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    XML Notes

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    manojkm812593
    XML is a markup language that defines a structure for data using tags. It was designed to carry and describe data rather than display it like HTML. XML allows users to define their own tags and uses either a DTD or XML Schema to validate documents. The DOM and SAX interfaces allow programs to parse and access XML documents. The DOM returns the document as a tree structure while SAX uses events to stream through the document. XML can be transformed with XSLT and messages can be exchanged with SOAP. To build a search engine for large XML data, candidates may propose importing the data into a database, using a full text search, or leveraging a third party XML search solution.

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    XML Notes

    Uploaded by

    manojkm812593
    262 views5 pages
    XML is a markup language that defines a structure for data using tags. It was designed to carry and describe data rather than display it like HTML. XML allows users to define their own tags and uses either a DTD or XML Schema to validate documents. The DOM and SAX interfaces allow programs to parse and access XML documents. The DOM returns the document as a tree structure while SAX uses events to stream through the document. XML can be transformed with XSLT and messages can be exchanged with SOAP. To build a search engine for large XML data, candidates may propose importing the data into a database, using a full text search, or leveraging a third party XML search solution.

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    XML is a markup language that defines a structure for data using tags. It was designed to carry and describe data rather than display it like HTML. XML allows users to define their own tags and uses either a DTD or XML Schema to validate documents. The DOM and SAX interfaces allow programs to parse and access XML documents. The DOM returns the document as a tree structure while SAX uses events to stream through the document. XML can be transformed with XSLT and messages can be exchanged with SOAP. To build a search engine for large XML data, candidates may propose importing the data into a database, using a full text search, or leveraging a third party XML search solution.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    262 views5 pages

    XML Notes

    Uploaded by

    manojkm812593
    XML is a markup language that defines a structure for data using tags. It was designed to carry and describe data rather than display it like HTML. XML allows users to define their own tags and uses either a DTD or XML Schema to validate documents. The DOM and SAX interfaces allow programs to parse and access XML documents. The DOM returns the document as a tree structure while SAX uses events to stream through the document. XML can be transformed with XSLT and messages can be exchanged with SOAP. To build a search engine for large XML data, candidates may propose importing the data into a database, using a full text search, or leveraging a third party XML search solution.

    Copyright:

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    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    of 5

    What is XML?

    • XML is a cross-platform, software and hardware independent tool for


    transmitting information.
    • XML stands for EXtensible Markup Language
    • XML is a markup language much like HTML
    • XML was designed to describe data
    • XML tags are not predefined. You must define your own tags
    • XML uses a Document Type Definition (DTD) or an XML Schema to describe
    the data
    • XML with a DTD or XML Schema is designed to be self-descriptive
    • XML is a W3C Recommendation

    The Main Difference Between XML and HTML

    XML was designed to carry data.

    XML was designed to describe data and to focus on what data is.
    HTML was designed to display data and to focus on how data looks.

    HTML is about displaying information, while XML is about describing information.

    XML tags are not predefined. You must "invent" your own tags.

    The tags used to mark up HTML documents and the structure of HTML documents are
    predefined. The author of HTML documents can only use tags that are defined in the
    HTML standard (like <p>, <h1>, etc.).

    XML allows the author to define his own tags and his own document structure.

    XML HTML
    User definable tags Defined set of tags designed for
    web display
    Content driven Format driven
    End tags required for well formed End tags not required
    documents
    Quotes required around attributes Quotes not required
    values
    Slash required in empty tags Slash not required
    XML Does not DO Anything

    XML was not designed to DO anything.

    Maybe it is a little hard to understand, but XML does not DO anything. XML was
    created to structure, store and to send information.

    The following example is a note to Tove from Jani, stored as XML:

    <note>
    <to>Tove</to>
    <from>Jani</from>
    <heading>Reminder</heading>
    <body>Don't forget me this weekend!</body>
    </note>

    The note has a header and a message body. It also has sender and receiver information.
    But still, this XML document does not DO anything. It is just pure information wrapped
    in XML tags. Someone must write a piece of software to send, receive or display it.

    DOM
    It defines an interface that enables programs to access and update the style, structure, and
    contents of XML documents.
    The Document Object Model (DOM) is an interface specification maintained by the W3C
    DOM Workgroup that defines an application independent mechanism to access, parse, or
    update XML data. i.e. it is a hierarchical model that allows developers to manipulate
    XML documents easily
    When we parse an XML document with a DOM parser, we get back a tree structure that
    contains all of the elements of the document. The DOM provides a variety of functions
    that can be used to examine the contents and structure of the document.

