book

XML in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

by Elliotte Rusty Harold, W. Scott Means

September 2004

Intermediate to advanced

712 pages

24h 45m

English

O'Reilly Media, Inc.

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1.2. What XML Is Not
1.3. Portable Data
1.4. How XML Works
1.5. The Evolution of XML
2. XML Fundamentals
2.1. XML Documents and XML Files
2.2. Elements, Tags, and Character Data
2.2.1. Tag Syntax
2.2.1.1. Empty elements2.2.1.2. Case-sensitivity
2.2.2. XML Trees
2.2.2.1. Parents and children2.2.2.2. The root element
2.2.3. Mixed Content
2.3. Attributes
2.4. XML Names
2.5. References
2.6. CDATA Sections
2.7. Comments
2.8. Processing Instructions
2.9. The XML Declaration
2.9.1. The version Attribute
2.9.2. The encoding Attribute
2.9.3. The standalone Attribute
2.10. Checking Documents for Well-Formedness
3. Document Type Definitions (DTDs)
3.1. Validation
3.1.1. A Simple DTD Example
3.1.2. The Document Type Declaration
3.1.2.1. Public IDs
3.1.3. Internal DTD Subsets
3.1.4. Validating a Document
3.2. Element Declarations
3.2.1. #PCDATA
3.2.2. Child Elements
3.2.3. Sequences
3.2.4. The Number of Children
3.2.5. Choices
3.2.6. Parentheses
3.2.7. Mixed Content
3.2.8. Empty Elements
3.2.9. ANY
3.3. Attribute Declarations
3.3.1. Attribute Types
3.3.1.1. CDATA3.3.1.2. NMTOKEN3.3.1.3. NMTOKENS3.3.1.4. Enumeration3.3.1.5. ID3.3.1.6. IDREF3.3.1.7. IDREFS3.3.1.8. ENTITY3.3.1.9. ENTITIES3.3.1.10. NOTATION
3.3.2. Attribute Defaults
3.4. General Entity Declarations
3.5. External Parsed General Entities
3.5.1. Text Declarations
3.6. External Unparsed Entities and Notations
3.6.1. Notations
3.6.2. Embedding Unparsed Entities in Documents
3.7. Parameter Entities
3.7.1. Parameter Entity Syntax
3.7.2. Redefining Parameter Entities
3.7.3. External DTD Subsets
3.8. Conditional Inclusion
3.9. Two DTD Examples
3.9.1. DTDs for Record-Like Documents
3.9.2. DTDs for Narrative Documents
3.10. Locating Standard DTDs
4. Namespaces
4.1. The Need for Namespaces
4.2. Namespace Syntax
4.2.1. Qualified Names, Prefixes, and Local Parts
4.2.2. Binding Prefixes to URIs
4.2.3. Namespace URIs
4.2.4. Setting a Default Namespace with the xmlns Attribute
4.3. How Parsers Handle Namespaces
4.4. Namespaces and DTDs
4.4.1. Parameter Entity References for Namespace Prefixes
5. Internationalization
5.1. Character-Set Metadata
5.2. The Encoding Declaration
5.3. Text Declarations
5.4. XML-Defined Character Sets
5.5. Unicode
5.5.1. UCS-2 and UTF-16
5.5.2. UTF-8
5.6. ISO Character Sets
5.7. Platform-Dependent Character Sets
5.7.1. Cp1252
5.7.2. MacRoman
5.8. Converting Between Character Sets
5.9. The Default Character Set for XML Documents
5.10. Character References
5.11. xml:lang
5.11.1. Language Codes
5.11.2. Subcodes
5.11.3. ATTLIST Declarations of xml:lang
II. Narrative-Like Documents
6. XML as a Document Format
6.1. SGML’s Legacy
6.2. Narrative Document Structures
6.3. TEI
6.4. DocBook
6.5. OpenOffice
6.6. WordprocessingML
6.7. Document Permanence
6.8. Transformation and Presentation
7. XML on the Web
7.1. XHTML
7.1.1. Moving from HTML to XHTML
7.1.2. Three DTDs for XHTML
7.1.3. Browser Support for XHTML
7.1.3.1. The XML declaration and processing instructions7.1.3.2. Empty elements7.1.3.3. Entity references7.1.3.4. Other unsupported features
7.2. Direct Display of XML in Browsers
7.2.1. The xml-stylesheet Processing Instruction
