Level: Intermediate Nicholas Chase (nicholas@nicholaschase.com), Author, Studio B
04 Dec 2003 As many developers get frustrated with both the limitations of DTDs and the complexity of XML Schemas, many are gravitating towards RELAX NG. This tutorial gets you up to speed on both RELAX NG's simplicity and it's power, looking at both its full XML-based and its compact syntax.
Prerequisites
This tutorial is for developers who want to learn the concepts behind RELAX NG in both its XML and compact forms. In the tutorial, you'll learn how to use RELAX NG to validate a single source file. The tutorial doesn't actually build an application but uses a command-line application to simply validate the document against the schema document. This tutorial assumes that you have a basic understanding of XML.
System requirements
You'll need JavaScript enabled in your browser. To verify the schema files you create, you'll need a validator. RELAX NG validators exist for a number of different languages, including:
- Java technology -- Jing (http://www.thaiopensource.com/relaxng/jing.html) and MSV (http://wwws.sun.com/software/xml/developers/multischema/)
- C -- Libxml2 (http://www.xmlsoft.org/)
- C# -- Tenuto (http://sourceforge.net/projects/relaxng)
- Python -- XVIF (http://freshmeat.net/projects/xvif/?topic_id=868)
- ActiveX -- a DLL, VBRELAXNG (http://www.geocities.co.jp/SiliconValley-Bay/4639/vbrelaxng/vbrelaxng.html)
For more information on available tools, check out http://www.relaxng.org/#software. Before beginning the tutorial, install your chosen software according to its instructions and make sure you know how to actually validate a file.
Duration
Under one hour
Formats html, pdf
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