Building Oracle XML Applications

What Can I Do with XML?

Beyond encoding data in a textual format, an XML document doesn’t do much of anything on its own. The true power of XML lies in the tools that process it. In this section, we take a quick tour of the interesting ways to work with XML documents using tools and technologies widely available today from a number of different vendors.

Work with XML Using Text-Based Tools

Since an XML document is just text, you can:

• View and edit it with vi, Emacs, Notepad, or your favorite text editor

• Search it with grep, sed, findstr, or any other text-based utility

• Source-control it using systems like CVS, ClearCase, or RCS

These and other tools can treat an XML file the same as any other text file for common development tasks.

Edit XML Using DTD-Aware Editors

More sophisticated XML editing tools read an XML DTD to understand the lexicon of legal tag names for a particular XML vocabulary, as well as the various constraints on valid element combinations expressed in the DTD. Using this information, the tools assist you in creating and editing XML documents that comply with that particular DTD. Many support multiple views of your XML document including a raw XML view, a WYSIWYG view, and a view that augments the WYSIWYG display by displaying each markup tag.

As an example, this book was created and edited entirely in XML using SoftQuad’s XMetal 1.0 product in conjunction with the DocBook DTD, a standard XML vocabulary for authoring technical manuals. Figure 1.2 shows what XMetal ...