    //Create instance of DocumentBuilderFactory


    DocumentBuilderFactory factory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
    //Get the DocumentBuilder
    DocumentBuilder parser = factory.newDocumentBuilder();
    //Create blank DOM Document
    Document doc = parser.newDocument();

    //create the root element


    Element root = doc.createElement("root");
    //all it to the xml tree
    doc.appendChild(root);

    //create a comment
    Comment comment = doc.createComment("This is comment");
    //add in the root element
    root.appendChild(comment);

    //create child element


    Element childElement = doc.createElement("Child");
    //Add the atribute to the child
    childElement.setAttribute("attribute1","The value of Attribute 1");
    root.appendChild(childElement);

    SAX
    SAX provides a mechanism for reading data from an XML document.

    XML Processing with SAX.

    XMLReader xr = XMLReaderFactory.createXMLReader();

    A SAX Parser functions as a stream parser, with an event-driven API. The user defines a
    number of callback methods that will be called when events occur during parsing.
    The SAX events include:

    • XML Text nodes


    • XML Element nodes
    • XML Processing Instructions
    • XML Comments

    Events are fired when each of these XML features are encountered, and again when the
    end of them is encountered. XML attributes are provided as part of the data passed to
    element events.

    SAX parsing is unidirectional; previously parsed data cannot be re-read without starting
    the parsing operation again.

    Benefits

    SAX parsers have certain benefits over DOM-style parsers. The quantity of memory that
    a SAX parser must use in order to function is typically much smaller than that of a DOM
    parser. DOM parsers must have the entire tree in memory before any processing can
    begin, so the amount of memory used by a DOM parser depends entirely on the size of
    the input data. The memory footprint of a SAX parser, by contrast, is based only on the
    maximum depth of the XML file (the maximum depth of the XML tree) and the
    maximum data stored in XML attributes on a single XML element. Both of these are
    always smaller than the size of the parsed tree itself.
    Because of the event-driven nature of SAX, processing documents can often be faster
    than DOM-style parsers. Memory allocation takes time, so the larger memory footprint of
    DOM is also a performance issue.

    Due to the nature of SAX, streamed reading from disk is possible. Processing XML
    documents that could never fit into memory is only possible through the use of a SAX
    parser (or another kind of stream XML parser).

    Drawbacks

    The event-driven model of SAX is useful for XML parsing, but it does have certain
    drawbacks.

    Certain kinds of XML validation requires access to the document in full. For example, a
    DTD IDREF attribute requires that there be an element in the document that uses the
    given string as a DTD ID attribute. To validate this in a SAX parser, one would need to
    keep track of every previously encountered ID attribute and every previously encountered
    IDREF attribute, to see if any matches are made. Furthermore, if an IDREF does not
    match an ID, the user only discovers this after the document has been parsed; if this
    linkage was important to the building functioning output, then time has been wasted in
    processing the entire document only to throw it away.

    XSLT

    xsl:template to match the appropriate XML element, xsl:value-of to select the attribute
    value, and the optional xsl:apply-templates to continue processing the document.

    Extract Attributes from XML Data


    Example 1.

    <xsl:template match="element-name">
    Attribute Value:
    <xsl:value-of select="@attribute"/>
    <xsl:apply-templates/>
    </xsl:template>

    SOAP
    SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) is a protocol for exchanging XML-based
    messages over computer networks, normally using HTTP. SOAP forms the foundation
    layer of the Web services stack, providing a basic messaging framework that more
    abstract layers can build on.
    SOAP uses XML to define a protocol for the exchange of information in distributed
    computing environments.
    SOAP consists of three components:
    • an envelope,
    • a set of encoding rules, and
    • a convention for representing remote procedure calls.

    How would you build a search engine for large volumes of XML data?

    The way candidates answer this question may provide insight into their view of XML
    data. For those who view XML primarily as a way to denote structure for text files, a
    common answer is to build a full-text search and handle the data similarly to the way
    Internet portals handle HTML pages. Others consider XML as a standard way of
    transferring structured data between disparate systems. These candidates often describe
    some scheme of importing XML into a relational or object database and relying on the
    database's engine for searching. Lastly, candidates that have worked with vendors
    specializing in this area often say that the best way the handle this situation is to use a
    third party software package optimized for XML data.

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