7.2.1.1. The required href and type pseudo-attributes7.2.1.2. The media pseudo-attribute7.2.1.3. The charset pseudo-attribute7.2.1.4. The alternate and title pseudo-attributes
7.2.2. Internet Explorer
7.2.3. Netscape and Mozilla
7.2.4. Alternative Approaches
7.3. Authoring Compound Documents with Modular XHTML
7.3.1. Mixing XHTML into Your Applications
7.3.2. Mixing Your Applications into XHTML
7.3.3. Mixing Your Own XHTML
7.4. Prospects for Improved Web Search Methods
7.4.1. RDF
7.4.2. Dublin Core
7.4.3. Robots
8. XSL Transformations (XSLT)
8.1. An Example Input Document
8.2. xsl:stylesheet and xsl:transform
8.3. Stylesheet Processors
8.3.1. Command-Line Processors
8.3.2. The xml-stylesheet Processing Instruction
8.4. Templates and Template Rules
8.5. Calculating the Value of an Element with xsl:value-of
8.6. Applying Templates with xsl:apply-templates
8.7. The Built-in Template Rules
8.7.1. The Default Template Rule for Text and Attribute Nodes
8.7.2. The Default Template Rule for Element and Root Nodes
8.7.3. The Default Template Rule for Comment and Processing Instruction Nodes
8.7.4. The Default Template Rule for Namespace Nodes
8.8. Modes
8.9. Attribute Value Templates
8.10. XSLT and Namespaces
8.11. Other XSLT Elements
9. XPath
9.1. The Tree Structure of an XML Document
9.2. Location Paths
9.2.1. The Root Location Path
9.2.2. Child Element Location Steps
9.2.3. Attribute Location Steps
9.2.4. The comment( ), text( ), and processing-instruction( ) Location Steps
9.2.5. Wildcards
9.2.6. Multiple Matches with |
9.3. Compound Location Paths
9.3.1. Building Compound Location Paths from Location Steps with /
9.3.2. Selecting from Descendants with //
9.3.3. Selecting the Parent Element with ..
9.3.4. Selecting the Context Node with .
9.4. Predicates
9.5. Unabbreviated Location Paths
9.6. General XPath Expressions
9.6.1. Numbers
9.6.2. Strings
9.6.3. Booleans
9.7. XPath Functions
9.7.1. Node-Set Functions
9.7.2. String Functions
9.7.3. Boolean Functions
9.7.4. Number Functions
10. XLinks
10.1. Simple Links
10.2. Link Behavior
10.2.1. xlink:show
10.2.2. xlink:actuate
10.3. Link Semantics
10.4. Extended Links
10.4.1. Locators
10.4.2. Arcs
10.4.2.1. Multiple arcs from one arc element10.4.2.2. Arc titles10.4.2.3. Arc roles
10.4.3. Local Resources
10.4.4. Title Elements
10.5. Linkbases
10.6. DTDs for XLinks
10.7. Base URIs
11. XPointers
11.1. XPointers on URLs
11.2. XPointers in Links
11.3. Shorthand Pointers
11.4. Child Sequences
11.5. Namespaces
11.6. Points
11.7. Ranges
11.7.1. The range( ) Function
11.7.2. The range-inside( ) Function
11.7.3. The range-to( ) Function
11.7.4. The string-range( ) Function
11.7.5. Relative XPointers
11.7.6. here( )
11.7.7. origin( )
12. XInclude
12.1. The include Element
12.2. Including Text Files
12.3. Content Negotiation
12.4. Fallbacks
12.5. XPointers
13. Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
13.1. The Levels of CSS
13.2. CSS Syntax
13.3. Associating Stylesheets with XML Documents
13.4. Selectors
13.4.1. The Universal Selector
13.4.2. Matching Descendants, Children, and Siblings
13.4.3. Attribute Selectors
13.4.4. Pseudo-Class Selectors
13.4.5. Pseudo-Element Selectors
13.5. The Display Property
13.5.1. Inline Elements
13.5.2. Block Elements
13.5.3. List Elements
13.5.4. Hidden Elements
13.5.5. Table Elements
13.6. Pixels, Points, Picas, and Other Units of Length
13.7. Font Properties
13.8. Text Properties
13.9. Colors
14. XSL Formatting Objects (XSL-FO)
