Java and XML

Chapter 9. Web Publishing Frameworks

This chapter begins our look at specific Java and XML topics. So far, we have covered the basics of using XML from Java, looking at the SAX and DOM APIs to manipulate XML and the fundamentals of using and creating XML itself. We’ve also looked at how JDOM can provide a more Java-centric means of using our XML data and documents within Java programs. Now that you have a grasp on using XML from your code, we will spend time on specific applications. The next six chapters represent the most significant applications of XML, and, in particular, how those applications are implemented in the Java space. While there are literally hundreds and soon to be thousands of important applications of XML, the topics in these chapters are those that continually seem to be in the spotlight, and that have a significant potential to change the way traditional development processes occur.

We begin our look at these hot topics with the one XML application that seems to have generated the largest amount of excitement in the XML and Java communities: the web publishing framework. Although we have continually emphasized that generating presentation from content is perhaps over-hyped when compared to the value of the portable data that XML provides, using XML for presentation styling is still very important. This importance increases when looking at web-based applications.

Over the next five years, virtually every major application will either be completely web-based, or ...