Java and XML, 3rd Edition

Preface

Welcome to the third edition of Java & XML. Whether you’ve read either of the prior editions, both, or neither, I think you’ll find something interesting in the chapters that follow. Quite a bit has changed since the second edition appeared. Specifications that were drafts have been finalized, new APIs have been introduced, and new uses for XML have emerged. Perhaps most significantly, two APIs discussed in the second edition—JDOM and JAXB—saw important changes between the prerelease versions available at the time of writing and their eventual final releases. Although I hope that the text of this edition never becomes out of date, the rate of change in the Java and XML universe makes this unlikely. Nevertheless, I’m confident the bulk of what’s ahead will be useful for years to come, even if some of the details change.

Organization

This book is organized into three sections. The first section, composed of Chapters 1 and 2, provides a basic introduction to XML and related standards. The second—Chapters 3 through 11—explains a wide variety of APIs for creating, manipulating, outputting, and pretty much doing anything else to XML documents. The last section—Chapters 12 and 13—describes two important applications for XML. There’s also a final chapter and an appendix.

Chapter 1, Introduction

We’ll begin with the basics of XML. If you’ve never used XML before, this chapter will give you all the information you need to proceed with the remainder of the chapters. We briefly touch on ...