14.1. XSL Formatting Objects
14.2. The Structure of an XSL-FO Document
14.3. Laying Out the Master Pages
14.3.1. Flowing Content into the Pages
14.3.2. Generating the Finished Document
14.4. XSL-FO Properties
14.5. Choosing Between CSS and XSL-FO
15. Resource Directory Description Language (RDDL)
15.1. What’s at the End of a Namespace URL?
15.2. RDDL Syntax
15.3. Natures
15.4. Purposes
III. Record-Like Documents
16. XML as a Data Format
16.1. Why Use XML for Data?
16.1.1. Mixed Environments
16.1.2. Communications Protocols
16.1.2.1. XML as a part of the Web: REST16.1.2.2. XML for procedure calls over HTTP: XML-RPC16.1.2.3. XML envelopes and messages: SOAP16.1.2.4. Other options: BEEP and XMPP
16.1.3. Object Serialization
16.1.4. File Formats
16.1.5. Databases
16.1.6. RDF
16.2. Developing Record-Like XML Formats
16.2.1. Basic Application Requirements
16.2.1.1. Where and how will new documents be created?16.2.1.2. How complex will the document be?16.2.1.3. How will documents be consumed?16.2.1.4. How widely will the resulting documents be distributed?16.2.1.5. Will others need to incorporate this document structure into their own applications?
16.2.2. Investigating Available Options
16.2.2.1. XML vocabulary development
16.2.3. Planning for Growth
16.2.4. Choosing a Validation Method
16.2.5. Namespace Support
16.2.5.1. Will instance documents need to be validated using a DTD?16.2.5.2. Will markup from this application need to be embedded in other applications?16.2.5.3. Are there legacy XML document formats to support?
16.2.6. Maintaining Compatibility
16.3. Sharing Your XML Format
17. XML Schemas
17.1. Overview
17.1.1. Schemas Versus DTDs
17.1.2. Namespace Issues
17.2. Schema Basics
17.2.1. Document Organization
17.2.2. Annotations
17.2.2.1. The xs:documentation element17.2.2.2. The xs:appinfo element
17.2.3. Element Declarations
17.2.3.1. Simple types
17.2.4. Attribute Declarations
17.2.4.1. Attribute groups
17.3. Working with Namespaces
17.3.1. Target Namespaces
17.3.2. Controlling Qualification
17.4. Complex Types
17.4.1. Occurrence Constraints
17.4.2. Types of Element Content
17.5. Empty Elements
17.5.1. The complexContent Element
17.6. Simple Content
17.6.1. Defining New Simple Types
17.6.2. Facets
17.6.2.1. Handling whitespace17.6.2.2. Restricting length17.6.2.3. Enumerations17.6.2.4. Numeric facets17.6.2.4.1. Minimum and maximum values17.6.2.4.2. Length and precision17.6.2.5. Enforcing format17.6.2.6. Lists17.6.2.7. Unions
17.7. Mixed Content
17.7.1. Allowing Mixed Content
17.7.2. Controlling Element Placement
17.7.3. Using Groups
17.8. Allowing Any Content
17.8.1. Using Multiple Documents
17.8.1.1. Including external declarations17.8.1.2. Modifying external declarations17.8.1.3. Importing schemas for other namespaces
17.8.2. Derived Complex Types
17.8.2.1. Deriving by extension17.8.2.2. Deriving by restriction17.8.2.3. Using derived types
17.8.3. Substitution Groups
17.9. Controlling Type Derivation
17.9.1. Abstract Elements and Types
17.9.2. The Final Attribute
17.9.3. Setting fixed Facets
17.9.4. Uniqueness and Keys
17.9.4.1. Forcing uniqueness17.9.4.2. Keys and references
18. Programming Models
18.1. Common XML Processing Models
18.1.1. Text-Based XML Processing
18.1.2. Event-Driven XML Processing
18.1.3. Tree-based XML Processing
18.1.4. Pull-Based XML Processing
18.1.5. Transformations
18.1.6. Abstracting XML Away
18.1.7. Standards and Extensions
