categoryallspace2-Design Information Design XML http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Design/Information-Design/XML A directory of resources about design and information design and xml in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Design/Information-Design/XML http://tc.eserver.org/31357.html http://tc.eserver.org/31357.html Is your company making the move from Information Mapping to DITA (Darwin Information Typing Architecture)? The author compares and contrasts the two methods and shares insight on how to ease the pain of switching from one to the other. http://tc.eserver.org/31171.html http://tc.eserver.org/31171.html In this podcast, Marlene Martineau of New Dawn Technologies explains why they adopted DITA, how they adopted it, the benefits they're experiencing, and the reasons why she'll never go back. http://tc.eserver.org/31158.html http://tc.eserver.org/31158.html I went to the Content Management Strategies/DITA North America 2008 conference (put on by CIDM), which took place in Santa Clara last week. While I went to support our co-founder's speech on DocBook versus DITA, I also used this opportunity to catch up with software vendors and single-source users. Here's my top #10 take-away list. http://tc.eserver.org/31168.html http://tc.eserver.org/31168.html I have recently converted some user documents from MS Word to XML for a medical device company with the intent that they would be looking at authoring their future end-user documentation (printed, embedded, and online) in XML. I want to share with you some of the triumphs and challenges we had met along the way. http://tc.eserver.org/31156.html http://tc.eserver.org/31156.html DocBook and DITA both have their places. They're both excellent for single sourcing. DocBook is better for what I call monolithic single sourcing, while DITA is better suited for discrete single sourcing. http://tc.eserver.org/31124.html http://tc.eserver.org/31124.html I have seen a couple of blog postings lately that underscore the statement that DITA is not for everyone or for every situation. http://tc.eserver.org/30784.html http://tc.eserver.org/30784.html How do you convert your application-neutral, vendor-neutral, unformatted XML content into paginated content (such as PDF) or HTML? O'Keefe introduces one solution: the Extensible Stylesheet Language, a programming language for processing XML. http://tc.eserver.org/30753.html http://tc.eserver.org/30753.html DocBook is an easy-to-understand and widely used DTD. Dozens of organizations use DocBook for millions of pages of documentation, in various print and online formats, worldwide. http://tc.eserver.org/30670.html http://tc.eserver.org/30670.html XUL is a surprisingly easy way to build cross-platform browser extensions or even stand-alone applications. Discover how to build powerful, flexible Mozilla browser extensions that go beyond the capabilities of other tools like embedded scripting languages or CGI--because they're built right into the user's browser. http://tc.eserver.org/30231.html http://tc.eserver.org/30231.html Some folks here are taking a very strong look at DITA. I'm certainly one of them. But we also have a huge legacy of documents in Solbook format (Sun's subset of DocBook). There are tools for editing such documents, and tools for processing them. and there are many people who are comfortable with those tools. So DITA isn't going to replace the world, just yet. But DITA makes extensive reuse possible. It's a format with a serious future, because "reuse" is a very big deal. It lets you single-source your information content so have one place to make an edit. That sort of thing becomes important when you have multiple revisions of a product, and/or multiple variations. It becomes important when different tools and different products use the same information in different ways. It can drastically improve quality, ensure uniformity of presentation. Finally, structured formats like DITA and DocBook create the kind of consistently-tagged information that allows for useful automation. http://tc.eserver.org/30122.html http://tc.eserver.org/30122.html XML-based publishing challenges authors to convert from the familiar desktop-publishing routine to new tools. This article explains what you should consider when deciding whether to implement XML. http://tc.eserver.org/30114.html http://tc.eserver.org/30114.html XML will change the way you develop and integrate your databases. http://tc.eserver.org/30105.html http://tc.eserver.org/30105.html New office document standards like the OpenDocument Format(ODF) and Office Open XML (OOXML), however, are making office document integration in business processes a reality. A key benefit of ODF and OOXML for developers is the reuse of existing standards. http://tc.eserver.org/30062.html http://tc.eserver.org/30062.html The recent emergence of online digital archives has brought educators a major step closer to bringing original, reusable digital objects into undergraduate classrooms. Yet having to search multiple archives through mind-numbing search-and-browse routines can make it extremely difficult for educators to use the repositories successfully in their curriculum. What educators need is a suite of tools that allow them to reduce the search for relevance, expand the metadata with user-specific annotation, and tie the digital libraries' content directly to course materials. The keys to creating these resources are to build distributed networks of users and repositories. Cost containment often severely limits the amount of descriptive metadata that can be catalogued. Students and instructors create topical annotated bibliographies or lists