", concerning Identifiers and Resources.





TAG and the Web's Architecture

Kendall Grant Clark

September 4, 2002

Kendall Clark reviews the first public draft of the W3C Technical Architecture Group's publication "Architectural Principles of the World Wide Web", intended to be a definitive statement of how the Web should work.




Validation by Instance

Michael Fitzgerald

August 28, 2002

What if a single schema type won't suffice, and you need a DTD, RELAX NG, and W3C XML Schema? Michael Fitzgerald explains how to generate all three automatically from a representative XML instance.


Nobody REALLY Asked Me, But...

John E. Simpson

August 28, 2002

On the second anniversary of his column, John Simpson returns to the question of obscuring the contents of an XML document, exploring a good deal of XSLT along the way.


Transporting Binary Data in SOAP

Rich Salz

August 28, 2002

In this month's Endpoints column, Rich Salz discusses the issue of transporting binary data in XML messaging, using the Soap with Attachments technique.



Top Ten Tips to Using XPath and XPointer

John E. Simpson

August 21, 2002

XPath and XPointer allow developers to find specific information inside an XML document and manipulate that information. John Simpson, author of XPath and XPointer, offers ten tips that XML developers can put to use immediately.



The XMLPULL API

Elliotte Rusty Harold

August 14, 2002

Elliotte Rusty Harold takes an analytical look at XMLPULL, an alternative parsing model to the well-known SAX and DOM approaches.


XSLT Processing in .NET

Joe Feser

August 14, 2002

Joe Feser gives an overview of the many ways XML can be transforming using XSLT within the Microsoft .NET Framework.



UML For W3C XML Schema Design

Will Provost

August 7, 2002

The latest installment of Will Provost's XML Schema Clinic series describes a UML profile for W3C XML Schema, allowing the modeling of schemas in UML.



Finding the First, Last, Biggest, Smallest

Bob DuCharme

August 7, 2002

In this month's Transforming XML column, Bob DuCharme explains how to do without a query language using XPath expressions, XSLT predicates, and last month's sorting tricks, he explains how to find the first, last, biggest and smallest nodes.




Using XInclude

Elliotte Rusty Harold

July 31, 2002

Noted XML author Elliotte Rusty Harold gives an overview of XInclude, an emerging W3C specification for building large XML documents out of multiple well-formed XML documents.





Look Ma, No Tags

Kendall Grant Clark

July 24, 2002

XML's success can be measured not only in terms of deployment, but also in terms of inspiring competitors. Kendall Clark examines one such tagless competitor, YAML.




Processing SOAP Headers

Rich Salz

July 17, 2002

In this month's XML Endpoints column, Rich Salz explains how to process SOAP headers and why you'd want to. Along the way he predicts the demise of SAX-based SOAP processors.


The True Meaning of Service

Kendall Grant Clark

July 17, 2002

Kendall Grant Clark investigates the DAML-Services ontology, which ties together web services with the semantic web and could well play a key part in the web of the future.





XSH, An XML Editing Shell

Kip Hampton

July 10, 2002

In this month's Perl and XML column, Kip Hampton introduces XSH, an XML editing shell, which Kip suggests should become a part of your XML tool kit.



Sorting in XSLT

Bob DuCharme

July 3, 2002

In this month's Transforming XML column, Bob DuCharme explains the various uses of xsl:sort, including sort ordering, multiple keys, and reversing the sort.


Watching TAG Again

Kendall Grant Clark

July 3, 2002

Kendall Clark provides an update on the progress of the W3C's Technical Architecture Group, responsible for overseeing the architecture of the Web.




Enforcing Association Cardinality

Will Provost

June 26, 2002

In the first of our "XML Schema Clinic" series, we look at the ways that the cardinality of associations between XML elements can be controlled using W3C XML Schema.



DSDL Examined

Leigh Dodds

June 26, 2002

In Leigh Dodds' last XML-Deviant column, he examines the ISO's DSDL project and the XML development community's reaction to it.








Generating SOAP

Rich Salz

June 12, 2002

In Rich Salz's second XML Endpoints column, he uses Python to demonstrate generating SOAP code for talking to Google's web service.



Comparing and Replacing Strings

Bob DuCharme

June 5, 2002

In this month's Transforming XML column, Bob DuCharme gives us the ins and outs of string munging in XSLT, including string equality comparisons and search-and-replace operations.


An Overview of MSXML 4.0

Steven Livingstone

June 4, 2002

Microsoft's MSXML 4.0 is more than just an XML parser: MSXML expert Steven Livingstone gives us a tour of the functionality of the Microsoft XML toolkit.


Seeing and Tuning Social Networks

Jon Udell

June 4, 2002

Software is catching up with what we know about social networks: the greater the reach of your array, the more effective an actor you can be within an organization. Jon Udell talks with two observers about software that maps social networks and the patterns revealed.





Pull Parsing in C# and Java

Niel Bornstein

May 22, 2002

Niel Bornstein demonstrates the .NET C# XML "pull parser" from Microsoft, and then ports the program to use on of the several pull parsers available for Java, comparing the two languages.


XML Europe 2002 Coverage

Leigh Dodds

May 22, 2002

Leigh Dodds is in Barcelona this week, busy munching tapas and attending XML Europe 2002. This week's column features up-to-the-minute conference coverage.


Extending SVG for XForms

Antoine Quint

May 22, 2002

This month's SVG column, the first of a two-part series, explains the first steps in using SVG, CSS, and EcmaScript to build XForms applications.



Eric van der Vlist on W3C XML Schema

May 15, 2002

Regular XML.com contributor Eric van der Vlist has just finished writing a book on W3C XML Schema for O'Reilly. In this interview, he talks about the book and the technology.


Go Tell It On the Mountain

Kendall Grant Clark

May 15, 2002

As part of the re-framing of the W3C's Resource Description Framework a primer has been produced to accompany the new RDF specifications. Kendall Clark reviews the new document.


Examining WSDL

Rich Salz

May 15, 2002

The XML Endpoints column returns with Rich Salz's discussion of the state of WSDL, with particular reference to the new Google web services API.







REST Roundup

Leigh Dodds

May 8, 2002

This week's XML-Deviant surveys the multifaceted debates about the REST web application architecture.


Blogspace Under the Microscope

Jon Udell

May 3, 2002

Backlinks are creating a new kind of feedback loop among blogger systems. Jon Udell looks to biology for a metaphor of how information loops spur the development of increasingly sophisticated systems in nature, and suggests that informational trails will have a similar effect online.







Google's Gaffe

Paul Prescod

April 24, 2002

Paul Prescod explains why moving its API to use SOAP was a backward step for the popular search engine, and argues for a return to a pure HTTP and XML interface.


Kicking out the Cuckoo

Edd Dumbill

April 24, 2002

Web services are a distraction from the true business of developing the Web, argues Edd Dumbill, and the W3C should stop wasting resources on their development.


Strange Transformations

John E. Simpson

April 24, 2002

In this month's Q&A column, John Simpson explains how to handle unwanted CDATA sections in source trees and offers some advice for serving XHTML to old browsers.


When to Use Get?

Leigh Dodds

April 24, 2002

The XML-Deviant examines the recent debate surrounding the TAG's draft statement on the proper use of GET.


Government and Finance Industry Urge Caution on XML

Alan Kotok

April 24, 2002

The XML world recently received a double-dose of sobering news, as reports from both the U.S. General Accounting Office and NACHA, an electronic payments organization, urged their constituents to move cautiously on any commitment to XML.








Beyond W3C XML Schema

Will Provost

April 10, 2002

Adding XPath and XSLT into your toolchain for validating documents can give you much more control than using W3C XML Schema alone.


What's New in XSLT 2.0

Evan Lenz

April 10, 2002

A advance look at the useful and much-awaited new features in the second version of the W3C's XSLT language.


XML Namespaces 1.1

Leigh Dodds

April 10, 2002

This week's Deviant examines the Namespaces 1.1 Working Draft, as well as its goals and likely impact on XML processors and development practices.


From JDOM to XmlDocument

Niel Bornstein

April 3, 2002

In this second part of his "Learning C# XML" series, Niel Bornstein shows how Java-based document processing with JDOM translates into the .NET world with C#.


TAG Watch

Kendall Grant Clark

April 3, 2002

The W3C's Technical Architecture Group (TAG), charged with making the hard decisions about the shape web technology, has now gotten down to serious business. We take a took at their progress so far.



Jon Udell: Instant Outlining, Instant Gratification

Jon Udell

April 1, 2002

Jon Udell says the new Instant Outlining feature of Radio UserLand 8.0 turns it into something he's been waiting years for: a tool that keeps messages and attachments in context, and helps us get out of the swamp of email.


Template Languages in XSLT

Jason Diamond

March 27, 2002

Handy as it is, XSLT fails to bring a proper separation between content and presentation. This article demonstrates how XSLT can be used to implement a template language more suitable for everyday use.



W3C XML Schema Needs You

Leigh Dodds

March 27, 2002

In this week's Deviant column the issue of interoperability and specification conformance of XML Schema processors is discussed.


Basic Training

John E. Simpson

March 27, 2002

In this month's Q&A column, John Simpson attends to the most basic XML question of all: "What is XML?"



What Is XSL-FO

G. Ken Holman

March 20, 2002

Extended excerpts from noted XSLT trainer Ken Holman's book on the W3C's XSL Formatting Objects specification.


What's New in XPath 2.0

Evan Lenz

March 20, 2002

XPath's about to become a lot more powerful and flexible. Evan Lenz guides us through a tour of the new features of XPath 2.0.




Inside Sablotron: Virtual XML Documents

Petr Cimprich

March 13, 2002

The Sablotron open source XSLT processor has an API that enables it to process "virtual XML documents," bringing with it a flexible and efficient approach to processing both XML and non-XML data sources.



XLink: Who Cares?

Bob DuCharme

March 13, 2002

XLink was part of the original plan for XML, along with XSL, but has taken a long time to reach completion and has inspired few implementations. Bob DuCharme asks why.





Learning C# XML

Niel Bornstein

March 6, 2002

The first in a series providing an introduction to Microsoft's C# XML APIs from the perspective of a Java programmer.




Jon Udell: Radio UserLand 8.0 Is a Lab for Group-Forming

Jon Udell

March 1, 2002

Radio Userland 8.0 brings together blogging, cross linking, RSS syndication, referrer logs, and FTP upstreaming to create a topic-oriented web of smart people. Jon Udell says it's the laboratory for online group-forming that he's been awaiting for years.


Server Side SVG

J. David Eisenberg

February 27, 2002

SVG tools aren't just for the client side: find out how the Apache Batik toolkit can enable your web server to SVG on the fly, providing fallback to JPEG or PNG images for browsers without SVG support.





Doing That Drag Thang

Antoine Quint

February 27, 2002

This month's SVG column explores the coordination of SVG animation and JavaScript programming in order to create a click-and-drag effect.



