This document should serve as a starting point for any one who is interested in xml and it's related technologies from a programmers point of view. After going through this tutorial, you will be able to identify the many different components of the xml development environment and understand how to deploy them. The following tutorial will cover XML, XSL, and XSLT and give examples written on both Microsoft and Java development platforms. This is part 1 of the turorial. Today you will learn about XML and XSLT. You will go to work tomorrow having written an XML document, an XSLT document and will have transformed that document for display. All tools and source code will be provided. All you need to do is spend a little time.

• What should I know?
To work with XML, an understanding of web based, client/server application development is a must. The language in witch you choose to develop, however, isn't important. Our examples will be written in VBScript and Java. Visual Basic and Java Script could also be used. In fact, they have similar syntax and are identical in concept. You will see that a little bit goes a long way. That's because many of the world wide webs technologies have been developed in the open source arena and over seen by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The W3C, along with many contributors, defines specifications and guidelines for application development while encourging interroperability if disparate systems. XML is no exception. In fact, it is this paradigm that XML supports so well. Keep this in mind when going through this turorial. The concepts are the most important things to remember here. NOT syntax.

<? xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE wml PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD WML 1.1//EN  
"http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/wml_1.1.xml">

<wml>
	<card id="test">
		<a href="http://www.xmldataworld.com"
            >Hello Wap user!!!</a>

	</card>

</wml>

Use this when the element is full:
	<name>John is my name</name>

Use this or the short cut below it if the element is empty:
	<name></name>                                 
	<name/>

This would be wrong:
	<tstDocument>
		<name>John is my Name
	</tstDocument>
		</name>

This would be correct:  ( 2 names and 2 empty name tags )
	<tstDocument>
		<name sex="male">John is my Name</name>
		<name sex="female">Mary is my Name</name>
		<name/>
		<name></name>				
	</tstDocument>

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<mydocument>

<paragraph>
      XML is defined as the the "Extensible 
      Markup Language". This makrkup langauge 
      is a universal programming language 
      for describing and structuring data in 
      its own independant form. No longer will 
      data need to rely on specific formatting 
      from the  various applications you may use.  
      XML can be used to define unlimited languages 
      for specific industries and applications 
      and even promises to simplify and lower 
      the cost of data interchange 
      and publishing in a Web environment. 
</paragraph>

<paragraph>
      XML is a text-based syntax that is readable by 
      both computer and humans. XML offers data 
      portability and reusability across different 
      platforms and devices. It is also flexible and 
      extensible, allowing new additions, definitions 
      and "tags" to  be added without breaking 
      an existing document structure. 
</paragraph>

</mydocument>

<?xml version="1.0"?> 

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/
1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
<xsl:output method="html" indent="yes"/>

<xsl:template match="mydocument">
	<xsl:value-of select="paragraph"/>
</xsl:template> 

</xsl:stylesheet>

Notice that it is a well formed XML document containing the XML declaration on the first line. The next line is what we call a name space. It states that any tag or element in this document that is prefixed with "xsl:" belongs to this namespace. The URI makes this namespace unique since any one can create a name space. At Orbidex, a possible namespace could be: xmlns:orb="http://www.orbidex.com/XML/Public/DTDS" Any tag from our name space would look like this: <orb:item/> There fore, if you created your own <item/> tag, it wouldn't be ambiguous to the processor. After the namespace, we have other elements such as <xsl:output/>. Use this to set the content-type along with other options. All elements and valid tags in the XSL Namespace can be found at http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL. Again, to ensure you know all there is to know, check this site out. This is the W3C so if you go here, you don't necessarilly have to go anywhere else. What is extreemely important here is the <template/> element. It defines a template that matches any <mydocument> element and gets the value of the first paragraph element it encounters. When our mydocument.xml file is transformed with this mydocument.xsl file, the browser should display the contents of the first <paragraph/> element encountered aftering matching the <mydocument> element.

• LETS DO IT!

What we need.
All we need is Interned Explorer 5.0 or above to run this example. We need IE5 because it is currently the only browser that supports XSLT. If our clients don't have IE5 or above, don't worry, we can transform the data on the server into HTML or XHTML and then send it. This eliminates any inconpatibilities and makes XML cross browser ( Actually cross whatever ) compatible.

You can go to Microsoft.com and get an IE5 upgrade or you can just learn from this example. Later on in this tutorial, as asformentioned, we will be doing server side transformations using VBScript and Java.

• BEGIN

Step 1
Download this XML Document and put it in any directory
--------
myDocument.xml

Step 2
Download this XSL Document and put it in the samed directory
--------
mydocument.xsl

Step 3
Open mydocument.xml in Internet Explorer 5 or above and view the contents of the first <paragraph/> element contained within the <mydocument/> element.

Go to the XSL Transformations site and find out more tags. Add as many elements as you wish to these documents and learn, learn, learn.

XML Software, Resources, and Development Tools