18.1.8. Combining Approaches
18.2. Common XML Processing Issues
18.2.1. What You Get Is Not What You Saw
18.2.2. To Read the DTD or Not To Read the DTD?
18.2.3. Whitespace
18.2.4. Entity References
18.2.5. CDATA Sections
18.2.6. Comments
18.2.7. Processing Instructions
18.2.8. Notations
18.2.9. Unparsed Entities
18.3. Generating XML Documents
19. Document Object Model (DOM)
19.1. DOM Foundations
19.1.1. DOM Notation
19.1.2. DOM Strengths and Weaknesses
19.2. Structure of the DOM Core
19.2.1. Generic Versus Specific DOM Interfaces
19.3. Node and Other Generic Interfaces
19.3.1. The NodeList Interface
19.3.2. The NamedNodeMap Interface
19.3.3. Relating Document Structure to Nodes
19.4. Specific Node-Type Interfaces
19.4.1. Structural Nodes
19.4.1.1. DocumentType19.4.1.2. ProcessingInstruction19.4.1.3. Notation19.4.1.4. Entity
19.4.2. Content Nodes
19.4.2.1. Document19.4.2.2. DocumentFragment19.4.2.3. Element19.4.2.4. Attr19.4.2.5. CharacterData19.4.2.6. Comment19.4.2.7. EntityReference19.4.2.8. Text19.4.2.9. CDATASection
19.5. The DOMImplementation Interface
19.6. DOM Level 3 Interfaces
19.6.1. DOMStringList
19.6.1.1. NameList19.6.1.2. DOMImplementationList19.6.1.3. DOMImplementationSource19.6.1.4. TypeInfo19.6.1.5. UserDataHandler19.6.1.6. DOMError19.6.1.7. DOMErrorHandler19.6.1.8. DOMLocator19.6.1.9. DOMConfiguration
19.7. Parsing a Document with DOM
19.8. A Simple DOM Application
20. Simple API for XML (SAX)
20.1. The ContentHandler Interface
20.2. Features and Properties
20.3. Filters
IV. Reference
21. XML Reference
21.1. How to Use This Reference
21.2. Annotated Sample Documents
21.3. XML Syntax
21.3.1. Global Syntax Structures
21.3.2. DTD (Document Type Definition)
21.3.3. Document Body
21.3.4. Namespaces
21.4. Constraints
21.4.1. Well-Formedness Constraints
21.4.2. Validity Constraints
21.4.3. Namespace Constraints
21.5. XML 1.0 Document Grammar
21.5.1. EBNF Grammar for XML 1.0 (Third Edition)
21.5.1.1. Document21.5.1.2. Character range21.5.1.3. Whitespace21.5.1.4. Names and tokens21.5.1.5. Literals21.5.1.6. Character data21.5.1.7. Comments21.5.1.8. Processing instructions21.5.1.9. CDATA sections21.5.1.10. Prolog21.5.1.11. Document type definition21.5.1.12. External subset21.5.1.13. Standalone document declaration21.5.1.14. Element21.5.1.15. Start-tag21.5.1.16. End-tag21.5.1.17. Content of elements21.5.1.18. Tags for empty elements21.5.1.19. Element type declaration21.5.1.20. Element-content models21.5.1.21. Mixed-content declaration21.5.1.22. Attribute-list declaration21.5.1.23. Attribute types21.5.1.24. Enumerated attribute types21.5.1.25. Attribute defaults21.5.1.26. Conditional section21.5.1.27. Character reference21.5.1.28. Entity reference21.5.1.29. Entity declaration21.5.1.30. External entity declaration21.5.1.31. Text declaration21.5.1.32. Well-formed external parsed entity21.5.1.33. Encoding declaration21.5.1.34. Notation declarations21.5.1.35. Characters
21.6. XML 1.1 Document Grammar
21.6.1. EBNF Grammar for XML 1.1
