XML Unleashed

Namespaces and the Document Object Model

Although you won't learn the details of the Document Object Model (DOM) until Part III, "Processing XML Documents," it's worth taking a moment to see how namespaces are accessed from the DOM. In case you aren't familiar with the DOM, it is essentially a programmatic interface for accessing and manipulating XML documents. The DOM interface is both platform-independent and language-independent, which means that it can be used to develop programs and scripts, on virtually any platform, that dynamically access and modify the content and structure of XML documents.

The DOM consists of a hierarchy of object interfaces that represent the structure of XML documents. Each DOM object typically describes a particular ...