of media clips (or segments of media clips) and 'publish' these for class, work group, or more general use. Allowing teachers and students to annotate and segment media as well as build their own galleries greatly enhance the educational value of digital objects by augmenting the minimal descriptive metadata and facilitating the building of complex digital objects tailored to the needs of specific education standards and curricula. The project uses a METS XML schema that provides an encoding format for administrative, descriptive, and structural metadata that is fully compliant with OAIS, and open source applications to facilitate ingestion and delivery (as well as help to control costs). http://tc.eserver.org/29977.html http://tc.eserver.org/29977.html This article looks at the impact of the introduction of semantic markup and structured authoring on the world of technical writers, editors, Help authors and content developers. This article is not specifically about the Semantic Web movement itself, but about the implementation of semantic concepts in the documentation field. http://tc.eserver.org/29978.html http://tc.eserver.org/29978.html XML became an integral part of Microsoft's strategy around the time of Internet Explorer 4. IE4 was an XML-aware browser. As well as displaying HTML documents, it could also display XML documents through an inbuilt XML parser. Another part of IE4 was something known as the XML DSO (Data Source Object). The XML DSO allows you to manipulate primitive XML 'data islands' by binding (or attaching) the XML data to HTML presentation elements. The XML elements within Internet Explorer continue to be improved and added to with every new IE release. http://tc.eserver.org/29979.html http://tc.eserver.org/29979.html Maybe XML is more like a carcinogen. We don't notice it's there, but we're still getting exposed to it. In ever-increasing doses. But unlike a carcinogen, XML is not bad for our health; in fact, it has many life-enhancing properties. Well, work-enhancing properties. http://tc.eserver.org/29958.html http://tc.eserver.org/29958.html The domain model is a familiar concept to most OOP (Object Oriented Programming) developers and architects, and has been used successfully in a variety of systems and projects. But how does this principle apply to SOA-based solutions? http://tc.eserver.org/29962.html http://tc.eserver.org/29962.html XML is often used today as a data export and exchange format. In such cases, you might deal with a feed of XML records; sometimes, if this feed, is too long, there are performance problems importing it into another system. As such, you might want to produce only an incremental feed--that is, one that only includes items that have changed. This article presents a collection of simple techniques that you can combine into a system for more digestible feeds containing only updated records. http://tc.eserver.org/29953.html http://tc.eserver.org/29953.html Firefox 2.0 brought several important changes in its XML support. It's currently reaching its peak in user deployment. Learn about updated XML features in Firefox 2.0, including a controversial change to the handling of RSS Web feeds. http://tc.eserver.org/29956.html http://tc.eserver.org/29956.html A Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) typically exports a range of services. For XML service modelling and subsequent consumption of those services by users (people, machines, or other services), Java technology provides powerful mechanisms to handle XML data, which in turn provides a key foundation for using SOA concepts. Dive into the practical aspects of SOA using XML and Java technology, and discover clear examples of why this seemingly complex technology is so popular. http://tc.eserver.org/29960.html http://tc.eserver.org/29960.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/29959.html http://tc.eserver.org/29959.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/29860.html http://tc.eserver.org/29860.html BMC Software Inc., a company that writes utility tools for database administrators, wanted to reuse the error messages from partner database companies. Having learned that two of these database companies already used single-source files for their error messages, BMC Software integrated the information about the error messages from the database companies. We accomplished our goal by negotiating with our partner companies for the source files of the error message information. This session discusses how we took those source files and modified them to create simple XML files, then transformed them into HTML using XSL transforms within a product. http://tc.eserver.org/29589.html http://tc.eserver.org/29589.html An XML data island is a piece of well-formed XML embedded into an HTML file. This article will show you how to retrieve data in an XML format from a database using ADO; you will also learn how to bind this data into an HTML document. http://tc.eserver.org/29586.html http://tc.eserver.org/29586.html XPath is a language for addressing parts of an XML document, designed to be used by both XSLT and XPointer. In this article we will learn about XPath, XPath expressions and how to use XPath in .NET and Java. http://tc.eserver.org/29587.html http://tc.eserver.org/29587.