REST and the Real World

Paul Prescod

February 20, 2002

Following on from his "Next Generation Web Services" article, Paul Prescod shows how the REST model for web services meets real world demands such as security, auditing and orchestration.




Web Services Pitfalls

David Orchard

February 13, 2002

The web services vision of automated business sometimes sounds too good to be true. This article puts web services in the context of real business concerns, showing there's some way to go to achieve the vision.






Top Ten FAQs for Web Services

Ethan Cerami

February 12, 2002

Ethan Cerami, author of Web Services Essentials answers ten of the most frequently asked questions about Web services, from what one is to how you can get started.


Second Generation Web Services

Paul Prescod

February 6, 2002

If SOAP and friends are the first generation of web services, what will the future look like? Paul Prescod explains how the basics of HTTP, XML and URIs will underlie second generation web services.


U.S. Federal XML Guidelines

Alan Kotok

February 6, 2002

The US Government's guidelines for use of XML in Federal agencies shows an encouraging appreciation of XML, but also highlights the difficulties inherent in drafting such guidelines.



The Value of Names in Attributes

Kendall Grant Clark

February 6, 2002

The struggle with namespaces in XML continues in the developer community. Recent discussion has centered on the wisdom of the use of qualified names in attribute values by languages such as XSLT and W3C XML Schema.


Quick and Dirty Topic Mapping

Jon Udell

February 4, 2002

If you've ever tried to map out a taxonomy for an existing or future body of content, you know it can be a frustrating exercise. Here's a strategy for creating a taxonomy from the bottom up rather than top down -- including the Perl script to run it.


Web Services Interoperability

James Snell

January 30, 2002

Interoperability is about blurring the lines between development environments, and James Snell, coauthor of Programming Web Services with SOAP, illustrates what that means with a simple demonstration showing that at least basic tools are available to do that.


Document Associations

Leigh Dodds

January 30, 2002

The Deviant column examines the relation of namespaces and document types, as well as multi-typed documents, in the context of XML processing models.





Digging Animation

Antoine Quint

January 23, 2002

The first installment of our new SVG column takes a look at animation and how SVG compares to Flash.


Relax NG, Compared

Eric van der Vlist

January 23, 2002

A feature-by-feature explanation of the RELAX NG XML schema language, with reference to the features provided by the W3C's XML Schema Definition Language.







Fat Protocols

Leigh Dodds

January 16, 2002

Leigh Dodds looks at recent discussions about the efficiency of XML-based distributed application frameworks.



Bright Year In Prospect For XML

Edd Dumbill

January 16, 2002

Edd Dumbill reviews some of the promising areas of XML for the coming year, including presentation technologies and a renaissance in independent contributions to XML.


Web Services Acronyms, Demystified

Pavel Kulchenko

January 9, 2002

The coauthor of Programming Web Services with SOAP presents a quick guide to the protocols and the specifications behind more than 20 acronyms related to Web services, from SOAP to XLANG, including a description of how they relate to each other and where each sits on the Web services landscape.


An Introduction to the XML:DB API

Kimbro Staken

January 9, 2002

The growing number of native XML databases all have different programming interfaces. The XML:DB API is an open source project to provide a unified API for native XML databases.






XQuery Questioned

Leigh Dodds

January 2, 2002

The XML-Deviant asks whether the XQuery specification should be refactored, and whether it should be released without specifying significant parts of the expected feature set?


Growing Ideas at XML 2001

Simon St. Laurent

December 19, 2001

The XML 2001 exposition featured a special "Incubator" zone, where young XML companies exhibited their products. We checked out the encouraging array of new technologies.








Interoperate or Evaporate

Alan Kotok

December 12, 2001

Last week's business standards interoperability summit resulted in a clear message to standards groups from vendors: learn to work together or lose your support.



Top Ten SAX2 Tips

David Brownell

December 5, 2001

Learn how to get the best out of the Simple API for XML from the author of O'Reilly's upcoming book on SAX2.


Plaudits and Pundits

Edd Dumbill

December 5, 2001

The return of the <taglines/> comment column, handing out plaudits to Adobe, introducing XML Europe 2002, and soliciting nominations for the XML.com Anti-Awards 2001.



Far from Patchy Progress

Leigh Dodds

December 5, 2001

Leigh Dodds reviews the recent history of the Apache XML project, its the latest SOAP developments, and concludes that Apache XML has matured considerably.


Elements Revisited

John E. Simpson

November 28, 2001

John Simpson answers deep questions about content models and element names, with detours into the simplicity of humans and machines.


Introduction to dbXML

Kimbro Staken

November 28, 2001

Following on from his introduction to native XML databases, Kimbro Staken introduces the dbXML open source native XML database.



SVG: Where Are We Now?

Antoine Quint

November 21, 2001

SVG expert Antoine Quint surveys the current state of tool support for the W3C's Scalable Vector Graphics Recommendation.


Wrap Your App

Leigh Dodds

November 21, 2001

Leigh Dodds reports on recent community conversations about solving the XML application packaging problem.








Identity Crisis

Leigh Dodds

November 7, 2001

Leigh Dodds describes the recent XML developer community's debate about the best way to fix XML's ID attribute problem.



Building XML-RPC Clients in C

Joe Johnston

October 31, 2001

In this article, Eric Kidd's XML-RPC C library is used to build a simple, yet powerful debugging client. Special care is taken to bring programmers with rusty C-hacking skills up to speed.



Browser Lockouts and Monopoly Power

Kendall Grant Clark

October 31, 2001

Last week's controversial blocking of certain browsers by MSN.com was excused by means of a flimsy appeal to "standards compliance." Kendall Clark reports on the debate and the possible implications for the Microsoft antitrust negotiations.


The Selfish Tag

Edd Dumbill

October 24, 2001

Even in the standards-led world of today, an attitude of pragmatic selfishness is the best policy for developers using XML in their applications.



Using W3C XML Schema

Eric van der Vlist

October 17, 2001

A comprehensive introduction to XML Schema, a W3C XML language for describing and constraining the content of XML documents. Includes quick reference tables.








XML You Can Touch

Edd Dumbill

October 10, 2001

What's really hot these days in XML isn't the latest spec, but it's the software that's using XML. Edd Dumbill takes a look at how XML has been adopted in the GNOME desktop platform.





Valid Frustrations

John E. Simpson

September 26, 2001

John Simpson talks about some of the limits of DTD content models, suggesting an interesting XSLT-based alternative.


XML Divided

Edd Dumbill

September 26, 2001

As XML application grows, it is inevitable that it will divide into different communities, but a strong commitment to interoperability must remain key.



Being Too Generous

Leigh Dodds

September 19, 2001

Leigh Dodds reports on the community's so far successful efforts to convince Microsoft to fix XML conformance bugs in IE6.




Picture Perfect

Edd Dumbill

September 12, 2001

The W3C's publication of the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) Recommendation heralds a new age for graphics in the emerging multi-device Web.


Dividing Factors

Leigh Dodds

September 5, 2001

Leigh Dodds searches the fault lines of the XML development community and finds that a desire for technological diversity is the new epicenter.


XSLT Extensions

Bob DuCharme

September 5, 2001

Bob DuCharme explores XSLT extension functions, showing you the best way to use them in portable stylesheets.







A New Kind of Namespace

Edd Dumbill

August 22, 2001

Light finally dawns in XML-DEV on the reason behind the inclusion of locally-scoped element names in W3C XML Schema.




Architectural Style

Leigh Dodds

August 15, 2001

Leigh Dodds reviews a debate about the usefulness of XSLT, concluding that if used as intended, XSLT is one of the successful XML technologies.




Opening Old Wounds

Leigh Dodds

August 8, 2001

Leigh Dodds discusses the interpretation of namespaces and XML Schema and, in the process, highlights an important flaw in the W3C's specification process.


The Web's Grand Planners

Edd Dumbill

August 1, 2001

Edd Dumbill examines the W3C's new architectural watchdog, the TAG, and whether it will have much influence over the development of XML.


Getting Loopy

Bob DuCharme

August 1, 2001

Ducharme discusses how to achieve common looping constructs, like "for" and "while", in XSLT.


Doing it Simpler

Leigh Dodds

August 1, 2001

Dodds recaps the history of SML-DEV's efforts to simplify XML, including Common XML, MinML, and YAML. He then examines where SML-DEV may be going next.



The Naming of Parts

John E. Simpson

July 25, 2001

John Simpson explains how to name parts of XML documents, detouring through the tricky areas of EBNF, XML spec productions, and Unicode characters.



Washed Clean, Washed Up

Edd Dumbill

July 18, 2001

In the first installment of his new XML.com column, Edd Dumbill takes a look at the latest incarnation of SOAP, and the ever-changing XML conference scene.



Programming Web Services with XML-RPC

Simon St. Laurent, Joe Johnston, and Edd Dumbill

July 18, 2001

This excerpt from O'Reilly & Associates' recently published Programming Web Services with XML-RPC discusses using PHP to integrate two web applications into a single interface. In the given example, the authors show how a technology news service based on RSS (RDF Site Summary) feeds was created.



Sunshine and Blueberries

Leigh Dodds

July 11, 2001

Leigh Dodds explores the issues behind the W3C's newly-forming Technical Architecture Group, as well as giving an update on XML Blueberry.


Using XML to Configure Groove

Brian Buehling

July 11, 2001

Groove is a peer-to-peer groupware solution, launched earlier this year. Brian Buehling investigates how XML is used to support the creation of custom Groove applications.




Against the Grain

Leigh Dodds

July 5, 2001

XML developers are talking about a perennial question: how can XML and database technologies be integrated appropriately?



Blueberry Jam

Leigh Dodds

June 27, 2001

A proposed revision of XML to accommodate new Unicode characters is becoming a sticky point of debate in the XML developer world.



XML on the Cheap

Edd Dumbill

June 27, 2001

If you're new to XML, or simply want a to play around with it a little, there are plenty of resources on the Web you can use for free, many without even installing software on your computer.


Rapid Resolution

Leigh Dodds

June 20, 2001

A recent debate about supporting OASIS catalogs in XML shows that strong differences of opinion still exist on interpretation of the XML 1.0 specification itself.






Three Myths of XML

Kendall Grant Clark

June 13, 2001

XML has it all, not only an interoperable syntax but a solution to bring world peace, end poverty and deter evil dictators. Kendall Clark debunks these and other popular myths of XML.




Time for Consolidation

Leigh Dodds

June 6, 2001

Is XML changing the way applications are being designed? If so, what tools should you use to model these applications?



DIDL: Packaging Digital Content

Mark Walker, Todd Schwartz, and Vaughn Iverson

May 30, 2001

Internet applications generally fall short in their ability to transfer multimedia content. This article describes an XML vocabulary for packaging digital content, breaking the one-to-one mapping between the notion of a content item and an individual file.






A Web Less Boring

Edd Dumbill

May 23, 2001

Tim Bray condemned the state of web browser technology, saying it was responsible for making the Web dull, in his opening keynote at XML Europe 2001 in Berlin.






