May 13-17, 2002 Prague, Czech Republic

Going to Prague for the seminars is competetive with staying in the US

For technical questions and information about in-house training, consulting, and offsite development services, email dbartlett@pobox.com

Here's why you'll want to come!

This course is designed to lay the foundations for future Web-based data-intensive applications. The goal of this course is to teach you XML by using it in various senarios. Many different XML applications will used, many different parsers will be used and the examples will be developed in several languages including Java, C++, Python, Visual Basic and Perl. Attendees should have experience in one of the following languages Java, C++, Python or VB.

The Web provides a simple and universal standard for the exchange of information. Its central task is to decompose information into units that can be named and transmitted. Typically that unit of information is a file created by one Web user and shared with others by making it available in the form of a URL. It is important to understand that this information is designed to be distributed in a human-readable format - HTML documents. The success of the Web is derived in part from the development of HTML, a means of structuring text for visual presentation. HTML describes both an intradocument structure (layout and formatting of text) and an interdocument structure (hyperlinks). Most courses and articles focus on XML as a replacement to HTML. This view of XML is exceptionally limited and narrow; XML is about data, not documents.

There is a long-standing view of the structure of information that is almost orthogonal to that of document and textual structure - the view developed for data management systems. People working in this field use the vocabulary of relational database schemas and entity relationship diagrams to describe structure. They are concerned with query languages to access information and with mechanisms for concurrency control and for recovery in order to preserve the integrity of the structure of their data. Providing efficient implementations of databases and query languages is a central issue in databases. XML and its various extensions (data-models, query languages)provide methods that make Web information accessible in a semi-structured way.

This course is designed to bridge these differences and provide you with the understanding to create applications utilizing XML as semi-structured data. The course gives you solutions describing how to use XML to solve the problem of providing a robust interface with stable parsing tools that are independent of any display format. We look at the the latest developments that apply efficient storage and extraction technology developed for highly structured database systems to bear upon the relatively loosely structured format specified by XML.

Session 1: Introduction and Overview

• Introduction
• What is XML?
• Origins, History, Comparison to HTML
• Creating Documents
• Viewing XML
• Testing XML
• Transformations
• Writing XML Documents

Session 2: Markup Language Components

• An XML Document
• Elements
• Attributes
• Introduction to Namespaces
• Entities
• Example
• A "well-formed" document
• Data Structure in XML
• Verification
• XML Tools

Session 3: Validating XML

• Validating documents with Document Type Definition (DTD)
• Validation and defining a markup language
• DTD Syntax
• Validating Elements and attributes
• Tips and tricks for designing DTDs

Session 4: XML Schemas

• Limitations of DTDs
• XML Schema
• Moving DTDs to XML Schemas
• Modeling Data with XML Schemas

Session 5: XML Namespaces

• What are Namespaces?
• Assigning URLs to Namespaces

Session 6: Xpointers and Xlinks

• Connecting Resources
• Specifying Resources
• Xpointer
• Introduction to Xlinks

Session 7: XML and Data

• Relating XML and Metadata
• Positioning XML in a 3-tier architecture

Session 8: Applying Style to Data

• The necessity of style
• Design rules
• XSL Elements

Session 9: XSL

• Comparing XSL to CSS
• Processing documents with pattern mathching and templates
• Programming with XSL functions
• Filtering and sorting with XSL

Session 10: Transforming XML with XSLT

• Tools for Transformations
• XML to HTML using XSL
• XML to XML

Session 11: Formating XML with XSLT-FO

• Creating a Formatted Document
• XSL Formatting Objects

Session 12: XML Protocols and SOAP

• Understanding RPC's
• HTTP as an RPC
• XML for Data Representation
• HTTP + XML = SOAP
• Anatomy of a SOAP Message
• SOAP Standardization
• DATABASES AND XML

Session 13: Building Data Repositories

• Identifying relationships between XML and databases
• XML data server capabilities

Session 14: Relational Databases

• Working with XSQL
• Accessing databases using middleware
• Communicating with databases
• Generating XML using database tools

Session 15: DOM Fundamentals

• The role of DOM
• DOM Architecture
• DOM Parsers
• Processing with DOM
• Modifying XML with DOM

Session 16: SAX, Simple API for XML

• Event-driven SAX Model
• Accessing Elements and Attributes with document handler interface
• Error handling in SAX
• Integrating SAX and DOM