The Semantic Web: 1-2-3

This document is not intended to teach you RDF via my own words, but rather to hand-hold you through the 'good' parts of the same journey I took. If it looks like a big link-list with menial comments from the peanut gallery, then you're not far off the mark of my intent. This is by no means definitive, nor was that the goal.

Disobey.com (2003). Articles>Information Design>Metadata>XML

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Made Simple

Even if you're wrapping a legacy application, you'll need a service description that other web services applications can use. Of course, there are many data-binding tools available that are, for example, capable of turning a Java class into an XML Schema or a Windows-compatible wizard with a "generate WSDL" button. But even then, you'll have to give those descriptions to others, the tools may have bugs (surprising, I know, but it's been known to happen), or you'll need to hand-tweak the generated files because a particular customer "just wants the namespace or URL changed." At that point, you don't want to have to burn the midnight oil with a copy of the WSDL and Schema specs in hand and the generated WSDL file on your screen.

Salz, Rich. XML.com (2005). Articles>Information Design>XML

Services for Data Integration    

The fact that many decisions need a combination of information sources makes easy integration of geospatial data an important data usability issue. Our vision is to achieve automated just-in-time integration. As a foundation, we present a system architecture with distributed data and services. Existing and evolving standards and technologies fitting into this architecture are presented along with their scope and shortcomings. A major point is the appropriate definition of data and operation semantics. Further research is needed here to make the automatic formation of service chains for data integration possible.

Riedemann, Catharina and Christian Timm. Data Science Journal (2003). Articles>Information Design>XML>Geography

Simple Web Syndication with RSS 2.0

Simply put RSS is an XML application for simple web feed syndication and content subscriptions. Let's say you have content on your site that you want to feed, or make available for other sites. This is known as web syndication. Most commonly this takes the form of sharing news headlines, product releases, or some similar timely content. RSS provides a standardized method for web sites to use when creating these feeds.

Dev Articles (2007). Articles>Information Design>XML>RSS

SOAP

SOAP is a protocol for exchanging XML-based messages over a computer network, normally using HTTP. SOAP forms the foundation layer of the Web services stack, providing a basic messaging framework that more abstract layers can build on. SOAP can be used to facilitate a Service-Oriented architectural pattern.

Wikipedia (2006). Articles>Information Design>XML>SOAP

Standards with a Future

About ten years ago, a handful of highly specialised consultants were trying with missionary zeal to establish SGML as the basic format in technical communication; today, the XML-standard is no longer something that can be dispensed with, and is, in fact, even mandatory in many projects. This article takes a look in hindsight at the beginnings of SGML and XML, and the current developments and standards around XML, and also hazards a guess at what the years to come might hold in store.

Rath, Hans Holger. tekom (2006). Articles>Information Design>Standards>XML

Standards-Based Publishing with XML, XSLT, XHTML and XSL-FO  

XML, the Extensible Markup Language recommendation by the W3C, separates content from processing. When you author XML, you describe your information semantically using a computer readable and human readable syntax. The syntax of XML is elements and attributes. We call this semantic markup.

Arbury, Autumn. tekom (2005). Articles>Information Design>XML>Semantic

Strategies in Re-Purposing Graphics for Interactive Intelligent Delivery

In the domain of aerospace/defense, a products life cycle may likely span up to 30 years. The amount of technical data required to manufacture, operate, and maintain those products is immense. The graphic representation of that data facilitates the communication of operational and maintenance instructions. This paper outlines issues with creating, authoring, revising, and delivering intelligence with graphics and the associated meta-data.

Woolsey, Jeremiah and Martin Jackson. XML Europe (2001). Articles>Information Design>XML>Metadata

Structured Authoring and XML: Part One

Implementing structured authoring with XML allows organizations to create better content. The addition of hierarchy and metadata to content improves reuse and content management. These benefits, however, must be weighed against the time and money required to implement a structured authoring approach. The business case is compelling for larger writing organizations; they will be the first to adopt structured authoring. Over time, improvements in available tools will reduce the cost of implementing structured authoring and make it affordable for smaller organizations.

O'Keefe, Sarah S. Carolina Communique (2003). Articles>Documentation>Information Design>XML

Structured Authoring and XML: Part Three

Not every content-creation group will benefit from structured authoring and XML. Sometimes, the expense of implementation outweighs the benefits realized, especially in smaller groups with less total page count.

O'Keefe, Sarah S. Carolina Communique (2004). Articles>Documentation>Information Design>XML

Structured Authoring and XML: Part Two

In a structured authoring environment, authors create documents by assembling elements and text in an order permitted by the structure definition document. You might think of structured authoring as being similar to template-based authoring with a strict template. Authors do not assign formatting; the formatting is automatically assigned based on the structure of the document. Formatting may differ for different output media.

O'Keefe, Sarah S. Carolina Communique (2003). Articles>Documentation>Information Design>XML

Structuring Your Documents for Maximum Reuse  

A major topic among information development managers these days is single sourcing--writing information once and using it many times. Structured documents are critical for single sourcing. So, let's explore: what we mean by structuring documents; why structuring is useful; some of the concerns that writers have about structuring documents.

Redish, Janice C. 'Ginny'. Center for Information-Development Management (2005). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>XML

Subsetting and Customizing DITA

This article explores ideas related to subsetting and customizing the DITA specification without the addition of new elements. Instead, we explore taking default rules and adapting them to meet the needs of specific writing and publishing environments. Introductory information about the DITA specification and the difference between subsetting and specialization is provided.

