XML is object without source. There can be no development tools for XML until we find a way of creating source code. 'There's no such thing as an XML application.' A strong statement, perhaps, but what do we mean when we talk about an XML application? Is a publishing system that relies...

Someday soon you'll be able to tell the Internet what you're interested in and have it respond with the information you need. You could instruct a Web site to monitor traffic reports, for example, then tell it where you're heading. If there's a traffic jam, the Web site will dial your ...

Anyone who has ever done a search query on the Internet is familiar with the phenomenon in which a single query pulls up more than a million possible search matches. This has to do with the fact that information is ultimately not linear, but rather is linked and interrelated in ways th...

XSLT is a powerful technology that can provide many benefits. In this tutorial we examine how you can use XSLT to transform an XML example to the WML (Wireless Markup Language) that WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) devices such as PDAs - Palm Pilots, digital cell phones, pagers - u...

Every business process is made up of many workflows that dictate how business gets done. These manual processes are being replaced by Internet-based electronic systems that promise to automate, improve efficiency, and expedite results. But this new way of doing business presents a boun...

Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT) is part of the XSL standard. The most popular use of XML and XSL is to create a separation of content and presentation. Although several XML/XSLT articles and tutorials are available, none really explain and demonstrate the true flex...

Today's decentralized, distributed environment for exchange of information can be confusing at times, but for the most part you can still encounter standardized, globally accepted technologies. Each of these technologies serves its respective domain well. But when the question of how d...

In designing markup languages, one of the first questions customers ask religiously is, 'Do you prefer elements or attributes?' In fact, if you examine many of the current markup languages on the Internet, you often see a strict schism between those that use mostly (or even exclusively...

Analysts have predicted that by the end of 2003, 80% of interapplication traffic will be XML-based. Furthermore, they predict that such traffic will grow 10 times more quickly than application-to-person traffic. This is being driven by the growing adoption of XML by the business commun...

XML Schemas have truly entered the picture with the Internet standards organization, W3C, advancing it to Candidate Recommendation status in late October 2000. You may ask, Who cares? Well, developers with any interest in XML. This means XML Schemas are here to stay, so start learning...

While DOM provides a flexible way of manipulating elements in an XML document, it can be quite costly when the XML source document is large. Remember, DOM reads an XML document from a disk and builds the elements as nodes in a tree in memory. The costs involved in reading the file and ...

This article compares and contrasts the broad functionality of XML Schemas (whose approval by the World Wide Web Consortium is imminent) with that of document type definitions, currently part of the XML 1.0 Recommendation.

The single most significant factor in the performance and scalability of XML may be the runtime engine that processes it. Parsers are the key component of that runtime engine and present a unique set of issues. By looking at the current capabilities and limitations of parsers, we can a...

Although XML defines each data element in a given transaction (the semantics), there's no mechanism to also communicate the business context. This represents the difference between reading XML and understanding the business impact of the transaction. The use of namespaces, numeric ...

Programming in script-based languages such as Perl and Tcl is popular in life science disciplines such as bio- and cheminformatics, especially among developers at pharmaceutical and biotech companies. Adding the ability to use XML to pipe these scripts into more robust systems used...

In my last article, 'Two Great Technologies, One Amazing Solution' (XML-J, Vol. 2, issue 1), I demonstrated how the Java programming language could be used within stylesheets to add robustness to XSLT. This month I'll stick strictly within the confines of the XPath and XSLT to show...

XML is a metalanguage that's used to describe a language grammar. Documents that comply with a grammar formulated in XML use tags to distinguish between the actual content and its semantically relevant markup. XML defines abstract semantics in contrast to operational ones (which can be...

At the outset XML separated the data from the metadata. This structural separation was intentional - it simultaneously allowed XML to be the logical evolution of a document, a new transaction medium, and the conversation engine that connects applications. Deciding how your application ...

Today many companies are evaluating the application of XML to their technology initiatives. With all its potential, performance, scalability, and accessibility implications need to be considered when developing an implementation strategy utilizing XML.

XML is just a tool, not a solution. Solutions come only when two or more entities agree to use the same format to share data.

As XML becomes accepted as the format for document markup, the demand for XML tools is also increasing. In particular, there's a need for a tool that can be easily programmed to perform any number of general reporting and editing operations on XML files. In the world of ASCII text, thi...

XML provides a convenient mechanism for information exchange between heterogeneous applications. Information providers expose data that is of some value to their clients in the form of an XML document. The way information is processed varies from one client to another and is dictated b...

In today's environment it's becoming more and more difficult to develop well-architectured software for two reasons: the size and complexity of software keeps growing and the target environments are becoming more and more complex. In other words, today's environments are distributed an...

We've all heard the proclamations: XML is the language standard that enables seamless data interchange between disparate applications. First the Internet provided the physical connection. Now XML completes this by providing a common language that enables every application to exchange d...

Is XML a potential competitor to CORBA? Does it represent CORBA's nemesis? Or is it, on the contrary, too lightweight for use in distributed systems? Much heated debate has centered recently on the question of the possible combination of CORBA and XML…