Reports from WWW10

Edd Dumbill

May 9, 2001

Highlights from the 10th International World Wide Web conference, which took place last week in Hong Kong.



Can XML Help Write the Law?

Alan Kotok

May 9, 2001

A report from the Conference on Congressional Organizations' Application of XML, where both the mechanics and the public benefits of making legislation available in XML were discussed.


Daring to Do Less with XML

Michael Champion

May 2, 2001

One person's tangled mess of XML is another's set of must-have features. This article offers advice for making your way through the jungle of XML and its associated specifications.



Mix and Match Markup: XHTML Modularization

Rick Jelliffe

May 2, 2001

The latest development from the W3C on HTML is the XHTML Modularization specification, allowing the tailoring of XHTML to suit different applications or devices. This article discusses the motivation and techniques behind modularization.



Parsing the Atom

Leigh Dodds

April 25, 2001

Not every piece of data the XML programmer has to deal with comes neatly packaged in angle brackets. XML developers have been examining how W3C XML Schema could help out.


XSLT UK 2001 Report

Jeni Tennison

April 25, 2001

Earlier this month Keble College, Oxford, England was the setting for the first ever conference dedicated to XSLT. XSLT expert Jeni Tennison reports on the proceedings.


XSLT Surgery

John E. Simpson

April 25, 2001

This month our question and answer columns covers XSLT issues, from using multiple languages to styling third party content.



Intuition and Binary XML

Leigh Dodds

April 18, 2001

Binary encodings for XML is a well-worn topicon XML-DEV, yet last week's revisiting of the debate introduced some interesting new evidence.






TREX Basics

J. David Eisenberg

April 11, 2001

TREX is an alternative schema language created by James Clark, designed to be simpler and more lightweight than W3C's XML Schema.


XML Hype Down But Not Out In New York

Edd Dumbill

April 11, 2001

Signs of reality were setting in this week at XML DevCon 2001 in New York City. As vendors and professionals were feeling the pinch of the economic conditions, the cloud of dust raised by recent overmarketing was starting to settle.


ebXML Ropes in SOAP

Alan Kotok

April 4, 2001

Our report on the latest happenings in ebXML covers their adoption of SOAP, and takes stock as ebXML nears the end of its project.


XP Meets XML

Leigh Dodds

April 4, 2001

The XML-Deviant has been watching advocates of the latest trend in software development, Extreme Programming, get to grips with XML. At least they have acronyms in common.



A Brief History of SOAP

Don Box

April 4, 2001

An insider's view of the last three years of SOAP's development, its relationship with W3C XML Schema, and an assessment of where XML protocols should go next.




Schemas by Example

Leigh Dodds

March 28, 2001

There has been a lot of activity in the area of XML schema languages recently: with several key W3C publications and another community proposed schema language.






Using XML::Twig

Kip Hampton

March 21, 2001

XML::Twig provides a fast, memory-efficient way to handle large XML documents, which is useful when the needs of your application make using the SAX interface overly complex.



TAXI to the Future

Tim Bray

March 14, 2001

Tim Bray presents TAXI, a Web application architecture that utilises the power of XML to deliver a responsive user environment.


Extensions to XSLT

Leigh Dodds

March 14, 2001

Members of the XSL mailing list have started a commnunity-based project to standardize extensions for XSLT.


Entities and XSLT

Bob DuCharme

March 14, 2001

Using XML entities can be tricky -- this article covers their usage with XSLT in both input and output documents.




Building the Semantic Web

Edd Dumbill

March 7, 2001

Tim Berners-Lee's vision of the Semantic Web is undoubtedly exciting, but its success will lie in the extent to which it solves real world problems.




Answering the Namespace Riddle

Leigh Dodds

February 28, 2001

Dodds introduces RDDL, the Resource Directory Description Language, the result of a recent project conducted by the XML developer community to make XML namespaces easier to use.


Time to Refactor XML?

Leigh Dodds

February 21, 2001

The growing interdependency between XML specifications is causing concern among XML developers -- is this just a case of sensible reuse, or are we creating a dangerously tangled web of standards?


XML on the Move

Edd Dumbill

February 21, 2001

A report from XML DevCon Europe, London. On the first day of the conference, Henry Thompson spoke on XML Schemas and the XML Infoset, and David Orchard gave an overview of the world of web services.



Functional Programming and XML

Bijan Parsia

February 14, 2001

Current XML programming practice is dominated heavily by object-oriented techniques, but are we missing out on new and innovative ways of handling XML? Find out in our whistle-stop tour of functional programming and XML.


XSLT Extensions Revisited

Leigh Dodds

February 14, 2001

The first Working Draft of XSLT 1.1, though attempting to address the portability of stylesheets that use extension functions, has failed to please everyone in the XSLT developer community.



The Politics of Schemas: Part 2

Kendall Grant Clark

February 7, 2001

Having established in the first half of this essay that schemas are essentially political, this second installment examines the relevance of this to the XML community, and avenues for further consideration.



Schemarama

Leigh Dodds

February 7, 2001

For the past two weeks XML-DEV has seen fascinating exchanges between three inventors of alternative XML schema proposals.






OASIS XSLT/XPath Conformance

January 24, 2001

Following their highly successful work in creating an XML conformance test suite, OASIS has begun a similar activity for XSLT. This report describes the work being undertaken by the XSLT/XPath Conformance Technical Committee.


What Is RDF

Tim Bray

January 24, 2001

An introduction to the W3C's Resource Description Format, a standard for exchanging metadata, and a key technology for the W3C's "Semantic Web".



XPointer and the Patent

Leigh Dodds

January 17, 2001

Does a Sun patent threaten the future of hypertext on the web, or are XML developers getting unnecessarily alarmed by the licensing terms on the XPointer spec? The XML-Deviant reports.


Using XSL Formatting Objects

J. David Eisenberg

January 17, 2001

The W3C's XSL Formatting Objects technology provides an XML language for specifying the layout of documents. In the first article of our XSL FO tutorial series we show you how to set up your pages.



Old Ghosts: XML Namespaces

Leigh Dodds

January 10, 2001

The XML Namespaces ghost returned to haunt the XML community this Christmas. However, developers on XML-DEV fought back with a new proposal to bring predictability to the use of URIs as namespace identifiers.





OASIS Technical Committee Work

Karl F. Best

January 3, 2001

The mission of OASIS is to promote and encourage the use of structured information standards such as XML and SGML. This report describes the work in which OASIS is currently engaged.


Axis Powers: Part Two

Bob DuCharme

January 3, 2001

Part one of this series introduced the role of XPath axes in XSLT. This article explains the remaining axes and shows how to handle namespaces in XPath.



Staying in Synch

Didier Martin

December 27, 2000

SyncML is a new standard aimed at keeping your data synchronized between devices both large and small. Didier Martin provides a whirlwind tour of this new technology.


Converging Protocols

Leigh Dodds

December 20, 2000

Jon Bosak's comments at XML 2000 about the respective roles of ebXML and SOAP have sparked discussion on convergence between ebXML's transport, routing and packaging layer and the W3C's XML Protocol Activity.


Axis Powers: Part One

Bob DuCharme

December 20, 2000

In this first installment of a two-part series, we examine the vital role of XPath in XSLT, and introduce the axes used in XPath expressions.


Getting Topical

Simon St. Laurent

December 20, 2000

At the recent XML 2000 conference the XML Topic Maps (XTM) specification made an impressive debut. Simon St. Laurent reviews the development and prospects of XTM.


Using W3C XML Schema - Part 2

Eric van der Vlist

December 13, 2000

The second half of our comprehensive introduction to the W3C's XML Schema Definition Language, including coverage of namespaces, object-oriented features and instance documents.


XML 2000 Coverage

December 13, 2000

Reports and reviews from the largest XML conference of the year.



Will XML replace HTML?

John E. Simpson

December 13, 2000

The relationship between XML and HTML is often confusing for the Web developer coming to XML for the first time. Our Q&A column explains all.





Developers' Day at XML 2000

Edd Dumbill

December 5, 2000

The XML Developers' Day at XML 2000, chaired by Jon Bosak, was composed of "late-breaking" developments in XML, and provided many valuable insights into developing XML systems.



What's in a Name?

Leigh Dodds

November 29, 2000

The XML-Deviant looks at best practices for identifying XML resources; then wonders why more developers aren't taking advantage of entity management systems.




Profiling and Parsers

Leigh Dodds

November 22, 2000

Can XML be meaningfully split up to facilitate partial implementation of the specification? XML developers debate the issues.


Validating XML with Schematron

Chimezie Ogbuji

November 22, 2000

Schematron is an XSLT-based language for validating XML documents. This article explains why schema languages are required and introduces the principles behind Schematron.


XMLDevCon2000 Showfloor highlights

Simon St. Laurent

November 18, 2000

Simon St. Laurent uncovers a few gems on the XMLDevCon 2000 trade floor and explains their relevance to developers. Discoveries include XML Spy 3.5, XML Authority 2.0, and <xml>Transport and <xsl>Composer.


Embracing Web Services

Edd Dumbill

November 14, 2000

Delivering a talk entitled "Web Services: Requirements, Challenges and Opportunities," Greg Hope laid down the future of web business as Microsoft sees it, and especially the role of XML technologies.



A Uniform Interface for Authoring

Edd Dumbill

November 13, 2000

In the first session of the XML DevCon Fall 2000 conference, Greg Stein delivered an introduction to WebDAV, Web Distributed Authoring and Versioning protocol.


Simple XML Validation with Perl

Kip Hampton

November 8, 2000

A combination of Perl and XPath can provide a quick, lightweight solution for validating documents. Find out how in the first installment of our new monthly Perl and XML column.


What's So Great About XML?

Didier Martin

November 8, 2000

Why bother using XML in a web publishing system? Didier Martin discusses the benefits of using XML as an intermediate stage in content delivery.


Primed for the Semantic Web

Leigh Dodds

November 8, 2000

Last week's article on the Semantic Web has sparked discussion among the RDF developer community, who are considering the nature of the Semantic Web and how it might be implemented.


What's So Great About XML?

Didier Martin

November 7, 2000

Why bother using XML in a web publishing system? Didier Martin discusses the benefits of using XML as an intermediate stage in content delivery.



XML Protocol Technology Reference

Edd Dumbill

November 1, 2000

A quick reference to the most important technologies and initiatives in the XML protocols area, with links to specifications, white papers, and developer communities.


The Semantic Web: A Primer

Edd Dumbill

November 1, 2000

The question "What is the Semantic Web?" is being asked with increasing frequency. While mainstream media is content with a high level view, XML developers want to know more, and discover the substance behind the vision.


Combining Stylesheets with Include and Import

Bob DuCharme

November 1, 2000

XSLT provides two means of combining multiple stylesheets into one, include and import. This article explores the use of these instructions and shows how they can be used to customize the DocBook XSLT stylesheets.



An Introduction to Dublin Core

Stuart Weibel and Eric Miller

October 25, 2000

You may have heard of the Dublin Core metadata element set before, but who is behind it, and what do they want to achieve? The leaders of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative explain what they do and where they're headed.