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/29590.html http://tc.eserver.org/29590.html This article explains a useful way to embed data in an HTML document, and store it on the client, using XML. With XML becoming ever more pervasive and the client side implementation gaining a lot of ground, you will probably find yourself using this technique in many projects. http://tc.eserver.org/29585.html http://tc.eserver.org/29585.html XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language. XML is used to aid the exchange of data. The language makes it possible to define data in a structured way. XML tags are not predefined like HTML. XML lets you create your own unique tags that are meaningful for your data, hence the use of the term 'extensible.' http://tc.eserver.org/29548.html http://tc.eserver.org/29548.html RSS, also known as rich site summary or real simply syndication, arrived on the scene a number of years ago, but was only recently embraced by webmasters as a means to effectively syndicate content. RSS Feeds provide webmasters and content providers an avenue to provide concise summaries to prospective readers. Thousands of commercial web sites and blogs now publish content summaries in an RSS feed. Each item in the feed typically contains a headline; article summary and link back to the online article. http://tc.eserver.org/29465.html http://tc.eserver.org/29465.html XML alone is not enough to effectively manage your organization's global content. Explore global XML and its benefits. http://tc.eserver.org/29461.html http://tc.eserver.org/29461.html Is DITA right for your organization? This article provides a starting point for your own research on DITA. http://tc.eserver.org/29458.html http://tc.eserver.org/29458.html The XMetaL-DITA group was founded to educate XMetaL users in working with the DITA standard. http://tc.eserver.org/29401.html http://tc.eserver.org/29401.html A gathering place for information about DITA. http://tc.eserver.org/29399.html http://tc.eserver.org/29399.html DITA is quickly becoming the dominant XML schema for topic-oriented authoring. DITA is a highly practical way of moving to XML authoring in general and granular content reuse in particular. DITA distinguishes itself from predecessor standards by explicitly rejecting the book paradigm in favour of a topic-oriented model. http://tc.eserver.org/29402.html http://tc.eserver.org/29402.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/29304.html http://tc.eserver.org/29304.html This month I'm taking a break from covering XSLT 2.0 to describe how the combination of XSLT 1.0 and an application with an open XML format solved a problem for me. I solved this problem so quickly and easily that it got me thinking about how the combination of XSLT 1.0 and the increasing amount of open XML formats are opening up a world of simple, valuable new applications and utilities for us to write. http://tc.eserver.org/29285.html http://tc.eserver.org/29285.html DITA maps are documents that collect and organize references to DITA topics to indicate the relationships among the topics. They can also serve as outlines or tables of contents for DITA deliverables and as build manifests for DITA projects. http://tc.eserver.org/28822.html http://tc.eserver.org/28822.html Feedity is an RSS generator for web pages without a web syndication format. The goal of Feedity is to dynamically create RSS web feeds from such webpages. Feedity will take virtually any web page, and convert it into a fully formed RSS web feed. The RSS feed is updated in near-real time. http://tc.eserver.org/28480.html http://tc.eserver.org/28480.html One key benefit of XML is the fact that it was designed for international use. But do you really understand the concepts of internationalization and localization? This article explains what they are, how they work, and why you want to use them. http://tc.eserver.org/28273.html http://tc.eserver.org/28273.html The defining feature of XML is the ability to specify your own tags. Learn about what to look for in an XML information model and what a technical communicator can contribute to an XML documentation team. http://tc.eserver.org/28185.html http://tc.eserver.org/28185.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/28186.html http://tc.eserver.org/28186.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/28177.html http://tc.eserver.org/28177.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/28184.html http://tc.eserver.org/28184.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/28069.html http://tc.eserver.org/28069.html During a recent development effort, one of our clients was alarmed at the conversion costs of the proposed XML-based content management system compared to the existing MS Word-based process. This was just one instance of an alarming trend of balking at XML-based systems in favor of using public web folders, indexed by some full-text search engine, as part of a local intranet. In the short run, these edit, drop, and index solutions have some appealing features, including low development and conversion costs. But they are short-lived systems that either wither from lack of functionality or rapidly outgrow their design. http://tc.eserver.org/28070.html http://tc.eserver.org/28070.