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Simon St. Laurent

Author of "XML: A Primer", "Building XML Applications" and "Inside XML DTDs: Scientific and Technical." Simon is a technical writer and sometime Java developer. After spending several years working in hypertext, he found XML and decided he was home.

Articles by this author


JSON on the Web, or: The Revenge of SML

Simon St. Laurent looks back to see if we can all learn a lesson or two: were there signs early on in the life of XML that something like JSON would eventually do very well as a Web data format?

The Next Web?

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.

Hacking Election Maps with XML and MapServer

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.


Reports from XML Europe 2003

The annual XML Europe Conference took place in London, May 2003. This article collects together reports from XML.com writers Uche Ogbuji and Simon St. Laurent.

Growing Ideas at XML 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.

Programming Web Services with XML-RPC

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.

XML Ain't What It Used To Be

Current XML development at the W3C threatens to obliterate the original promise of XML by piling on too many features and obscuring what XML does best.

Getting Topical

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.

XML 2000 Show Floor Review

New and interesting technologies from the show floor at XML 2000, including Schemantix, Fourthought, Kinecta, Ontopia and Architag.


XMLDevCon2000 Showfloor highlights

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.

Describing your Data: DTDs and XML Schemas

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.


On Display: XML Web Pages with Mozilla

Widespread support for XML in browsers is finally on the horizon. In the first of a series covering Mozilla, IE, and Opera, Simon St. Laurent looks at formatting XML with CSS2 inside Mozilla.

XML'99 Expo Update

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 Standards Update

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

News From the Expo Floor

Reviewing the Expo Floor from XML DevCon 2000, we take a look at a couple of new kids on the block: Numerator and XMLMATE.

XML: A Disruptive Technology

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.



XML With Style: eBooks and XSL-FOs

The XSL Formatting Objects specification has seen renewed activity recently. Simon St. Laurent investigates applications of this and other styling technology at XTech 2000.

Relax, and Take it Easy

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.

When XML Gets Ugly

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.

Object Design becomes eXcelon Corp.

XML is here to stay: Object Design has renamed itself after its flagship XML product, eXcelon. Simon St. Laurent reports on the name change and eXcelon Corp.'s new range of XML products.