Dublin Core in the Wild

Dale Dougherty

October 25, 2000

The recent Dublin Core Metadata Initiative meeting provided an opportunity for O'Reilly Network to discover more about Dublin Core and to explore its relationship with RSS.


Of Standards and Standard Makers

Leigh Dodds

October 25, 2000

The debate over who makes XML standards and how they are made rumbles on. This week the XML-Deviant examines the W3C and asks whether its Semantic Web initiative informs or hinders comprehension of their mission.


Opening the E-Book

Didier Martin

October 18, 2000

Use XML and save the planet! Didier Martin opens up the e-book specification and finds out that it's easy to save paper by creating electronic books.


The Rush to Standardize

Leigh Dodds

October 18, 2000

Keeping track of the number of consortia in the XML space is rapidly requiring the effort needed to track the burgeoning number of specifications. Is all this "standardization" too premature? XML-Deviant covers the recent debate.



Learning to RELAX

J. David Eisenberg

October 16, 2000

The RELAX schema language is a simpler alternative to W3C XML Schemas. This easy-to-read tutorial shows you just how easy it can be to RELAX.


XML Reduced

Leigh Dodds

October 11, 2000

Is the incessant multiplication of XML standards leading to confusion, and what is the real minimum a developer needs to know about XML in order to do useful work?


What's Wrong with Perl and XML?

Michel Rodriguez

October 11, 2000

Perl, the choice of many for programming on the Web, lags behind Java and C++ in the XML popularity contest. Michel Rodriguez shares his opinions on what's wrong, and what could be done about it.


RIL: A Taste of Knowledge

Uche Ogbuji

October 11, 2000

An innovative part of 4RDF is the RDF Inference Language (RIL), which provides a way of viewing an RDF model as an Expert System knowledge base.


4RDF: A Library for Web Metadata

Uche Ogbuji

October 11, 2000

One of the jewels in the crown of Python's XML support is the 4Suite collection of libraries, the most recent addition to which is 4RDF, a library for the parsing, querying, and storage of RDF.


Finding Relatives

Bob DuCharme

October 4, 2000

XML nodes have many friends and relations. In XSLT, the key to finding them is XPath. In this article Bob DuCharme shows you how.


XML Linking Technologies

Eric van der Vlist

October 4, 2000

XML's flexibility provides many ways of approaching the problem of creating links between nodes. Using practical examples, this article surveys linking in XML from containment through to RDF and XLink.



The Beginning of the Endgame

Rick Jelliffe

September 27, 2000

The W3C's XML Schemas technology, vital to the use of XML in e-business, is finally nearing completion. This article catalogs the most significant changes from the recent draft specs,and highlights areas where priority feedback is required from implementors and users.


From DTDs to Documents

John E. Simpson

September 27, 2000

This month our question and answer column covers guidelines for good DTD design and the thorny problem of generating Microsoft Word or Adobe Acrobat documents from XML.


Schemas in the Wild

Leigh Dodds

September 27, 2000

As adoption of W3C XML Schema technology increases, the need for documenting best practices is becoming more important, not least where namespaces are concerned. The XML-Deviant investigates.


Getting into i-Mode

Didier Martin

September 20, 2000

Following on with his investigations into XML and wireless devices, Didier Martin explains i-Mode, the technology fueling the Japanese explosion in wireless Web access, and contrasts it with WAP.


Super Model

Leigh Dodds

September 20, 2000

Growing interest in RDF is seeing renewed work to increase understanding of the specification, including a move to separate RDF's simple data model from its oft-maligned syntax.


What Is XLink

Fabio Arciniegas A.

September 18, 2000

XLink is an XML specification for describing links between resources in XML. Our introduction shows you how to get to grips with using XLinks in your own documents.


XLink Reference

Fabio Arciniegas A.

September 18, 2000

Examining the details of the XLink specification, this reference uses examples to show the creation of extended and simple links between XML documents, including resources for XLink software and further reading.



Going to Extremes

Liora Alschuler

September 13, 2000

Geeks in tweed and metadata maniacs, shapers of the future of structured information representation. The recent Extreme Markup Languages conference had it all. Liora Alschuler was there and reports back on the Topic Maps and RDF head-to-head.



Gentrifying the Web

Leigh Dodds

September 13, 2000

XHTML promises to civilize the unruly mass of HTML on the Web. But is anybody listening? Leigh Dodds examines whether web developers know or care about XHTML.


Hello, Voice World

Didier Martin

September 6, 2000

Ever written a "Hello World" program that talks back? Didier Martin has, and now he shares his experiences in order to show us around VoiceXML, a markup language for voice interactions.


Schema Round-up

Leigh Dodds

September 6, 2000

An introduction to tools for writing and documenting schemas, and a look at a new alternative to XML Schemas called RELAX.


Distributed XML

Edd Dumbill

September 6, 2000

In this speech to the XML World 2000 conference in Boston, XML.com Editor Edd Dumbill gives an overview of the integrated future of XML and the Web, and the role that SOAP and RDF will play in that vision.


MSXML Conformance Update

Chris Lovett

August 30, 2000

In the past, XML.com has tested Microsoft's MSXML parser for XML conformance with less than glorious results. In this article, Chris Lovett presents the significant improvements made by Microsoft in MSXML in recent months.


Instant RDF?

Leigh Dodds

August 30, 2000

RDF has some devoted followers, but is yet to hit the XML mainstream. Many believe this is because of its complicated syntax. XML-Deviant investigates the quest for "instant RDF".


HTML and XSLT

Bob DuCharme

August 30, 2000

While HTML isn't an XML application itself, it can be both generated and transformed using XSLT. Bob DuCharme show us how.






Choosing an XML Parser

John E. Simpson

August 22, 2000

Validating or non-validating? Java-based, Perl, or C? This month we tackle the tricky issue of which parser to use for your XML applications.


Write Once, Publish Everywhere

Didier Martin

August 16, 2000

Didier Martin leads us through building a portal accessible by HTML, WML, and VoiceXML. This week's article introduces the project and covers the login process.


ebXML: Assembling the Rubik's Cube

Alan Kotok

August 16, 2000

The fourth meeting of the Electronic Business XML working group sees the intiative make good progress. But will the group be able to meet its self-imposed 18-month deadline?


What Is XSLT

G. Ken Holman

August 16, 2000

Part One of XML.com's series on the W3C's Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation technology, written by XSLT instructor G. Ken Holman.


What is XSLT? (I)

G. Ken Holman

August 16, 2000

In the first part of his comprehensive introduction to XSLT and XPath, G. Ken Holman examines the context of the two technologies within the W3C family of XML Recommendations.


What Is XSLT, Part 2

G. Ken Holman

August 16, 2000

Introducing the concepts of styling structured information, the W3C XSL language, XSL transformations (XSLT), the use of XML Namespaces, and the mechanism for associating stylesheets with documents.





A Few Bumps

Edd Dumbill

August 9, 2000

Some problems are due to success, some are growing pains, and some just refuse to go away. XML has all of these, chronicled as ever by the XML-Deviant.


Putting RDF to Work

Edd Dumbill

August 9, 2000

Tool and API support for the Resource Description Framework is slowly coming of age. Edd Dumbill takes a look at RDFDB, one of the most exciting new RDF toolkits.


Investigating the Infoset

Leigh Dodds

August 2, 2000

XML's syntax was invented before its data model, but the XML Infoset specification is seeking to plug the gap and formalize the data model. The XML-Deviant examines what the Infoset is, and what people think of it so far.



A Question of Timing

Didier Martin

August 2, 2000

The SMIL family of XML applications enables synchronized display of multimedia elements on the Web. Didier Martin explores SMIL, and the new synchronization features in Microsoft's IE5.5.


Even More Extensible

Alan Kotok

August 2, 2000

Since our first survey of XML business vocabularies in February this year, the number of entries in our tables has more than doubled, highlighting the large push forward in vertical and cross-industry standardization activity.


XML Questions Answered

John E. Simpson

July 26, 2000

In the first of our new monthly XML Q&A columns we tackle the problem of converting HTML to XML, ask "What is markup?", and discover whether XML has any weaknesses.


Style-free XSLT Style Sheets

Eric van der Vlist

July 26, 2000

Building web sites with XSLT sometimes raises architectural issues. This article presents a pattern for maintaining a clear separation between style, logic, and content in XSLT-produced websites.


Last Call Problems

Leigh Dodds

July 26, 2000

This week the XML Deviant dips into the SVG developer lists to find developers frustrated with the specification, which is still at Last Call status.


Syndicating XML

Edd Dumbill

July 21, 2000

This special issue of XML.com focuses on XML's application in syndication, including XML news formats, ICE, and syndicating web site headlines with RSS.


Codename Spinnaker

Leigh Dodds

July 19, 2000

Despite starting off life in a rather turbulent fashion, the "Xerces Refactoring Intiative" promises to improve both the software and the internal structure of the Apache XML Project.


A Campfire Story

Didier Martin

July 19, 2000

Sleeping under the stars, Didier Martin writes of today's HTTP and XML infrastructure, and the changes coming to wireless user interfaces.


XML in News Syndication

Edd Dumbill

July 17, 2000

XML has found many applications in the news industry for overcoming the challenges posed by the Web. This article examines the technologies, and looks at the future of news syndication with XML.


eSyndication: Heterogeneity Rules!

Mani Manickam

July 17, 2000

Syndication is a growing force in Internet business, and XML is right at the heart of this new technology. This article looks at syndication applications and the requirements for a scalable syndication solution.


RSS: Lightweight Web Syndication

Rael Dornfest

July 17, 2000

RSS, a simple XML application to describe web site headlines, has had such enormous success that it has been pulled in many directions. Rael Dornfest documents the history of RSS, and the debate over its future.


Visual Basic Special Edition

July 12, 2000

This special edition of XML.com is dedicated to exploring how XML can be used with Visual Basic, one of the most widespread programming environments. Find out more about using VB with the DOM, XSLT and SOAP.


Schemas Revisited

Leigh Dodds

July 12, 2000

The XML-DEV mailing list has seen a renewed vigor in discussion recently, with the spotlight being turned on the troubled issue of XML Schemas.



XML and Visual Basic

Kurt Cagle

July 12, 2000

What happens when one of the most popular programming languages in the world meets XML? This article explains how to use XML with Visual Basic, and the effect XML is having on VB application design.




More To WAP Than Meets The Eye

Didier Martin

July 5, 2000

HDML is still a widespread language for marking up mobile phone content. Didier Martin introduces us to the differences between HDML and WML, and shows how HDML can be created from XML.


XPathScript: An Alternative To XSLT

Matt Sergeant

July 5, 2000

XPathScript brings the power of XPath into a familiar ASP-like web development environment, using mod_perl and Apache. In this article, XPathScript's author explains its main features and advantages.


RSS Modularization

Leigh Dodds

July 5, 2000

The popularity of RSS, the lightweight XML headline syndication format, is provoking moves to extend and advance its feature set. XML-Deviant reports on proposals and their connection with RDF and Namespaces.