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/28029.html http://tc.eserver.org/28029.html XPath is a way of pulling out particular data from an XML document. It is used by XSL to determine what should be output in your documents. It is essentially a systematic way of defining an address of each piece of data. http://tc.eserver.org/28006.html http://tc.eserver.org/28006.html More and more people are working with texts and documents in XML format. With the increasing popularity of XML, the number of XML editors is also increasing and it can be difficult to choose the editor that best suits a particular user or task. The aim of this Information Paper is to provide an introduction to different features XML editors can have and the extent to which these features are implemented in various editors. It also presents the result of an evaluation exercise where different user groups tried a number of the editors. http://tc.eserver.org/27996.html http://tc.eserver.org/27996.html RDF was originally created in 1999 as a standard on top of XML for encoding metadata--literally, data about data. Metadata is, of course, things like who authored a web page, what date a blog entry was published, etc., information that is in some sense secondary to some other content already on the regular web. Since then, and perhaps especially after the updated RDF spec in 2004, the scope of RDF has really evolved into something greater. The most exciting uses of RDF aren't in encoding information about web resources, but information about and relations between things in the real world: people, places, concepts, etc. http://tc.eserver.org/27953.html http://tc.eserver.org/27953.html In this article, gain knowledge about the difference between elements and attributes in XML, as well as differences in character sets. The author shows the benefits and drawbacks of using XML components and why you should carefully consider your character set when developing your software. http://tc.eserver.org/27951.html http://tc.eserver.org/27951.html So you know all about reading and parsing XML files, and even checking if they're well-formed and valid. Now, take a step into more advanced territory with this expose of two objects that let you dynamically create well-formed XML documents in your ASP.NET scripts. http://tc.eserver.org/27948.html http://tc.eserver.org/27948.html This is the first article in a series concentrating on generating XML Schema dynamically using Visual Basic 2005. The series is mainly targeted at those who are familiar with XML, XML Schema and the .NET framework. http://tc.eserver.org/27952.html http://tc.eserver.org/27952.html Learn about XML and the hierarchical structure of the Document Object Model. Nodes, NodeLists, NameNodeMaps, as well as properties such as parentNodes, childNodes, nodeNames, and nodeValues are explored, explained and code is given. http://tc.eserver.org/27947.html http://tc.eserver.org/27947.html This article, the third of three parts, explains what MSXML is and how to access an XML document using JavaScript. http://tc.eserver.org/27946.html http://tc.eserver.org/27946.html This article, the second of three parts, explains what MSXML is and how to access an XML document using JavaScript. http://tc.eserver.org/27945.html http://tc.eserver.org/27945.html This article, the first of three parts, explains what MSXML is and how to access an XML document using JavaScript. http://tc.eserver.org/27916.html http://tc.eserver.org/27916.html The abbreviation DITA stands for 'Darwin Information Typing Architecture', an information architecture based on XML. DITA is not a mere reinvention of the wheel: rather, it sets the standards for known structuring requirements. The most striking feature of this architecture is the clear orientation towards a technology for structuring, which has already proved its worth in online documentation. http://tc.eserver.org/27915.html http://tc.eserver.org/27915.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/27868.html http://tc.eserver.org/27868.html How can you create an RSS for a specific HTML page, especially if the page-create software or web host doesn't provide an automated method. This article discusses how to use a screen scraper to quickly and easily create a RSS feed for any HTML page. http://tc.eserver.org/27859.html http://tc.eserver.org/27859.html XML is a new type of language which has been developed for the web which is different to any other type of scripting or programming language available before. Instead of being concerned with the processing and display of data, XML's primary purpose is to tell the computer what data entered actually means. http://tc.eserver.org/27747.html http://tc.eserver.org/27747.html XSLT stylesheets are designed to transform XML documents. Coupled with Java extensions, stylesheets can also be a powerful complement to XML Schema when grammar-based validation cannot cover all the constraints required. In this article, Peter Heneback presents the case for validating documents using XSLT with Java extensions and provides practical guidance and code samples. http://tc.eserver.org/27750.html http://tc.eserver.org/27750.html The IBM DB2 Viper release brings many new XML-related (and non-XML) features. One such feature is the annotated XML schema decomposition that allows you to decompose their XML documents into relational tables. The annotated XML schema supports various mapping constructs that allow you to map elements/attributes defined in the XML schema to table-column pairs in the relational schema. For large XML schemas consisting of many XML schema documents, manual annotation can be a cumbersome task. Get an introduction to the tool, DefaultAnnotater, that allows you to create default mapping and a default relational schema into which corresponding XML documents can be decomposed. This article provides a good starting platform for not only trying out the new function, but also further enhancing the mapping in a given XML schema. http://tc.eserver.org/27742.html http://tc.eserver.org/27742.html XPath 2.0 is the foundation of two essential recommendations currently in the final stages of development at W3C: XSLT 2.0 and XQuery. It is a major rewrite designed to significantly increase the power and efficiency of the language. In this article, Benoît Marchal shows how the new data model enables you to easily write more sophisticated requests. http://tc.eserver.org/27741.html http://tc.eserver.org/27741.