An Introduction to Document Type Definitions - XML tutorial

Category: XML tutorials > Basics - Difficulty:

XML's usage is continuing to grow quickly as both individuals and companies realize its potential. However, in many ways XML is still a relatively new technology, and many people, possibly you, are just now learning what it can do for them. Unlike some other software technologies such as HTML or even Java, XML is a little fuzzier in terms of how it is applied in different scenarios. Just as it's difficult to look at a person and grasp how their DNA makes them who they are, it can also be challenging to look at an application and get a grasp for how XML fits into the equation. This tutorial introduces you to XML and gives you some insight as to why it was created and what it can do.

In this tutorial we'll discuss how to use Dynamic HTML (DHTML) to create dynamic Web-based user services components. DHTML allows you to embed scripts written in either the VBScript or JScript programming languages into an HTML page.

Although XML is certainly a great storage format for shuttling data around the Web, most web applications store their data in relational databases. Knowing this, it stands to reason that many web applications will end up accessing data from a database yet interacting with it and sharing it with other applications as XML data. This has a lot do with the fact that XML can be used not only as a document format, but also as a way to represent data in a highly structured manner. In this tutorial, you learn how relational databases work and how you can integrate your XML applications with relational databases. More specifically, you find out how to export database data as XML code, as well as how to make SQL queries on a database and format the results in XML.

Using XPath for pattern matching.

In this tutorial, you'll learn: the basics of style sheets and XML formatting; when and why to use CSS and XSL on the Web; the practical differences between CSS and XSL style sheets; how to format a basic XML document using CSS and XSLT style sheets.