XML DevCon 2000 Reports

July 5, 2000

XML DevCon 2000 took place in June 2000 in New York. XML.com reported live from the show, covering the latest vendor and product news.


Last Word on Last Call

Liora Alschuler

July 5, 2000

The W3C's XML Schemas specification has just exited its Last Call phase, drawing many comments in the process. Everyone agrees on the urgency of this work, yet opinion is widely divided over the current draft. Liora Alschuler investigates.






Vendor Update: IBM and Sun

Edd Dumbill

June 26, 2000

Vendors IBM and Sun are both committed to XML, and have donated substantial code to the XML community through Apache. We talked to both organizations about their plans for XML product support, and what they have lined up for the rest of this year.



XSL and CSS: One Year Later

Leigh Dodds

June 21, 2000

Are the W3C's XSL formatting objects up to the job, and what is that job anyway? XML-Deviant tracks the resurgent discussion about XSL.


New XSLT Technologies Debut

Leigh Dodds

June 21, 2000

As XSLT adoption grows, developers from Sun and Oracle have been pushing the boundaries of the technology with "translets" and an XSLT virtual machine.


XML Europe 2000 Reports

Edd Dumbill

June 21, 2000

Held from 12th-16th June in Paris, France, the XML Europe 2000 conference demonstrated the continuing increase in innovation and application of XML. We reported daily from the show all week.


XML: A Disruptive Technology

Simon St. Laurent

June 21, 2000

XML is placing increasingly heavy loads on the existing technical infrastructure of the Internet. This article charts some of the pressure points, and speculates on the benefits of an XML-specific foundation to the Internet.


The State of XML

Edd Dumbill

June 16, 2000

In his closing keynote speech at XML Europe 2000, Edd Dumbill surveyed the state of XML, covering its past, its present, and its future in distributing data and applications around the Internet.


Topic Maps

Liora Alschuler

June 16, 2000

Topic maps have made a big splash at XML Europe this year, with fourteen presentations and two tutorials. Find out what they are, who's behind them, and why they matter.


The State of XML - Part 2

Edd Dumbill

June 16, 2000

In his closing keynote speech at XML Europe 2000, Edd Dumbill surveyed the state of XML, covering its past, its present, and its future in distributing data and applications around the Internet.



Standards and the Vendor

Leigh Dodds

June 15, 2000

This week, XML-Deviant comes from the XML Europe vendor panel discussion. Representatives from IBM, Sun and Microsoft fielded questions on their support for XML standards.


Getting Personal With CPExchange

Edd Dumbill

June 14, 2000

On Wednesday afternoon at XML Europe 2000, Brad Husick of Vignette introduced the work being done by the CPExchange group on XML descriptions for customer profiles.


Quilt Has Querying Covered

Edd Dumbill

June 13, 2000

Jonathan Robie of Software AG kicked off the XML Europe session on XML Query languages Tuesday afternoon with a description of the Quilt language.



XML Europe 2000

June 12, 2000

XML Europe 2000 starts today (Monday) in Paris, France. Hosted by the GCA, the show runs all week, comprising tutorials, special interest tracks, plenary sessions, panels, and an exposition.


XMLterm: A Mozilla-based Semantic User Interface

R. Saravanan

June 7, 2000

Mozilla's support for rendering XML and CSS offers the capability for creating new types of user interfaces, combining aspects of the command line, GUI, and web interfaces. In this article, the author of XMLterm explains his project to integrate the Unix shell and Mozilla.



The Future of XT

Leigh Dodds

June 7, 2000

James Clark, whose software has significantly influenced the popularity of both XML and XSLT, has said he sees no future for his own XSLT processor, XT. XML-Deviant looks at the community's reaction, and their determination to carry on with XT.


Second Coming

Leigh Dodds

May 31, 2000

This week XML-Deviant reports on the progress with XML Schemas, and an upcoming consolidation of the XML 1.0 errata into a second edition of the specification.





ebXML Gathers Pace

Alan Kotok

May 24, 2000

A recent meeting of the ebXML initiative was able to demonstrate proof-of-concept technology of some of its early specifications. A third of the way through its allotted 18-month timetable, ebXML has made definite progress, but still has a long way to go.


News from the Trenches

Leigh Dodds

May 24, 2000

Over four hundred mail messages in one week makes relative URI references in XML Namespaces a hot topic. The discussions remain, however, fearsomely impenetrable. XML-Deviant ventures into the battlezone to summarize the debate.


Shaken, But Not That Stirred

Edd Dumbill

May 24, 2000

Although the XML Protocols Shakedown Panel at WWW9 in Amsterdam last week clarified the positions of the various participants, the session did not result in any clear consensus.



How AxKit Works

Matt Sergeant

May 24, 2000

AxKit is a new Apache- and Perl-based solution for publishing web pages using XML and style sheets. In this article AxKit's creator, Matt Sergeant, describes the architecture and the future direction of the project.


Namespace Trouble

Leigh Dodds

May 17, 2000

This week XML Deviant reports on a Namespace-related debate holding up XML work at the W3C, and the final release of SAX2/Java.


XML and Portals

Edd Dumbill

May 15, 2000

This month's XML.com Special Edition focuses on the role of XML in portals. XML plays a natural part in the process of aggregation and transformation of data that is core to the operation of a portal.


XML at Jetspeed

Edd Dumbill

May 15, 2000

Jetspeed is a new open source project to create a Java and XML-based enterprise information portal. We review the progress so far and examine the possibilities for the project's future.



Creating an HTML/WML Portal

Didier Martin

May 15, 2000

With the explosion in alternative browsing devices, portals need to present more than one representation of their content. Didier Martin demonstrates how to build your own XML-driven portal.


XML Protocols

Edd Dumbill

May 10, 2000

With the recent release of SOAP 1.1, XML protocols is a "hot" topic. Looking forward to the "XML Protocols Shakedown" at the WWW9 conference next week, we examine recent developments, and the vital importance of XML interoperability.


XML Conformance Update

David Brownell

May 10, 2000

Since our last round of conformance tests, significant changes have happened in the XML parser world. Our latest XML conformance tests yield good results from open source parsers, but disappointing ones from Microsoft and Oracle.


Setting the Standard

Liora Alschuler

May 10, 2000

We all know standards are important for XML, but what about the people who make them? Liora Alschuler investigates the options for processes, structure, and financial support in standards-setting organizations.


JDOM and TRaX

Leigh Dodds

May 3, 2000

Two innovative technologies have recently been announced to the XML developer community: JDOM, a Java-specific DOM; and TRaX, an API for XML transformations.


Generic Data Models and Schemas

Jeff Lowery

May 3, 2000

In a response to an article on XML.com ("Keep it Simple"), reader Jeff Lowery writes to share how he is using the DOM in his applications, and his wishes for XML Schema integration in programming languages.




DSSSL for XML: Why not?

Didier Martin

May 2, 2000

Although a forerunner to CSS and XSLT, DSSSL can still be used today with XML to create RTF, HTML, and other formats. Didier Martin show us how.


RAX: An XML Database API

Sean McGrath

April 26, 2000

Neither SAX nor DOM are well-suited to processing database-generated XML. RAX is a record-oriented API to XML data that reduces the overhead and complexity of handling XML generated from databases.


Character Encodings in XML and Perl

Michel Rodriguez

April 26, 2000

This article examines how to handle character encodings with XML and Perl: which encodings are handled natively, converting to and from Unicode, and what to do when your tools don't support Unicode.


Problems and Prospects

Leigh Dodds

April 26, 2000

The last few weeks have been troublesome ones for the XML-DEV mailing list's new hosts, OASIS. On the plus side, the resultant introspection has raised new ideas regarding the future of the XML-DEV community.






Speaking Your Language

Leigh Dodds

April 19, 2000

This week's column addresses the issue of internationalization in XML DTDs and schemas, as well as reporting on the latest initiative of the SML-DEV group to produce a simplified XML.


Groves Explained

Fabio Arciniegas A.

April 19, 2000

Every so often somebody on an XML mailing list will tell you that groves are the answer to all your problems. But what exactly are they? Fabio Arciniegas A. presents an introduction to groves and their use.


Architectures for Styling

Didier Martin

April 19, 2000

How should you style your XML? Client-side or server-side? CSS or XSLT? Didier Martin presents an exploration of architectures for styling your XML.



Filling in the Gaps

Leigh Dodds

April 12, 2000

The XML-DEV mailing list has long been a place for thorough examination of the XML specification, and suggestions for areas where new activity is required. Recent discussion has centered around the problems of describing parser capabilities and external resources required by a document.



XML, Standards and You

Edd Dumbill

April 10, 2000

XML has been nurtured by standards organizations from its very beginning. Because of this, XML's current use and future development is inextricably tied with the world of standards and standard-makers. This special edition of XML.com highlights the processes involved in creating XML standards.


W3C and the Web Community

Ian Jacobs

April 10, 2000

The World Wide Web Consortium ushered XML into the world, and is at the center of the development of core XML technologies. Ian Jacobs explains how ideas get to become W3C Recommendations, and how you can contribute to the process.




A Family Affair

Didier Martin

April 5, 2000

XHTML, SVG, XSL, WML are all XML vocabularies for determining the final appearance of information on a display device. Didier Martin surveys this family of rendering languages, and considers their interaction with XSLT and the DOM.


Storing and Querying

Leigh Dodds

April 5, 2000

Real-world use of XML is leading to repeated requests for a consistent way to store and query XML documents. While a query language from the W3C seems a long way off, DOM level 3 may be able to help.


Processing XML with Perl

Michel Rodriguez

April 5, 2000

Perl has an unparalleled wealth of XML support, but where do you start? Can you tell a twig from a tree? Can you see the DOM for the groves? Read on to find out which Perl module to use for your XML processing.


Processing XML with Perl - Part 2

Michel Rodriguez

April 5, 2000

Perl has an unparalleled wealth of XML support, but where do you start? Can you tell a twig from a tree? Can you see the DOM for the groves? Read on to find out which Perl module to use for your XML processing.


Unifying XSLT Extensions

Leigh Dodds

March 29, 2000

XSLT processors each have a different way of implementing extension functions. Developers in the XML community have stumbled upon this problem, and want to do something about it. Leigh Dodds analyzes the arguments and suggests a way forward.


Keep it Simple...

Edd Dumbill

March 29, 2000

The popularity of Sean McGrath's PYX notation has highlighted the value of simple syntax-based XML processing. Why stack layer upon layer of processing when you don't need it?





Moving Home: Portable Site Information

Lynn C. Rees

March 22, 2000

Web development frameworks are many and varied, but why should you have to rebuild your site structure for each one? XML comes to the rescue, in the form of the Portable Site Information project.


Pyxie Perfect

Edd Dumbill

March 22, 2000

Last week's article about Pyxie fired the imagination of XML.com's readers. Now Pyxie has Java and Perl implementations too!