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/27744.html http://tc.eserver.org/27744.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/27748.html http://tc.eserver.org/27748.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/27722.html http://tc.eserver.org/27722.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/27647.html http://tc.eserver.org/27647.html To create a specific deliverable, you collect all of the relevant topics and wrap information around them. A printed book, for instance, contains topics grouped into chapters along with front and back matter. http://tc.eserver.org/27660.html http://tc.eserver.org/27660.html XQuery speeds up the process of finding information contained in an XML document, which is very handy when dealing with long XML documents. This article, the first of two parts, will teach you how to write XQuery expressions. http://tc.eserver.org/27661.html http://tc.eserver.org/27661.html XQuery speeds up the process of finding information contained in an XML document -- which is very handy when dealing with long XML documents. This article, the second of two parts, will teach you how to write XQuery expressions. http://tc.eserver.org/27633.html http://tc.eserver.org/27633.html This is the first article in a series which guides you in designing XML Schemas right from the basics without any hurdles. http://tc.eserver.org/27632.html http://tc.eserver.org/27632.html This is the first article in a series concentrating on implementing relations for designing robust XML schema definitions. http://tc.eserver.org/27631.html http://tc.eserver.org/27631.html This article is the second in a series that shows you how to implement relations for designing robust XML schema definitions. http://tc.eserver.org/27615.html http://tc.eserver.org/27615.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/27582.html http://tc.eserver.org/27582.html Large enterprise applications - the ones that execute core business applications, and keep a company going - must be more than just a bunch of code modules. They must be structured in a way that enables scalability, security, and robust execution under stressful conditions, and their structure - frequently referred to as their architecture - must be defined clearly enough that maintenance programmers can (quickly!) find and fix a bug that shows up long after the original authors have moved on to other projects. That is, these programs must be designed to work perfectly in many areas, and business functionality is not the only one (although it certainly is the essential core). Of course a well-designed architecture benefits any program, and not just the largest ones as we've singled out here. We mentioned large applications first because structure is a way of dealing with complexity, so the benefits of structure (and of modeling and design, as we'll demonstrate) compound as application size grows large. Another benefit of structure is that it enables code reuse: Design time is the easiest time to structure an application as a collection of self-contained modules or components. Eventually, enterprises build up a library of models of components, each one representing an implementation stored in a library of code modules. When another application needs the same functionality, the designer can quickly import its module from the library. At coding time, the developer can just as quickly import the code module into the application. http://tc.eserver.org/27583.html http://tc.eserver.org/27583.html UML is the way the world models not only application structure, behavior, and architecture, but also business process and data structure. http://tc.eserver.org/27374.html http://tc.eserver.org/27374.html Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML-based architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. The architecture and a related DTD and a W3C-Schema was developed by IBM. http://tc.eserver.org/27285.html http://tc.eserver.org/27285.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/27087.html http://tc.eserver.org/27087.html XML is 'extensible markup language' and SGML is 'standard generalized markup language' is somewhat 'related' to XML and HTML. http://tc.eserver.org/27077.html http://tc.eserver.org/27077.html DITA experts Don Day, Michael Priestley, and Gretchen Hargis address the topic architecture of DITA, tips and techniques, and general DITA questions. http://tc.eserver.org/27078.html http://tc.eserver.org/27078.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/27082.html http://tc.eserver.org/27082.html So, your company has decided to implement XML. You are tasked with figuring out exactly how, when, and why. For starters, you should find out what XML is and what you can do with it. This tutorial serves to explain the basics of XML documents. Once you understand what they are, it can help you know the how, when, and why. XML fits into a lot of places. It can replace, or work with, other technologies. It can be used instead of, or to supplement, scripts. It can work with databases, or on its own to store readable content. Before you dive into what XML might do, it can help if you learn a little more about it. http://tc.eserver.org/27040.html http://tc.eserver.org/27040.html There are several tools that can help you generate an XML Schema document from either an instance or a DTD. This hack shows you how to get the job done with little fuss. http://tc.eserver.org/27042.html http://tc.eserver.org/27042.html Use JavaScript to ensure that you write correct, well-formed XML in web pages. http://tc.eserver.org/27048.html http://tc.eserver.org/27048.html The DITA Knowledge Base pages provide a reliable basis of technical and educational information on the standard. http://tc.eserver.org/27035.html http://tc.eserver.org/27035.html The nXML mode for GNU Emacs provides a powerful environment for creating valid XML documents. http://tc.eserver.org/27038.html http://tc.eserver.org/27038.html Sometimes your XML output from various programs is less than attractive. Spruce it up in a hurry with Xalan C++ and an identity transform. http://tc.eserver.org/27033.html http://tc.eserver.org/27033.