XML Technical Overview

XML Technical Overview is a two-day course covering the technical concepts, syntax and uses of XML.

Intended Audience

XML Technical Overview is designed for technically oriented people who want focused training in XML syntax. Attendees may or may not have a programming background.

Course Format

This two-day course consists of lectures, written exercises and computer lab exercises.

Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites for this course. If you are also planning to take Enterprise XML Strategies or Introduction to XML, we advise taking them prior to XML Technical Overview.

Course Description

XML Technical Overview begins with a quick introduction to XML, then moves to the XML syntax section of the course. The XML Technical Overview then provides students with a chance to work written exercises to practice the syntax they are learning about well-formed XML, elements, attributes, entities and other XML markup.

The next section discusses XML Namespaces syntax and concepts followed by a short discussion of the XML Info Set. The course then moves to valid XML covering both W3C Schema and DTD syntax. After learning about and comparing DTD and W3C Schema syntax, students move on to putting XML to work.

In the "Putting XML to Work" section, students learn about related XML technologies that enable them to manipulate and process XML information items. The technologies discussed in this section are CSS, XPath, XSLT, XSL-FO, DOM, SAX, XLink and finally XPointer.

Course Outline

Introduction to XML

• The Concept of Markup & XML Syntax
  • Concept of Markup
    • Parts of an XML Document
    • Elements
    • Naming Rules
    • Correct XML Names & Empty Elements
    • Markup vs. Character Data
    • Predefined Entities
    • Attributes
    • Attribute Values
  • Well-formedness Rules
  • Comments
  • Processing Instructions
  • Namespaces in XML
• XML Infoset
• Data Model Design
• Schema and DTD Design
  • W3C Schemas
    • Schema Type Hierarchy
    • Schema Structures
    • Schema Types and Declarations
  • Document Type Definitions (DTDs)
    • Internal and External Subsets
    • Elements
    • Attributes
    • Entities
• Putting XML to Work
  • Cascading Style Sheets
  • Addressing XML (XPath)
  • Extensible Stylesheet Language
  • Processing XML
    • DOM
    • SAX