Painting by Numbers with SVG

Leigh Dodds

March 15, 2000

Following the generally warm welcome received by SVG of late, the denizens of the XML-DEV list have taken their microscope to the specification, resulting in some enlightening dialogue.


Pyxie

Sean McGrath

March 15, 2000

Ingeniously combining concepts from SGML with the ethos of simplicity, Pyxie presents a powerful alternative to existing methods for processing XML.


Fooling with XUL

Edd Dumbill

March 15, 2000

With the mounting excitement about Mozilla, we decided to check out the promise of the XML, DOM, and CSS in combination with the XUL user interface language.



XTech 2000 Conference Reports

Edd Dumbill

March 8, 2000

XML.com reports from XTech 2000, the XML developer's conference held from February 26 - March 2 in San Jose, California. News from the tutorials, conference sessions and keynotes.


A Sneak Preview of XMetaL 2.0

Liora Alschuler

March 8, 2000

Last week at XTech 2000, SoftQuad demonstrated a preview of the next release of their XMetaL XML editor. Liora Alschuler reports on what to expect in XMetaL 2.0.


Being Resourceful

Leigh Dodds

March 8, 2000

Forget about making XML simpler, what about RDF? While some may love this specification, many others find it impenetrable. XML-Deviant probes the grumblings of XML-DEV about this controversial technology.



Namespace Myths Exploded

Ronald Bourret

March 8, 2000

Published over a year ago, the "Namespaces in XML" recommendation may only be a small specification, but it's caused more than its fair share of confusion. Find out what the right-thinking developer should do about XML namespaces.


When XML Gets Ugly

Simon St. Laurent

March 2, 2000

What are the security consequences for a Web full of XML? Co-chair David Megginson used his keynote speech at XTech 2000 to focus on this issue.


Relax, and Take it Easy

Simon St. Laurent

March 2, 2000

Delegates to XTech 2000 on Wednesday were shown two technologies aimed at making their lives easier: EasySAX, a Python XML processor, and RELAX, a simplified schema language.



Conference Sketch

Edd Dumbill

March 1, 2000

This week, XML-Deviant is in San Jose for the XTech 2000 conference. Seeing XML-DEV in the flesh is a rare experience: read on for highlights of the XML Schema Town Hall meeting.





XTech 2000 - Real World XML

Edd Dumbill

February 25, 2000

What will be happening this coming week at XTech 2000? Our introduction to the XML developers' conference previews the tutorials, technical sessions, and other events.


Spotlight on Schemas

Leigh Dodds

February 23, 2000

As the W3C XML Schema work nears the "Candidate Recommendation" phase, criticism from XML developers abounds. Leigh Dodds summarizes the recent debates.


Extensible and More

Alan Kotok

February 23, 2000

Two years after the XML 1.0 Recommendation, we see XML being applied in many areas—especially e-business. Alan Kotok takes a snapshot of XML e-business activity.


Advanced XML Applications in Zope

Amos Latteier

February 23, 2000

Concluding his three-part tutorial on XML and Zope, Amos Latteier discusses the wider implications of creating XML applications with Zope, demonstrating with the creation of an RSS channel class.




Component-Based Page Layouts

Didier Martin

February 16, 2000

Combining XHTML, XSLT and XLink can be a powerful way to construct web page layouts. Adding a splash of SVG for good measure, Didier Martin challenges us to experiment.


OASIS and the Future of SAX

Leigh Dodds

February 16, 2000

Last week on the XML-DEV list, Jon Bosak suggested that the OASIS consortium should take on further development of the SAX API. Also, don't miss "Groves explained in 50 Words."


Birth of a Community

Leigh Dodds

February 9, 2000

As the XML-DEV mailing list transfers to OASIS, XML-Deviant talks to Peter Murray-Rust, the founder of the list.


Inside SOAP

Don Box

February 9, 2000

A technical introduction to SOAP, an XML-over-HTTP remote procedure protocol. SOAP was recently submitted to the IETF as an Internet Draft.



An XML Apprenticeship

Leigh Dodds

February 2, 2000

This week, XML-Deviant gets deeper into groves, takes another look at the controversy over W3C processes, and finds real progress with SAX2.



A Class Act

Didier Martin

February 2, 2000

In the first of our new "Style Matters" columns, Didier Martin shows how to preserve semantic information when using XSLT to generate HTML from XML.


Bad Language

Edd Dumbill

January 26, 2000

This week: discussions on the clarity of language in W3C specs, the neglect of HyTime by XML standards developers, and the possibility of XML-DEV as a replacement for scholarly journals.




Schema Repositories: What's at Stake? Part II

Liora Alschuler

January 26, 2000

Key to the success of repositories are a common framework for business messages and interoperable schemas. How are XML.org and BizTalk affected by these, and what is prompting companies to invest large sums of money in the repository projects?


High Drama

Edd Dumbill

January 19, 2000

This last week has the seen the periodic resurrection of the "How The W3C Should Be Run" debate. XML-Deviant had a front row seat.



Making Progress

Edd Dumbill

January 12, 2000

The holiday behind, XML developers are back to work. This week has seen plenty of activity on the SAX2 front, as well as a progress update from the SML initiative.






Wishful Thinking

Edd Dumbill

January 5, 2000

XML-Deviant is a new weekly column on XML.com, providing reports from the XML developer mailing lists. This week's happenings include wishful thinking from Peter Murray-Rust, and a DTD for sharing recipes.


Eight Greats of XML.com 1999

Edd Dumbill

December 29, 1999

It has been an eventful year on XML.com. From January's XML Namespaces recommendation through to December's XML'99 show, we've selected some of the most interesting, controversial, and useful articles published on XML.com during the last year.


XML.com's Year in Review

Edd Dumbill

December 22, 1999

During this year we have seen the establishment of essential core technologies and the formation of several wide-reaching XML initiatives in the business world. We review what has been achieved in 1999, and what must come next in 2000.



Reports from XML'99

Edd Dumbill

December 15, 1999

Last week XML.com provided coverage of the GCA's XML'99 conference in Philadelphia. Over 2,200 delegates gathered to attend tutorials, see the products on show in the expo and listen to the presentations.


Goldilocks and SML

Rick Jelliffe

December 15, 1999

"Simplicity is as excellent as motherhood", says Rick Jelliffe. He isn't as sure, however, about the initiative to produce a Simplified Markup Language (SML).



The Key Role of Open Source in XML

Edd Dumbill

December 9, 1999

Delivering the closing keynote of XML'99, Peter Murray-Rust told how XML had "changed his life" and stressed the importance of open source software to the development of XML.


XML'99 Expo Update

Simon St. Laurent

December 8, 1999

The expo at XML'99 saw many vendors presenting their new XML technologies. Simon St. Laurent takes a look at some of the most interesting and innovative products on show.



XML Processing with Python

Sean McGrath

December 6, 1999

XML'99 got underway Sunday with tutorials from XML experts. Today we bring you a taste of those tutorials from Sean McGrath, who is teaching a course on XML with Python. Sean presents an overview of the popular language, and some sample XML processing programs.


Schemas Top Delegate Wishlist at XML'99

Edd Dumbill

December 6, 1999

The W3C's Dan Connolly fielded questions from the floor in Monday morning's Standards Update session at XML'99. The progress of the XML Schema work was important to many attendees from the XML community


XML Standards Update

Simon St. Laurent

December 6, 1999

Simon St. Laurent analyzes the progress made by various industry consortia as presented to the XML'99 conference Monday morning.


XML'99 Coverage on XML.com

Edd Dumbill

December 3, 1999

XML.com is proud to be a co-host of XML'99, running from December 5-9 in Philadelphia. We'll be bringing you daily coverage from the show, highlighting interesting technologies and products.


Simplified Markup Language: Your Responses

Edd Dumbill

December 1, 1999

Last week we invited you to respond to Robert La Quey's article on a Simplified Markup Language. This article presents some of your feedback, along with other excerpts from the continuing SML debate.


Describing your Data: DTDs and XML Schemas

Simon St. Laurent

December 1, 1999

Are you confused about which XML schema syntax to use? Concerned that your XML applications remain interoperable with future XML schema standards? Simon St. Laurent guides us through the maze of XML schema languages, focusing on DTDs and XML Schemas.


Which Mailing List Should You Join?

Edd Dumbill

December 1, 1999

Some of the best and most up to date help on programming with XML can be found in mailing lists and newsgroups. Our guide can help you to choose the right forum in which to get involved.






SML: Simplifying XML

Robert E. La Quey

November 24, 1999

Sounding rather like an XML civil war, with the Simpletons versus the DocHeads, an initiative to define a simplified form of XML has recently been launched among XML developers. Robert La Quey explains the thinking behind a Simplified Markup Language.


Microsoft XML Parser Conformance

David Brownell

November 17, 1999

David Brownell tests the Microsoft XML parser, as bundled with Internet Explorer 5, for XML 1.0 conformance. He finds the parser to perform well generally, but uncovers a flaw with validation and DTDs.





XML Programming with C++

Fabio Arciniegas A.

November 17, 1999

SAX or DOM? Fabio Arciniegas A. examines various approaches to using XML in C++ applications, demonstrating when to use each approach, with plenty of examples to illustrate his points.






Less Is More In E-Business: The XML/edi Group

David Webber and Alan Kotok

November 10, 1999

The XML/edi Group's "XML for E-Business Initiative" seeks to deliver on the promise of XML for the many businesses currently unable to use established electronic business mechanisms. In this article, the authors explain the initiative and argue strongly for simplicity in XML specifications.



Apache XML Project Launches

Edd Dumbill

November 10, 1999

This Tuesday saw the launch of the Apache XML Project, an effort to provide an open source, commercial-quality platform for XML. The project has been bootstrapped by the contribution of tools from the open source community, and commercial vendors including IBM and Sun.


The W3C, P3P and the Intermind Patent

Lisa Rein

November 3, 1999

What danger do claims of patent infringement hold for implementors of the W3C's Platform for Privacy Preferences framework? Lisa Rein reviews the recent analysis issued by the W3C.





Examining CommerceNet's eCo Framework

Edd Dumbill

October 27, 1999

The eCo Framework Project from CommerceNet will provide a fundamental level of integration and interoperability among e-commerce applications that are written for different vertical markets. Edd Dumbill analyzes the project's two key documents: the eCo Semantic Recommendations and the eCo Framework Specification.



The Making of the DocBook DTD

Dale Dougherty

October 20, 1999

The DocBook DTD grew out of the Davenport Group, and many of the people who contributed to this DTD for computer documentation have gone on to take leading roles in XML development.






XML Inter-Application Protocols

Edd Dumbill

October 13, 1999

Last week, XML.com reported on a talk by Tim O'Reilly, in which he discussed the next-generation of web-centric applications. This week, Edd Dumbill presents a case why XML is already in a position to form the links between these services.


Where the Web Leads Us

Tim O'Reilly

October 6, 1999

In a talk from Linux World in Tokyo, Tim O'Reilly offers a broad perspective on the confluence of Open Source software and open standards, looking at past and future developments.