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/27034.html http://tc.eserver.org/27034.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/27037.html http://tc.eserver.org/27037.html If you are handling many XML documents, sometimes you need to check the differences between two or more documents. You can perform diffs of XML documents with online and command-line tools. http://tc.eserver.org/27001.html http://tc.eserver.org/27001.html DITA is an architecture for creating topic-oriented, information-typed content that can be reused and single-sourced in a variety of ways. It is also an architecture for creating new information types and describing new information domains based on existing types and domains. This allows groups to create very specific, targeted document type definitions using a process called specialization, while still sharing common output transforms and design rules developed for more general types and domains. http://tc.eserver.org/27000.html http://tc.eserver.org/27000.html The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is an XML-based, end-to-end architecture for authoring, producing, and delivering technical information. This architecture consists of a set of design principles for creating 'information-typed' modules at a topic level and for using that content in delivery modes such as online help and product support portals on the Web. This document is a roadmap for DITA: what it is and how it applies to technical documentation. http://tc.eserver.org/26935.html http://tc.eserver.org/26935.html This will be the story of my life from the time my boss came to me and said, 'Hey, maybe we could do that Knowledge Base in XML. I hear good things about that XML,' to the time that I figured out everything I needed to know and deployed a fully functional XML knowledge base to the world. http://tc.eserver.org/26890.html http://tc.eserver.org/26890.html 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. http://tc.eserver.org/26877.html http://tc.eserver.org/26877.html The open source Firefox Web browser continues to grow in popularity. Users like the security and convenience features it offers. Developers like the Firefox attention to standards compliance, inherited from its Mozilla roots. The most recent version, Firefox 1.5, comes with many features for XML developers, including XML parsing, XHTML, CSS, XSLT, SVG, XML Events in JavaScriptâ„¢, and XForms. Additional third-party extensions provide even more XML support. In this article, Uche Ogbuji provides an overview of XML features in Firefox 1.5. http://tc.eserver.org/26876.html http://tc.eserver.org/26876.html This second article in the series, "XML in Firefox 1.5," focuses on basic XML processing. Firefox supports XML parsing, Cascading Stylesheets (CSS), and XSLT stylesheets. http://tc.eserver.org/26452.html http://tc.eserver.org/26452.html The JAXP API allows Java programmers easy access to the power and flexibility of XML parsing and filtering and XSLT transformation. However, while many programmers utilize JAXP for simple XML parsing or single-shot XSLT transformation, going further to construct processing pipelines often proves difficult. http://tc.eserver.org/26198.html http://tc.eserver.org/26198.html This paper describes how changes to XML documents and data files can be represented in XML and proposes a delta format for XML. Although Canonical XML provides a mechanism for verifying that two XML files or documents are equal, it is more often necessary to determine the differences between two XML documents. Such differences should ideally be represented in XML and this paper describes how such changes can be represented in XML with minimal additional attributes and elements. The paper describes how any changes can be simply represented using this delta format, and how the delta file has the same look and feel as the original files being compared. The paper describes how the delta file can be transformed into HTML for viewing by using a simple XSL style sheet, and by modifying this style sheet changes to particular XML file types can be presented to users in a way that suits their view. In addition, the delta file can be processed by any XML application for other purposes. http://tc.eserver.org/26199.html http://tc.eserver.org/26199.html As XML becomes ubiquitous so the need for powerful tools to manipulate XML data becomes more pressing. Merging XML is particularly tricky, but often necessary to consolidate data feeds from heterogeneous systems, or to synchronize submissions of XML fragments which make up a larger document. An automated mechanism for defining and controlling such merges has been developed and is demonstrated to provide a consistent, adaptable and resilient solution to this problem. Integration into an information pipeline allows limitless customization. http://tc.eserver.org/26201.html http://tc.eserver.org/26201.html XML has become the de facto standard format for web publishing and data transportation. Since online information changes frequently, being able to quickly detect changes in XML documents is important to Internet query systems, search engines, and continuous query systems. Previous work in change detection on XML, or other hierarchically