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Introduction to XML

Doug Tidwell (dtidwell@us.ibm.com), XML Evangelist, EMC

Senior Programmer Doug Tidwell is IBM's evangelist for Web Services. He was a speaker at the first XML conference in 1997, and has been working with markup languages for more than a decade. He holds a Bachelors Degree in English from the University of Georgia and a Masters Degree in Computer Science from Vanderbilt University. He can be reached at dtidwell@us.ibm.com. You can also see his Web page at ibm.com/developerWorks/speakers/dtidwell/.
(An IBM developerWorks Contributing Author)

Summary: XML, the Extensible Markup Language, has gone from the latest buzzword to an entrenched eBusiness technology in record time. This newly revised tutorial discusses what XML is, why it was developed, and how it's shaping the future of electronic commerce. It also covers a variety of important XML programming interfaces and standards, and ends with two case studies showing how companies are using XML to solve business problems.

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Date: 07 Aug 2002
Level: Introductory
PDF: A4 and Letter (141 KB | 35 pages)Get Adobe® Reader®

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Resources

The dW XML zone is your one-stop shop for XML resources. See www.ibm.com/developerworks/xml for everything you always wanted to know about XML.
developerWorks has "Fill your XML toolbox" articles that describe XML programming tools for a variety of languages:
- C/C++: See Rick Parrish's article at www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/x-ctlbx.html (developerWorks, September 2001).
- Perl: See Parand Tony Darugar's article at www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/x-perl-xml-toolkit/index.html (developerWorks, June 2001).
In addition to these articles, see David Mertz's review of Python XML tools in his article "Charming Python: Revisiting XML tools for Python" at www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-pxml.html.
XML tutorials: Dozens of tutorials on XML topics are available on developerWorks; see http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/views/xml/libraryview.jsp?type_by=Tutorials for the latest list.
IBM's jStart team: The jStart team works at very low cost to help customers build solutions using new technology (XML Web services, for example). In return, those customers agree to let IBM publicize their projects as a case studies. For more information, see ibm.com/software/jstart.
XML standards: Here's an alphabetical list of all the XML standards mentioned in this tutorial.
- DOM, the Document Object Model:
  - Core Specification: w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2-Core/
  - Events Specification: w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2-Events/
  - Style Specification: w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2-Style/
  - Traversal and Range Specification: w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2-Traversal-Range/
  - Views Specification: w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-2-Views/
- HR-XML.org, the Human Resources XML Consortium: hr-xml.org
- JAXP, the Java API for XML: java.sun.com/xml/jaxp/
- JDOM, which doesn't stand for anything: jdom.org/
- SAX, the Simple API for XML: saxproject.org/
- SMIL, the Synchronized Multimedia Integration Language: www.w3.org/TR/smil20/
- SOAP, which used to stand for the Simple Object Access Protocol, but now officially doesn't stand for anything: w3.org/TR/SOAP/
- SVG, Scalable Vector Graphics: www.w3.org/TR/SVG/
- UDDI, the Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration Protocol: uddi.org
- WSDL, the Web Services Description Language: w3.org/TR/wsdl (no closing slash)
- XLink, the XML Linking Language: w3.org/TR/xlink/
- XML, the standard that started it all: w3.org/TR/REC-xml
- XML Digital Signatures: w3.org/TR/xmldsig-core/
- XML Encryption: w3.org/TR/xmlenc-core/
- XML Namespaces: w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names/
- XML Repository of DTDs and schemas: xml.org/xml/registry.jsp
- XML Schema:
  - Part 0 - Primer: w3.org/TR/xmlschema-0
  - Part 1 - Document structures: w3.org/TR/xmlschema-1
  - Part 2 - Datatypes: w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2
- XPath, the XML Path Language: w3.org/TR/xpath (no closing slash)
- XPointer, the XML Pointer Language: www.w3.org/TR/xptr/
- XSL-FO, the Extensible Stylesheet Language for Formatting Objects: w3.org/TR/xsl/
- XSLT, the Extensible Stylesheet Language: w3.org/TR/xslt (no closing slash)
For more on JDOM, read these developerWorks articles:
- Simplify XML programming with JDOM at www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-jdom/ (developerWorks, May 2001)
- Converting from DOM at www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/x-tipcdm.html (developerWorks, April 2001)
- Converting from SAX at www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/x-tipcsx.html (developerWorks, April 2001)
- Using JDOM and XSLT at www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/x-tipjdom.html (developerWorks, March 2001)

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