Oracle Web Applications: PL/SQL Developer's Intro

The Document Type Definition (DTD)

If we’re going to use XML to exchange documents electronically, we must be able to judge whether a document meets a certain set of necessary requirements. For example, an electronic invoice must, at minimum, include an invoice number, a date, and at least one item. Our systems should be smart enough to reject an invoice if it doesn’t contain the required information. Additionally, we should be able to create these requirements ourselves.

You can associate a document type definition (DTD) with an XML document to enforce these sorts of rules. You can either create a DTD or use one that already exists. A major goal of XML is to encourage various groups (industry, community, academic, etc.) to form standards bodies to define collective DTDs. Eventually, these DTDs will form the basis for a variety of electronic data exchange systems.

A DTD is a lot like a database schema.^[24] Just as you would define the columns in a database table, you can use a DTD to define the name and datatype of every element that can appear in an XML document. Just as you define a column constraint, you can require that particular elements appear within the document. Just as you would normalize a set of database tables into one-to-many or one-to-one relationships, you can create the same relationships by defining how the elements can be hierarchically nested.

Let’s revisit the invoice example from the beginning of this chapter. If we were to simply model a basic invoice using ...