Merging XML Files: A New Approach Providing Intelligent Merge of XML Data Sets  

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.

La Fontaine, Robin. DeltaXML.com (2001). Articles>Information Design>XML>Collaboration

Moving from Information Mapping to DITA    

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.

Hughes, Michael A. Intercom (2008). Articles>Information Design>XML>DITA

MSXML Tutorial

This article, the first of three parts, explains what MSXML is and how to access an XML document using JavaScript.

Keogh, Jim and Ken Davidson. ASP Free (2006). Articles>Information Design>XML>Microsoft Windows

MSXML, Concluded

This article, the third of three parts, explains what MSXML is and how to access an XML document using JavaScript.

Keogh, Jim and Ken Davidson. ASP Free (2006). Articles>Information Design>XML>Microsoft Windows

MSXML, Continued

This article, the second of three parts, explains what MSXML is and how to access an XML document using JavaScript.

Keogh, Jim and Ken Davidson. ASP Free (2006). Articles>Information Design>XML>Microsoft Windows

New Metadata Standards for Digital Resources: MODS and METS

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.

Guenther, Rebecca and Sally McCallum. ASIST (2002). Articles>Information Design>Metadata>XML

New to XML

Extensible Markup Language, or XML, provides a way to mark up content that adds information about its purpose. With the information stored using XML, an application known as a parser can reliably extract the relevant information and process it accordingly for multiple situations.

IBM. Articles>Information Design>XML

Newcomers Lured by the Sweet XML of Success

How do you simplify the message you want to broadcast to the world without losing its meaning? For established players it's so much easier because they can get in front of their customers. They can run seminars or publish White Papers that will most likely reach an audience. Or they may gain interest from independent technical consultants to whom users will listen.

Sharpe, Richard. PC Magazine (2004). Articles>Information Design>XML

One-One, One-Many and Many-Many Relations in XML Schema

This article is the second in a series that shows you how to implement relations for designing robust XML schema definitions.

Chaterjee, Jagadish. Dev Articles (2006). Design>Information Design>Databases>XML

Opening Open Formats with XSLT

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.

DuCharme, Bob. OpenOffice.org (2004). Articles>Information Design>XML>XSL

The Organized Web

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.

Duffy, Scott. XGuru (2001). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>XML

Overcoming Objections to XML-Based Authoring Systems

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.

Buehling, Brian. XML.com (2001). Articles>Information Design>Software>XML

Powering Pipelines with JAXP  

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.

Nichols, Thomas. IDEAlliance (2005). Articles>Information Design>Programming>XML

Pretty-Print XML Using a Generic Identity Stylesheet and Xalan

Sometimes your XML output from various programs is less than attractive. Spruce it up in a hurry with Xalan C++ and an identity transform.

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

The Problem of Ingesting and Delivering Complex Objects from Digital Repositories  

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).

Kornbluh, Mark, Jerry Goldman and Dean Rehberger. Michigan State University (2005). Articles>Information Design>Metadata>XML

Publishing XML Content with XSL    

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.

O'Keefe, Sarah S. Intercom (2008). Articles>Information Design>XML>XSL

Python and XML

Python and XML are two very different animals, each with a rich history. Python is a full-scale programming language that has grown from scripting world roots in a very organic way, through the vision and guidance of Python's inventor, Guido van Rossum. Guido continues to take into account the needs of Python developers as Python matures. XML, on the other hand, though strongly impacted by the ideas of a small cadre of visionaries, has grown from standards-committee roots. It has seen both quiet adoption and wrenching battles over its future. Why bother putting the two technologies together?

Jones, Christopher A. and Fred L. Drake. O'Reilly and Associates (2001). Articles>Information Design>Programming>XML

RELAX NG

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.

RELAX NG (1997). Articles>Information Design>Standards>XML

RELAX NG: Complex Patterns  

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.

van der Vlist, Eric. O'Reilly and Associates (2003). Articles>Information Design>XML

Resource Description Framework (RDF)

The Resource Description Framework (RDF) integrates a variety of applications from library catalogs and world-wide directories to syndication and aggregation of news, software, and content to personal collections of music, photos, and events using XML as an interchange syntax. The RDF specifications provide a lightweight ontology system to support the exchange of knowledge on the Web.

W3C (2003). Resources>Information Design>Standards>XML

RSS Applications

A directory of more than 100 online resources about RSS (Really Simple Syndication).

DMoz. Resources>Information Design>XML>RSS

RSS Primer for Knowledge Base Publishers

RSS (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is an XML format designed for sharing headlines and other Web content. Print and Web publishers such as BBC, CNET, CNN, Disney, Forbes, Motley Fool, Wired, Red Herring, Salon, Slashdot, and ZDNet use it to distribute stock tickers, sport scores, weather reports, news headlines and other information.

Montague Institute Review (2003). Articles>Information Design>XML>RSS

Semantic Anchors for XML

XML syntax is just the foundation for data interoperability. The next step is semantic transparency. Some groups are working to address this by defining entire document formats to be adopted wholesale, while other groups are working on ways to express common terminology and concepts at a more granular level. In this installment, Uche Ogbuji looks at XML Topic Maps Published Subjects and Universal Data Element Framework (UDEF), two ideas that take the granular approach by seeking to provide anchors in the semantic stream.

Ogbuji, Uche. IBM (2003). Design>Information Design>XML>Metadata

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