Refresher/XML
This is a refresher course for those who need to review basic knowledge of XML.
Basic Concepts
[edit | edit source]- Character data example: <![CDATA[<sender>John Smith</sender>]]>
- Document Object Model (DOM) a cross-platform, language-independent convention for representing and interacting with objects in HTML, XHTML and XML documents
- Document Type Definition (DTD): markup declarations defining a document type for an SGML-family markup language (SGML, XML, HTML). XML uses a subset of SGML DTD
- Extensible Markup Language (XML): markup language defines rules for encoding documents in a format both human-readable and machine-readable
- Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL): a family of languages used to transform and render XML documents
- Semantics: the study of meaning and the relation between signifiers
- XML data binding: a means of representing information in an XML document as a business object in computer memory
- XML document structure: must have root tag, be case sensitive and close all tags
- XML for Analysis (XMLA): an industry standard for data access in analytical systems, such as OLAP and data mining
- XML namespaces: used for providing uniquely named elements and attributes in an XML document, WPF Example 1: Because of xmlns:="..." and xmlns:x="...", <StackPanel x:Name="foo" /> has 2 name resolutions StackPanel and x:Name
- XML Path Language (XPath): a non-XML language, used by XSLT, for addressing the parts of an XML document
- XQuery: programming language designed to query XML data collections
- XSL Formatting Objects (XSL-FO): an XML language for specifying the visual formatting of an XML document
- XSL Transformation (XSLT): an XML language for transforming XML documents
Serialization
[edit | edit source]- Binary serialization: serializing an object in binay format -- entire object state is saved and instance identity is preserved
- Deserialization: reverse of serialization
- marshalling (similar to serialization): the process of transforming the memory representation of an object to a data format suitable for storage or transmission
- serialization: converting a data structure into a format that can be stored and "resurrected" later
- Unmarshalling: reverse of marshalling and similar to deserialization
- XML serialization: serializing an object into an XML file
XML Schema
[edit | edit source]- Processing instruction -- Syntax <?PITarget PIContent?> -- Example <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
- XML Schema: description of a type of XML document and is one of several XML schema languages
- Schema is an abstract collection of metadata, consisting of a set of schema components
- Schema components: element and attribute declarations and complex and simple type definitions
- Schema documents: the source language definitions of schema components