structured documents, used an ordered tree model, in which left-to-right order among siblings is important and it can affect the change result. This paper argues that an unordered model (only ancestor relationships are significant) is more suitable for most database applications. Using an unordered model, change detection is substantially harder than using the ordered model, but the change result that it generates is more accurate. This paper proposes X-Diff, an effective algorithm that integrates key XML structure characteristics with standard tree-to-tree correction techniques. The algorithm is analyzed and compared with XyDiff [CAM02], a published XML diff algorithm. An experimental evaluation on both algorithms is provided. http://tc.eserver.org/26179.html http://tc.eserver.org/26179.html The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) is a hot topic among those who author, edit, deliver and manage content. But adopting a standard architecture is an important decision that requires up front research and knowledge of the pitfalls. Find out if DITA is right for your organization. Read this whitepaper to learn more (PDF). http://tc.eserver.org/26062.html http://tc.eserver.org/26062.html A few of aspects that are easy to miss in the excitement of trying to implement an XML-based information architecture in an organization. http://tc.eserver.org/25978.html http://tc.eserver.org/25978.html 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). http://tc.eserver.org/25981.html http://tc.eserver.org/25981.html This white paper discusses the role of an XML repository into today’s enterprise infrastructure. Virtually every database and repository provide some degree of XML support; however, there are important distinctions between support for XML as a data type and the role of a repository whose architecture and operations are optimized to support the broad family of XML recommendations and standards. Specifically, this white paper will explore: The nature and extent of XML use across the enterprise, cost and quality of service implications of an infrastructure with, and without, an XML repository, the evolution of XML repositories from both a technology and a market segment perspective, criteria to determine when an XML repository would add significant value to an existing infrastructure, and capability and packaging recommendations for XML repository functionality that can be used to evaluate specific offerings. http://tc.eserver.org/25849.html http://tc.eserver.org/25849.html RELAX NG is a simple schema language for XML, based on RELAX and TREX. A RELAX NG schema specifies a pattern for the structure and content of an XML document. A RELAX NG schema thus identifies a class of XML documents consisting of those documents that match the pattern. A RELAX NG schema is itself an XML document. http://tc.eserver.org/25260.html http://tc.eserver.org/25260.html This article will show you how to create a custom DTD that will add custom attributes, and will also show you how to validate documents that use those new attributes. http://tc.eserver.org/25039.html http://tc.eserver.org/25039.html This article weighs the pros and cons of XML for some applications (publishing), and explores why it is the best possible solution for many programming and publishing needs. http://tc.eserver.org/24875.html http://tc.eserver.org/24875.html Reviews Altova Authentic, a free, WYSIWYG, Windows-based, forms-based XML editor. http://tc.eserver.org/24264.html http://tc.eserver.org/24264.html Introduces the three technologies that comprise the Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) family of specifications as defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). http://tc.eserver.org/24247.html http://tc.eserver.org/24247.html The question is not whether XML will succeed as a widespread data format, but rather how fast, to what level and with what products. With the rapid maturing of the XML data standard by the W3C and the creation of many related standards, hundreds of leading vendors will ship XML-enabled products over the next 24 months. These products will drive a limited, but important, number of corporate and commercial publishing applications that will both prove the market viability of XML and also generate a small but critical mass of XML data that will trigger rapid widespread adoption. http://tc.eserver.org/24188.html http://tc.eserver.org/24188.html Now we come to the point of actually producing documents using structural markup—either eXtensible Markup Language (XML) or Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). Our sequence of topics illustrates the recommended steps to follow when you first implement structural markup: Learn about it and convince yourself and your organization of its benefits, identify your specific goals and expectations, and spend plenty of time selecting or designing your document structures. Only then should you get down to the specifics of how to produce XML or SGML documents. If you simply try to drop in an XML editor to replace your current word processing application, you will be lucky to avoid total disaster. http://tc.eserver.org/24091.html http://tc.eserver.org/24091.html One of the key differentiations between compositors and simple patterns is that compositors are patterns that don’t directly map to any individual element withinthe schema. I emphasize this distinction because it can be easy to forget when focusing on a schema instead of the instance document. http://tc.eserver.org/23599.html http://tc.eserver.org/23599.html DITA is an architecture for creating topicoriented, information-typed content that can be reused and single-sourced in a variety of