Sams Teach Yourself XML in 21 Days
- Table of Contents
- About the Author
- Acknowledgments
- We Want to Hear from You!
- Introduction
- Part I: At a Glance
- Day 1. Welcome to XML
- Day 2. Creating XML Documents
- Day 3. Creating Well-Formed XML Documents
- Day 4. Creating Valid XML Documents: DTDs
- Declaring Attributes in DTDs
- Day 6. Creating Valid XML Documents: XML Schemas
- Day 7. Creating Types in XML Schemas
- Part I. In Review
- Day 8. Formatting XML by Using Cascading Style Sheets
- Day 9. Formatting XML by Using XSLT
- Day 10. Working with XSL Formatting Objects
- Part II. In Review
- Part III: At a Glance
- Day 11. Extending HTML with XHTML
- Day 12. Putting XHTML to Work
- Day 13. Creating Graphics and Multimedia: SVG and SMIL
- Day 14. Handling XLinks, XPointers, and XForms
- Part III. In Review
- Part IV: At a Glance
- Day 15. Using JavaScript and XML
- Day 16. Using Java and .NET: DOM
- Day 17. Using Java and .NET: SAX
- Day 18. Working with SOAP and RDF
- Part IV. In Review
- Part V: At a Glance
- Day 19. Handling XML Data Binding
- Day 20. Working with XML and Databases
- Day 21. Handling XML in .NET
- Part V. In Review
- Appendix A. Quiz Answers
Online XML Resources
There are plenty of XML resources available free on the Internet. For example, the XML specifications themselves are online, and although they are hard to read, they're the place to check if you want the ultimate answer on an XML question. Here's a list of official W3C Web sites on various XML topics (note that we won't see some of these topics until later in the book):
- http://www.w3c.org/xml— W3C's main XML site. A good place to start.
- http://www.w3.org/XML/Activity— The W3C activity page listing what's going on with XML these days.
- http://www.w3.org/XML/1999/XML-in-10-points— Features a mini-tutorial called "XML in 10 Points" (really only seven). Provides an XML overview.
- http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml— The official W3C recommendation for XML 1.0. Not easy to read. We're going to cover nearly all of this specification in this book.
- http://www.w3.org/TR/xml11/— The official W3C XML 1.1 candidate recommendation, which turns out to be still evolving (more than most W3C candidate recommendations at this stage have done in the past).
- http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/— The W3C outline and overview of CSS programming.
- http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS1/— The W3C CSS1 specification.
- http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2/— The W3C CSS2 specification.
- http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/— The W3C XSL page.
- http://www.w3.org/TR/xml-stylesheet/— A resource on style sheets and XML.
- http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names/— An XML namespaces resource.
- http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/— The details on Extensible Stylesheet Language.
- http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt— The details on XSL Transformations (XSLT).
- http://www.w3.org/XML/Schema— XML schema activity page.
- http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-0/, http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-1/ , and http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/— All about XML schemas.
- http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/— The XHTML 1.0 specification.
- http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/— The XHTML 1.1 specification.
- http://www.w3.org/XML/Linking— All about XML Pointer, XML Base, and XML Linking.
- http://www.w3.org/TR/xlink/— The XLinks specification.
- http://www.w3.org/TR/xptr— The XPointers specification.
- http://www.w3.org/DOM/— The W3C Document Object Model (DOM).
- http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/Forms/— XForms, a new version of Web forms of the kind that currently appear in HTML documents.
- http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlbase/— All about the XML Base specification.
- http://www.w3.org/Encryption/2001/— Discussion on XML encryption.
- http://www.w3.org/2001/XKMS/— The XML Key Management Working Group.
- http://www.w3.org/XML/Query— The XML Query specification.
- http://www.w3.org/Signature/— Deals with XML signature, an XML-compliant syntax used for representing the signature of Web resources.
- http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath— The XPath 1.0 recommendation.
- http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath20/— The XPath 2.0 working draft.
There are many, many non-W3C XML resources available as well, of course—just searching for "XML" on the Internet gives you about 18,300,000 matches, and more appear every day. Here's a list of some of the best of the non-W3C resources:
- http://www.xml.com— Packed with XML resources, discussions, and schedules of public events.
- http://www.xml.org— Carries information about XML in industrial and commercial settings. A reference site for XML vocabularies, DTDs, schemas, and namespaces.
- http://www.oasis-open.org— The Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards, OASIS, hosting many XML application specifications.
- http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml/default.asp— Microsoft's own page on XML (note that Microsoft URLs are very volatile, and this URL might have changed by the time you look for it).
XML tutorials are also easy to find—a search for "XML Tutorial" turns up about 14,000 matches. Here's a starter list:
- http://www.w3schools.com/xml/default.asp— A free XML tutorial.
- http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml/tutorial/default.asp— Microsoft's XML tutorial in ten lessons (again, watch out—this URL might have changed by the time you read this).
- http://xmlfiles.com/xml/— An XML tutorial from XMLFiles.com.
- http://www.webdeveloper.com/html/html_xml_1.html— Webdeveloper.com's XML tutorial.
- http://www.ucc.ie/xml/— A comprehensive Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) list about XML, maintained by some of the members of the W3C's XML Working Group.
- http://www.xfront.com— An XML schema tutorial by Roger L. Costello.
You might also find some Usenet newsgroups on XML to be helpful; here are a few (note that not all news servers will carry all these groups):
- comp.text.xml— A good, free-floating XML newsgroup. If you want answers, try posting your questions here.
- microsoft.public.dotnet.xml— Discussion on using XML in Microsoft's .NET initiative.
- microsoft.public.xml— The general XML newsgroup hosted by Microsoft.
That completes your introduction to XML today. Tomorrow, we'll start taking a look at creating XML documents in depth.
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