XHTML: Three Namespaces or One?

Lisa Rein

October 6, 1999

It sounds like a religious debate from the days of the Byzantine empire. Whether XHTML should have three namespaces or one has been a question that's consuming the top minds in the XML community for the last month.


Tracing XML-based Bank Transactions

Alan Kotok

September 29, 1999

Does XML make money laundering easier? Alan Kotok looks into how the Web's new banking and investment services, many based on XML vocabularies, might help to catch the bad guys.



Arbortext Adept 8 Editor Review

William Brogden and Ed Tittel

September 22, 1999

Our reviewers pick over Arbortext's XML editor and find it an easy-to-use, and effective tool for beginners or power users. Read the review then take a "slide show" tour of the Adept 8 interface.











Simon Phipps: IBM's Chief Java and XML Evangelist

Dale Dougherty

September 8, 1999

Phipps describes a component model for open, networked computing systems using XML and Java that eliminates the kind of platform-centric dependencies that makes it difficult for partners to do business. He believes that such business relationships will be built around data analysis and transformations, enabled by XML and XSL.


Using XML for Object Persistence

Ralf Westphal

September 8, 1999

In this tutorial on object persistence and XML, Ralf Westphal explains object persistence and details some of the issues involved in maintaining an object's data, hierarchy, and structure. He then shows how to create your own XML data format for serializing objects.




Using Expat

Clark Cooper

September 1, 1999

Clark Cooper offers a detailed explanation of Expat, the C language library for XML parsing, and provides a directory of Expat functions.


Overview of Expat

Clark Cooper

September 1, 1999

In the first part of our look at Expat, Clark Cooper shows the basics of working with the library, including communication between handlers, character encoding, and namespace processing.


Expat Function Reference

Clark Cooper

September 1, 1999

In part two of our look at Expat, Clark Cooper offers a directory of Expat functions, including code and explanations on each.


Object Design's eXcelon 1.1

Jon Udell

August 25, 1999

Jon Udell takes a look at eXcelon, Object Design's XML data servers, and explains its user interface and general approach to XML.



Building Applications with eXcelon

Jon Udell

August 25, 1999

In part two of his review of Object Design's eXcelon, Jon Udell shows how to build server extensions and client applications, and how to design XML structures using the tool.


CBL: Ecommerce Componentry

Dale Dougherty

August 18, 1999

In this audio interview, Bob Glushko of Commerce One talks about the Common Business Library (CBL) as a set of building blocks for XML document types and schemas used in ecommerce.



Backends Sharing Data

Edd Dumbill

August 11, 1999

What if you could script remote procedure calls between web sites as easily as you can between programs? Edd Dumbill shows how it can be done in PHP.



EDI, Take It and Leave It

Alan Kotok

August 4, 1999

EDI's precision, responsiveness, and ability to separate data from documents are to be admired. Its twin international systems and ever-changing standards are not.



XML to the Rescue?

Alan Kotok

August 4, 1999

XML offers not only a fresh start for universal standards, but it's also more affordable for small companies than custom EDI systems.


EDI, Warts and All

Alan Kotok

August 4, 1999

EDI was developed to replace the growing piles of hard copy documents in shipping and transportation companies. But as it grew, it developed some cumbersome tendencies and two distinct international standards that require translation.



Busy August for XML Developers

Dale Dougherty

July 28, 1999

This August in Montreal, the XML community will be gathering to participate in the OASIS Summer Workshop, the W3C Schema Working Group, the MetaStructures Conference and the XML Developers Conference. Ten days of face-to-face meetings.








Understanding XML Schemas

Norman Walsh

July 1, 1999

Schemas are intended to be an improvement on DTDs, which are used to validate XML documents. In this article, we review schemas and the new features described in the W3C working draft.









E-Book Standards Edge Forward

Victor Votsch

June 17, 1999

The Open E-book specification was recently released as well as a separate but related effort known as EBX, a specification for electronic book distribution and digital copyrights.


Why XML is Meant for Java?

Matthew Fuchs

June 16, 1999

Is there a special affinity between Java and XML? Matthew Fuchs thinks it is because the two have grown-up together, and he talks about why they do work so well together.




Building a Better Metasearch Engine

Ralf Westphal

June 8, 1999

This two-part tutorial demonstrates how XML can be used to improve how search engines work. It shows how to automate retrieval of search results and when those results are available in XML, instead of HTML, how much more easily they can be organized and displayed for users. This demo requires IE 5 because the XML processing is done on the client side.




XSL Considered Harmful

Michael Leventhal

May 20, 1999

XSL is far more complicated than it needs to be, and we don't need it, argues Leventhal. CSS and the DOM are just fine so waiting for XSL to become a standard is nothing but a distraction.








Benchmarking XML Parsers

Clark Cooper

May 5, 1999

Are all parsers and parser implementations alike? Clark Cooper was wondering how his Perl-based XML parser compared to others and so he tested six parsers to see how they performed on small, medium and large processing jobs.





P3P: An Emerging Privacy Standard

Lisa Rein

May 5, 1999

The W3C has released the latest draft of a privacy protocol that should let agents work smoothly between browsers and web sites, in accordance with the user's preferences. Also, Microsoft and Trust-E have developed a wizard to help site owners create privacy guidelines.




What's the Big Deal With XSL?

G. Ken Holman

April 22, 1999

Confused about XSL and how it relates to CSS? Ken explains that the relationship between XSL and CSS is a complementary one. He examines two different implementations of XSL and provides the documents and stylesheets for you to compare to each other.







Microsoft's XML is More Than Just Standards

David Strom

March 30, 1999

Columnist David Strom contends that the big news isn't really the way Microsoft implements XML in Internet Explorer. More important is the way it implements MS-XML in its Office 2000 applications, an effort that could make MS-XML the default authoring format for the Web.


XML support in IE5

Tim Bray

March 18, 1999

Microsoft officially released Internet Explorer 5 and XML.com's technical editor Tim Bray finds that though the final release of IE5 has some nice features for the XML community, its XML implementation is still a little buggy.




Arbortext Goes Freeform

Liora Alschuler

March 15, 1999

The next release of Arbortext Adept Editor will ship with the capacity to edit and display DTD-less and stylesheet-less XML documents.









Namespaces in XML Adopted by W3C

Mark Walter

January 19, 1999

The "Namespaces in XML" specification has been formally adopted by the W3C as a recommendation. XML.com's Mark Walter explains why this was needed and what it will do to increase the adoption of XML.


Low-Rent Virtual Reality with XML

Tim Bray

January 19, 1999

3DML is almost XML - though you wouldn't know it from its creator's marketing information. This 'economy' virtual reality language has some benefits that VRML doesn't, and proves that you can use XML to do some surprising things.



The Extensible Style Language - XSL

Norman Walsh

January 19, 1999

XML offer Web developers the ultimate in flexibility -- the ability to write your own tags. But how can you be sure your custom tags will be interpreted properly. Enter XSL, the style language for XML. Norm leads a tour of the salient points.


Comparing XSL and CSS

Norman Walsh

January 19, 1999

In part 2 of this tour of XSL, Norm looks at the differences and similarities between XSL and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).


Understanding XSL

Norman Walsh

January 19, 1999

In part 3 of this tour of XSL, Norm looks at the XSL features needed to write a simple style sheet, and provides some exercises for continued learning about XSL.


XML Namespaces by Example

Tim Bray

January 19, 1999

The hows and whys of XML namespaces explained by a co-author of the specification, XML.com's technical editor Tim Bray.






How it works

Lisa Rein and Tim Bray

December 19, 1998

Using XML and other standards-based technologies, seafarers are no longer out to sea when it comes to specialized medical care. (Part 4)


Wrapping Up 1998

Liora Alschuler

December 18, 1998

As the year draws to a close, the XML.com editorial staff reviews recent progress--and lack of progress--in XML technology.



















Oracle plans XML support in 8i

Mark Walter

November 9, 1998

Oracle 8i's built-in XML support is the most extensive of any leading relational database to date, and XML.com has the details in this exclusive look at the new release.


Dreamweaver 2 Supports XML

November 9, 1998

Macromedia announced details of the XML support in Dreamweaver, its popular Web authoring tool.


Arbortext Eyes the Enterprise

Mark Walter

November 9, 1998

Arbortext has introduced Enterprise Product Information Chain (EPIC), a package of software and services for implementing XML-based publishing solutions at the enterprise level.



ICE Breaker

Dale Dougherty

October 29, 1998

The ICE 1.0 specification describes a transaction protocol for syndicated content distribution.





Is HTML+Time Out-of-Sync With SMIL?

Lisa Rein

October 7, 1998

Microsoft's HTML+Time submission is a proposed HTML extension for describing time-based media. Is this approach in conflict with the recently approved SMIL recommendation?


Live Data from WDDX

Lisa Rein

October 6, 1998

Software developers are finding out that XML can be used on many different levels for the representation of data structures used by programs written in different languages.


I'm Baaaack!

Xavier McLipps

October 3, 1998

The Falling Interleaves of Autumn...Unseasonable Northwest Winds...Winter in Chicago, and Other Cruelty...ROTFL



A Technical Introduction to XML

Norman Walsh

October 3, 1998

What is XML? This introduction to XML is geared towards a reader with some HTML or SGML experience, although that experience is not absolutely necessary. This article is an update to A Guide to XML, which originally appeared in the Winter 1997 edition of the World Wide Web Journal.









The Debut of XML:Geek

Peter Murray-Rust

August 28, 1998

XML.com is proud to welcome our XML:Geek columnist, Peter Murray-Rust, author of the JUMBO XML parser and co-manager the XML developer's mailing list (XML-DEV). XML:Geek asks 'how can I do something fundamentally new with XML? and where can I get the tools and components to help?'.






News Wire Services Heading for XML

Tim Bray

August 12, 1998

The News Industry is hoping that a switch to XML will jump-start adoption of the News Industry Text Format (NITF) among users and vendors of news wire services.


Pushing Standards

August 12, 1998

The Web Standards Project has been created by a group of big-league web site designers who have run out of patience with doing different versions of their work to fit the ever growing incompatibilities between browsers and standards.








Monkeying Around

Xavier McLipps

July 8, 1998

Edit this!...Monkey Logic...Mainlining XML...Clip the Box...Olde Editors...Rolling on the floor laughing.












XML and Vector Graphics

Lisa Rein

June 22, 1998

A standard vector graphics format for the Web will provide lightweight Web graphics with more functionality and flexibility.


Structuring Graphical Data

Lisa Rein

June 22, 1998

Vector graphics differs from raster graphics in the way the graphical data structures are represented. Vector graphic formats can provide more information about the graphic and its context.


PGML

Lisa Rein

June 22, 1998

The Precision Graphics Markup Language is an XML-based format based on the PostScript imaging model.


CGM and Web Schematics

Lisa Rein

June 22, 1998

CGM is an established graphics standard for the CAD industry. It has proven too complex for the Web. The Web Schematics submission looks at a much simpler version for 2D diagrams.