Aschwanden, Bernard. Publishing Smarter (2006). Articles>Information Design>XML>DITA

Technical Context and Cultural Consequences of XML

The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is an open standard for creating domain- and industry-specific markup vocabularies. XML has become the predominant mechanism for electronic data interchange between information systems and can be described as a universally applicable, durable “Code of Integration.â€Ω As we celebrate its tenth anniversary, it is appropriate to reflect on the role XML has played and the technical ecosystem in which it functions. In this paper, we discuss both the environment from which XML arose and its technical underpinnings, and we relate these topics to companion papers in this issue of the IBM Systems Journal. We discuss the broad consequences of XML and argue that XML will take its place among the technical standards having the greatest impact on the world in which we live. We conclude with some reflections on the significant technical, economic, and societal consequences that XML is likely to have in the future.

Adler, S., R. Cochrane, J.F. Morar and A. Spector. IBM (2006). Articles>Information Design>XML

Topic-Oriented Information Development and Its Role in Globalization

For all of its upside, XML-based single-source publishing has proven to be expensive and complicated to implement. XML-based single sourcing requires significant tool development, data conversion, and system integration prior to realizing the benefits of repurposing and reuse. To mitigate this, some vertical industries have developed their own XML tag sets. While successful on their own, these vertical industry efforts have not been extensible to other industries. A new XML-based approach to information development is the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA).

Trippe, Bill. Gilbane Report (2004). Articles>Information Design>Metadata>XML

Transforming Documentation from the XML Doctypes Used for the Apache Website to DITA: A Case Study  

A primary factor behind the enormous interest in XML is the support it provides for transforming documents to meet the needs of information-processing applications as well as human readers working with HTML, print, and other presentation media. This case study reviews the issues we confronted, the tools we implemented, and the procedures we adopted to transform a documentation set from one XML document type to another, and from XML to HTML and Adobe PDF. The documentation set for Xalan, the Apache XSL transformer based largely on code donated by Lotus/IBM, is written in XML, using document types shared by the projects on the Apache XML website. To present Xalan reference releases to IBM project groups, the Cambridge Advanced Technology Group has set up build procedures to transform the Xalan XML documentation to DITA, an extensible XML information typing architecture currently under development in IBM. After verifying that the DITA output conforms to its declared document type, the build publishes the DITA documentation set as HTML and as PDF.

Leslie, Donald M. Cover Pages (2004). Articles>Information Design>XML>DITA

UML 3.0 and the Future of Modeling  

The major revision work for UML 2.0 is complete, and it is now an OMG Final Adopted Specification. This is a good time to reflect on UML's future, and the future of model-driven development.

Kobryn, Cris. UML Forum (2004). Articles>Information Design>XML>UML

A UML Primer  

This document covers key areas in UML (the Unified Modeling Language), such as Association, Multiplicity, Aggregation, Generalization and diagrams such as the Use Case diagram, Class Diagram, and Sequence Diagram.

Sundaram, Elango. Yahoo (2003). (Farsi) Articles>Information Design>XML>UML

Unravel the OpenOffice File Format

OpenOffice provides a suite of applications whose native file format consists of a set of XML files, compressed into a ZIP archive. This article explores the basics of the OpenOffice file format.

O'Reilly and Associates (2004). Articles>Information Design>XML>OpenOffice

Update XForms Using XForms

With XForms technology, you can provide a lightweight editor for an existing collection of XForms. Explore an approach to form authoring for simple, quick changes that improve the effectiveness of data collected. Typical form editing requires a separate application even for the most trivial changes. XForms manipulates XML data and submits it to a server, making it an ideal choice to author these trivial changes and submit them for redeployment.

Speicher, Steve K., Jan J. Kratky and Kevin E. Kelly. IBM (2006). Articles>Information Design>XML

Use Character and Entity References

Not all characters are available on the keyboard! This hack shows you how to represent such characters in an XML document by using decimal and hexadecimal character references, and how to represent entities by using entity references.

O'Reilly and Associates (2005). Articles>Information Design>XML

Use Data URIs to Include Media in XML

There are many ways to link to non-XML content within XML, including binary content. Sometimes you need to roll all such external content directly into the XML. Data scheme URIs are one way to specify a full resource within a URI, which you can then use in XML constructs. In this tip, Uche Ogbuji shows how to use this to bundle related media into a single file.

Ogbuji, Uche. IBM (2006). Articles>Information Design>Multimedia>XML

Use PHP to create XForms, Part 1: Creating a PHP XForms library

This two-part article series is designed to get PHP developers up to speed in leveraging Web 2.0 XForms forms for their PHP forms development so that they can finally put their outdated Web 1.0 HTML forms away. This will be accomplished by creating a library of functions that generate XForms elements when called upon. In this article, Part 1 of a two-part series, developers will create the XForms library using PHP, allowing each function to take in parameters and output XForm elements.

Anderson, Tyler. IBM (2007). Articles>Information Design>XML>XSL

Use PHP to create XForms, Part 2: Using the PHP XForms Library to Create Useful XForms

This two-part article seriess is designed to get PHP developers up to speed in leveraging Web 2.0 XForms forms for their PHP forms development so that they can finally put their outdated Web 1.0 HTML forms away. In Part 1, you created the PHP XForms library. In this article, Part 2, you will enhance the library to include some error checking and convenience functions to help make using the library more manageable, and lastly you'll demo the library by creating a proof of concept XForm.

Anderson, Tyler. IBM (2007). Articles>Information Design>XML>XSL

Using the SQLXML Data Type

If you're a Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) developer, you'll want to preview the SQLXML technology, currently in development. Check out procedures to create an XML document, store an XML document in a relational database, retrieve an XML document from a database, and navigate an XML document with the SQLXML Java data type.

Vohra, Deepak. IBM (2006). Articles>Information Design>Databases>XML