21.6.1.1. Document21.6.1.2. Character range21.6.1.3. Whitespace21.6.1.4. Names and tokens21.6.1.5. Literals21.6.1.6. Character data21.6.1.7. Comments21.6.1.8. Processing instructions21.6.1.9. CDATA sections21.6.1.10. Prolog21.6.1.11. Document type definition21.6.1.12. External subset21.6.1.13. Standalone document declaration21.6.1.14. Element21.6.1.15. Start-tag21.6.1.16. End-tag21.6.1.17. Content of elements21.6.1.18. Tags for empty elements21.6.1.19. Element type declaration21.6.1.20. Element-content models21.6.1.21. Mixed-content declaration21.6.1.22. Attribute-list declaration21.6.1.23. Attribute types21.6.1.24. Enumerated attribute types21.6.1.25. Attribute defaults21.6.1.26. Conditional section21.6.1.27. Character reference21.6.1.28. Entity reference21.6.1.29. Entity declaration21.6.1.30. External entity declaration21.6.1.31. Text declaration21.6.1.32. Well-formed external parsed entity21.6.1.33. Encoding declaration21.6.1.34. Notation declarations
22. Schemas Reference
22.1. The Schema Namespaces
22.2. Schema Elements
22.3. Built-in Types
22.4. Instance Document Attributes
23. XPath Reference
23.1. The XPath Data Model
23.2. Data Types
23.3. Location Paths
23.3.1. Abbreviated Syntax
23.3.2. Axes
23.3.3. Node Tests
23.4. Predicates
23.5. XPath Functions
24. XSLT Reference
24.1. The XSLT Namespace
24.2. XSLT Elements
24.3. XSLT Functions
24.4. TrAX
25. DOM Reference
25.1. Object Hierarchy
25.2. Object Reference
26. SAX Reference
26.1. The org.xml.sax Package
26.2. The org.xml.sax.helpers Package
26.3. SAX Features and Properties
26.4. The org.xml.sax.ext Package
27. Character Sets
27.1. Character Tables
27.1.1. ASCII
27.1.2. ISO-8859-1, Latin-1
27.1.2.1. C1 controls27.1.2.2. Latin-1
27.2. HTML4 Entity Sets
27.3. Other Unicode Blocks
27.3.1. Latin Extended-A
27.3.2. Latin Extended-B
27.3.3. IPA Extensions
27.3.4. Spacing Modifier Letters
27.3.5. Combining Diacritical Marks
27.3.6. Greek and Coptic
27.3.7. Cyrillic
27.3.8. Armenian
27.3.9. Hebrew
27.3.10. Arabic
27.3.11. Devanagari
27.3.12. Thai
27.3.13. Tibetan
27.3.14. Ethiopic
27.3.15. Latin Extended Additional
27.3.16. Greek Extended
27.3.17. General Punctuation
27.3.18. Currency Symbols
27.3.19. Letter-Like Symbols
27.3.20. Arrows
27.3.21. Mathematical Operators
27.3.22. Miscellaneous Technical
27.3.23. Optical Character Recognition
27.3.24. Geometric Shapes
27.3.25. Miscellaneous Symbols
27.3.26. Dingbats
About the Authors
Colophon
Copyright

Content preview from XML in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Databases

XML can play a role in the communications between databases and other software, providing information in an easily reusable form. On the client side, XML data files can be used to offload some nontransactional data search and retrieval applications from busy web servers down to the desktop web browser. On the server side, XML can be used as an alternate delivery mechanism for query results.

XML is also finding use as a supplement to information stored in relational databases, and more and more relational databases include native support for XML, both as a data-retrieval format and a data type. Native XML databases, which store XML documents and provide querying and retrieval tools, are also becoming more widely available. These tools provide a more structured way of storing XML information than collecting documents in a filesystem.

Tip

For more information on the wide variety of XML and data-management tools available and ways to use XML with databases, see http://www.rpbourret.com/xml/XMLDatabaseProds.htm.

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XML: Visual QuickStart Guide, Second Edition

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XML in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

by Elliotte Rusty Harold, W. Scott Means

Databases

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