VML

Lisa Rein

June 22, 1998

The Vector Markup Language submission is supported by Microsoft and likely will be deployed in IE5.


Vector-based Binary Formats

Lisa Rein

June 22, 1998

Binary vector graphics formats such as those used in Macromedia's Flash are not based on XML, and tend to be proprietary formats. Macromedia has announced that the Flash file format will be made available as a potential standard.



Preview of XML Support in IE 5

Tim Bray

June 22, 1998

A preview release of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 5.0 is now available for developers and Tim Bray looks at what's new in IE5 and what that means for XML.


An Introduction to XML Linking

June 10, 1998

An introduction to the features and benefits of the XML Linking Language specification, by its co-editor Eve Maler. This is a RealAudio presentation.


RDF and Metadata

Tim Bray

June 9, 1998

Not excited about metadata? XML.com's technical editor Tim Bray thinks you should be and he explains why. He presents RDF, a spec that standardizes how to supply metadata on the Web.



Dreaming of Paris

Xavier McLipps

June 2, 1998

Paris...Hospitality Sweets...Resistance is Futile...Fall Conference...Micro Scar...Rolling on the Floor Laughing...



Structured Editors

Liora Alschuler

May 5, 1998

Will XML make structured editing any more mainstream than it was with SGML? A trip to the XML '98 Conference in Seattle, WA, uncovered four new products and shed light on where this market is headed.





SoftQuad previews XMetaL prototype

Liora Alschuler

May 5, 1998

While not yet solid code, SoftQuad's XMetaL represents a solid decision to pursue XML editing by the company best known for its HTML editor, HoTMetaL, and first known for its SGML editor, Author/Editor.




Structured Editors: Conclusion

Liora Alschuler

May 5, 1998

If these products are indeed viable, it is possible that within a year we may at last see real, new alternatives for writing structured documents that work in print and as richly linked hypertext.


Puzzlin' Evidence #4

April 27, 1998

Standards (yawn) ... Conferences (yawn) ... Sex, Lies, and XML-Data ... Puzzlin' PR ... Updates


When Will the XML Market Take Off?

Adina Levin

April 22, 1998

Is XML just so much hype? Another market opportunity that will fail to materialize? Analyst Adina Levin answers that XML is not really a market at all. Instead, XML enables new classes of applications, and these applications will require new tools.




Time Warner implements Perspecta/Vignette Combo

April 15, 1998

The Fortune magazine portion of Time Warner's Pathfinder site will pioneer the integration of two technologies we've been writing about recently: Perspeca's SmartContent System and Vignette StoryServer.


The Annotated XML Specification

C.M. Sperberg-McQueen, Jean Paoli, and Tim Bray

April 15, 1998

If you want to understand XML, you have to read the specification. However, to really get inside the specification and understand why it says what it does, you need an expert guide. Tim Bray, co-editor of the XML 1.0 specification, shares his knowledge and insights about XML, SGML and the working group behind the specification in this annotated version of the document.


Puzzlin' Evidence #3

April 11, 1998

Venture Dunce Caps ... Profundities ... Paris in the Spring ... Updates


Puzzlin' Evidence #2

April 2, 1998

Conference Sold Out ... Bicoastal Marketing Echo ... Accusations of Claquery ... Updates ... ROTFL



Puzzlin' Evidence #1

March 27, 1998

Inso heart Synex ... Adobe heart other peoples' employees ... CNgroup What? ... X-Actly Who? ... ROTFL




Folio to adopt XML, open up Views format

Mark Walter

February 20, 1998

Folio, a division of Open Market, jumped on the XML bandwagon with a significant announcement last month that foreshadows its plan to "open" Folio infobases to enable documents to be indexed and secured in their native formats rather than requiring prior conversion to Folio’s flat-file markup language.




Inso releases DynaBase 2

January 20, 1998

DynaBase is a client-server system for collaboratively authoring Web sites that have a mix of static and dynamically generated content.










Enigma targets XSL

January 10, 1998

Part 8 of the Seybold Report on Internet Publishing's coverage of SGML/XML ’97.










Synex garners support

January 10, 1998

Part 18 of the Seybold Report on Internet Publishing's coverage of SGML/XML ’97.




Banff from OmniMark

January 10, 1998

Part 22 of the Seybold Report on Internet Publishing's coverage of SGML/XML ’97.


Tools for Toolmakers

January 10, 1998

Part 23 of the Seybold Report on Internet Publishing's coverage of SGML/XML ’97.



Foundation for the future

January 10, 1998

Part 25 of the Seybold Report on Internet Publishing's coverage of SGML/XML ’97.





Web consortium publishes CSS2 draft

December 20, 1997

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has released a public draft of cascading style sheets (CSS) 2, a standard for defining page layout properties for Web pages.


W3C smiles on multimedia

December 20, 1997

In November, a working group within the W3C issued its first draft of a method for synchronizing multimedia objects within HTML documents.



XML Comes into the Limelight

November 20, 1997

To those who have worked for two decades on establishing SGML as a key technology for publishing, the opening day of Seybold San Francisco was a moment to savor.


Netscape shows RDF support

November 20, 1997

Mike Homer, senior VP of Netscape, who unveiled Netscape’s vision of a user interface based on the Resource Description Framework (RDF), which is written in XML syntax.


Microsoft counters with IE 4

November 20, 1997

Among the key enhancements in the new release: two built-in XML parsers—one in Java and one in C.


Supporting multiple media

November 20, 1997

Until now, the Web has been stuck with a delivery format that was essentially second-class when it came to data representation.


Sweeping vision

November 20, 1997

The most sweeping endorsement of XML came from John Gage, the scientific wit from Sun Microsystems. Drawing a parallel to PostScript, which provides an abstract way to describe graphical pages, Gage positioned XML, and its style sheet component, XSL, as nothing less than the future of computing.


What should publishers do?

November 20, 1997

There are many implications one might derive from these developments; we’ll suggest three.





DataChannel products

October 20, 1997

DataChannel’s company literature calls ChannelManager "a business framework for managing the proliferation of Web content," a means of creating a "private brand" for industry, corporation, department and employee business rules and stamping that brand onto thedesktop.



ChannelManager: What does it buy you?

October 20, 1997

ChannelManager has implications for publishers, both in terms of how to present information to customers and how employees will use such systems internally.


ChannelManager: What’s missing?

October 20, 1997

When we spoke with Pool in mid-August he predicted that "by this time next year, everyone will have XML metadata tags on their Web site."


ChannelManager: The market

October 20, 1997

Pool describes DataChannel’s market as "huge companies with routing and productivity problems."


ChannelManager: Conclusion

October 20, 1997

DataChannel is interesting as an early implementor of XML, a standard that should substantively change the art of publishing on the Internet.



The Web is Ruined and I Ruined it

David Siegel

October 2, 1997

In "The Web is Ruined and I Ruined it" self-proclaimed HTML Terrorist David Siegel discusses how proper separation of structure (HTML), style (CSS), and semantics (XML) make content more compelling and design more effective.



Introduction

Rohit Khare and Dan Connolly

October 2, 1997

Guest Editor Dan Connolly and Series Editor Rohit Khare team up to herald the appearance of XML and discuss its evolution.


XML Linking

Steve J. DeRose and Tim Bray

October 2, 1997

This document specifies a simple set of constructs that may be inserted into XML documents to describe links between objects and to support addressing into the internal structures of XML documents. It is a goal to use the power of XML to create a structure that can describe the simple unidirectional hyperlinks of today's HTML as well as more sophisticated multi-ended, typed, self-describing links.


HTML-Math

Patrick D.F. Ion and Robert R. Miner

October 2, 1997

The HTML-Math Working Group released another revision of its Working Draft of MathML. This note should serve to point the way to the proposal outlined in the full Working Draft, and will describe a little of the history, current state, and future of the HTML-Math work.



A Guide to XML

Norman Walsh

October 2, 1997

If you are looking for a good overview of XML, with sufficient technical detail, then this article from the World Wide Web Journal is a good place to start.


XML and CSS

Stuart Culshaw, Michael Leventhal, and Murray Maloney

October 2, 1997

The simplicity of document creation was a key element in the astonishingly rapid development of the Web. This article describes XML and CSS: the "one-two" punch that will not only bring back that level of simplicity, but also enable the construction of complex applications which are either difficult or impossible using HTML. In this article we outline the steps for using an CSS style sheet in an XML document; we discuss the limitations of CSS in complex applications; and we present a real life example.




Chemical Markup Language

Peter Murray-Rust

October 2, 1997

In this article, we describe the role of the XM L-LANG specification in supporting this. Examples are supplied explaining how components can be managed and how documents can be processed, with an emphasis on scientific and technical publishing.


Codifying Medical Records in XML

Thomas L. Lincoln, M.D.

October 2, 1997

This paper was given as a talk at the "XML Mixer" in La Jolla, California in late July '97, before a combined audience of clinicians, computing profess ionals, and vendors of document processing software.



XML: From Bytes to Characters

Bert Bos

October 2, 1997

This article defines, in some detail, how text is stored in an XML file. It also describes how an XML file is encoded for transportation over the Internet, and upon arrival, decoded again.




JUMBO: An Object-Based XML Browser

Peter Murray-Rust

October 2, 1997

JUMBO (Java Universal Markup Language) is an object-oriented XML browser/editor and transformation tool, written in Java. It has been developed as a development tool to explore the emerging XML-LANG and XML-LINK specifications, and implements most of the current proposals.




WIDL: Application Integration with XML

Charles Allen

October 2, 1997

The problem of direct access to Web data from within business applications has until recently been largely ignored. The Web Interface Definition Language (WIDL) is an application of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) which allows the resources of the World Wide Web to be described as functional interfaces that can be accessed by remote systems over standard Web protocols.


XML as an Acronym Factory

September 20, 1997

XML isn’t really a language; it’s a system that makes it possible to invent new languages. Lots of people are obliging.


XML leaders push forward at Montreal meeting

September 20, 1997

Interest in the Extensible Markup Language (XML) is still heating up. First, Microsoft announced a push channel based on XML syntax. Then, Netscape changed its apathetic stance and hired the standard’s coeditor, Tim Bray, to represent the firm’s interest on the editorial review board.




Penta's SGMLPublisher

January 20, 1997

Penta is focusing on the SGML market, where it can sell systems both to its traditional customers and to the SGML user community


Chrystal releases Astoria 2.0

January 20, 1997

Chrystal Software, the Xerox XSoft spinoff, showed version 2.0 of its Astoria document management package.


ArborText previews 7.0

December 20, 1996

If there is a market leader in the SGML editing marketplace, it is probably ArborText.



Stilo adapts quickly to XML

December 20, 1996

Stilo showed a quick and powerful adoption of the new XML standard on the development edition of its Stilo editor.


Timelux EditTime gets new features

December 20, 1996

Timelux demonstrated several new features made available since SGML Europe 96 in Munich, the most novel of which is the ability to drag and drop either the start tag or the end tag independently.