by Elliotte Rusty Harold and W. Scott Means
XML is one of the most important developments in document syntax in the history of computing. In the last few years it has been adopted in fields as diverse as law, aeronautics, finance, insurance, robotics, multimedia, hospitality, travel, art, construction, telecommunications, software, agriculture, physics, journalism, theology, retail, and comics. XML has become the syntax of choice for newly designed document formats across almost all computer applications. It's used on Linux, Windows, Macintosh, and many other computer platforms. Mainframes on Wall Street trade stocks with one another by exchanging XML documents. Children playing games on their home PCs save their documents in XML. Sports fans receive real-time game scores on their cell phones in XML. XML is simply the most robust, reliable, and flexible document syntax ever invented.
XML in a Nutshell is a comprehensive guide to the rapidly growing world of XML. It covers all aspects of XML, from the most basic syntax rules, to the details of DTD and schema creation, to the APIs you can use to read and write XML documents in a variety of programming languages.
XML in a Nutshell is a comprehensive guide to the rapidly growing world of XML. It covers all aspects of XML, from the most basic syntax rules, to the details of DTD and schema creation, to the APIs you can use to read and write XML documents in a variety of programming languages.
There are hundreds of formally established XML applications from the W3C and other standards bodies, such as OASIS and the Object Management Group. There are even more informal, unstandardized applications from individuals and corporations, such as Microsoft's Channel Definition Format and John Guajardo's Mind Reading Markup Language. This book cannot cover them all, any more than a book on Java could discuss every program that has ever been or might ever be written in Java. This book focuses primarily on XML itself. It covers the fundamental rules that all XML documents and authors must adhere to, whether a web designer uses SMIL to add animations to web pages or a C++ programmer uses SOAP to exchange serialized objects with a remote database.