ways. It is also an architecture for creating new information types and describing new information domains, allowing groups to create very specific, targeted document type definitions using a process called specialization, while at the same time reusing common output transforms and design rules. We discuss several methods that can be used to extend DITA’s basic topic types. http://tc.eserver.org/23521.html http://tc.eserver.org/23521.html XML is a language for creating data-description languages. http://tc.eserver.org/22836.html http://tc.eserver.org/22836.html XML is becoming the data format of choice for a wide variety of information systems solutions. Common applications using XML include document transmission in B2B systems, message format construction for integration of Internet applications with legacy systems, binding of XML data to visual and non-visual controls, data storage and retrieval, and various data manipulation activities within applications. http://tc.eserver.org/22805.html http://tc.eserver.org/22805.html Ask any guru about the next frontier in publishing and you'll hear the snazzy-sounding letters 'XML.' But according to Susan Glinert, who bears XML battle scars, the future is not bright. It boggles the mind that anyone bothered to invent a publishing solution that plunges both right- and left-brained people into absolute chaos. http://tc.eserver.org/22747.html http://tc.eserver.org/22747.html The Semantic Web really is an attempt to reconceptualize and reengineer AI for the Web. Discusses the path forward for successfully selling and developing Semantic Web technology into industry. http://tc.eserver.org/22750.html http://tc.eserver.org/22750.html Topic Maps provide a very flexible and robust way to add arbitrary data to a relational databases at runtime. Moreover, Topic Maps come with a predefined exchange mechanism (the XML Topic Maps (XTM) interchange syntax) to allow data to be exported to XML. http://tc.eserver.org/22746.html http://tc.eserver.org/22746.html After spending a week of toil and labor in the Semantic Web mines, I've returned to the surface, to the sweetness and light of the XML developer community. And what do I find but a crisis about the XML part of the technical book publishing industry, as well as a monster thread about character entity names. http://tc.eserver.org/22646.html http://tc.eserver.org/22646.html This document discusses the evolution of the Internet from an unorganized collection of web pages to an organized collection of data. It outlines how XML is at the center of that transformation, and how organizations can take advantage of this evolution with the development of web based services. http://tc.eserver.org/22644.html http://tc.eserver.org/22644.html XML was designed to be multi-lingual. Therefore, one is not restricted to only 7-bit ASCII characters when creating XML documents. Document authors can use the 16-bit+ Unicode 2.1 standard as well. As long as a mapping exists between the various DTDs for a particular international data file, one application could process data from many different languages at once. http://tc.eserver.org/22589.html http://tc.eserver.org/22589.html Buzz about the value and implications of XML has reached an all-time high, with lofty claims of its potential to transform business and society, doing everything from simple document formatting to curing the common cold. I don't recommend you empty your medicine cabinet just yet. However, do take seriously the developments surrounding XML and its associated technologies. While XML might not merit all the hyperbole, it remains useful. Knowing how to apply this simple meta-language can help you create solutions that will give you a strong competitive advantage. http://tc.eserver.org/22578.html http://tc.eserver.org/22578.html Introduces readers to Voice Extensible Markup Language (VXML), a markup language that allows vocal interaction between users and applications via a telephone-based communication system. The author also discusses World Wide Web Consortium specifications for VXML. http://tc.eserver.org/22392.html http://tc.eserver.org/22392.html Metadata has taken on a new look with the advent of XML and digital resources. XML provides a new versatile structure for tagging and packaging metadata as the rapid proliferation of digital resources demands both rapidly produced descriptive data and the encoding of more types of metadata. Two emerging standards are attempting to harness these developments for library needs. The first is the Metadata Object and Description Schema (MODS), a MARC-compatible XML schema for encoding descriptive data. The second standard is the Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS), a highly flexible XML schema for packaging the descriptive metadata and various other important types of metadata needed to assure the use and preservation of digital resources. http://tc.eserver.org/22359.html http://tc.eserver.org/22359.html A journal publishing articles about information design using XML. http://tc.eserver.org/22297.html http://tc.eserver.org/22297.html SOAP or Simple Object Access Protocol has become a standard mechanism in the world of Web Services. Now what exactly does this mean? And how can I make use of it inside Acrobat? http://tc.eserver.org/22235.html http://tc.eserver.org/22235.html This chapter explores the various methods for mapping between XML and relational data models. It focuses on the underlying fundamentals: goals and requirements for mapping between XML and relational data; issues that arise when mapping, such as handling of datatypes and order; and when a particular technique can or cannot support update operations.