II/2/1/10 Design and Processing of XML Languages

Lecturer: Tomasz

Abstract:

XML is a meta-language - a syntax to define application-specific languages - proposed by the WWW Consortium in 1998 to facilitate the definition and automated processing of various kinds of data. With on-going research efforts to develop new extension technologies, a fast-growing family of support tools, and hundreds of documented industrial data formats, XML is bound to have a major impact on the future development and use of the Web, and beyond.

The course offers a practical introduction to XML and the family of technologies that continue to evolve around XML. The course also provides an overview of the selected industrial applications, supporting tools, and relevant programming and mathematical theories. The main theme is the use of XML to construct languages in concrete application domains, and software development, using XML and other high-level technologies, to process such languages.

Organization:

The course can last from one (30 hours) to two weeks (60 hours). It consists of lectures, lab-based exercises and relies on home assignments to practice the skills learned. The aim of the exercises is to acquire the practical skills in defining XML languages and developing language-processing software.

Prerequisites:

The course is aimed at practising IT professionals, scholars and students. No prior knowledge of XML is assumed but some programming and markup (e.g. HTML) design experience would be useful.

Possible topics covered (60 hours course):

                                                lectures   exercises
1. The Language
   a. XML                                       2          2
   b. DTD                                       3          2
   c. XML namespaces                            1          2
2. XML Extension Technologies
   a. validation (XML Schema)                   3          2
   b. presentation (CSS)                        2          2
   c. pointing (XPath)                          1
   d. transformations (XSLT)                    3          4
3. XML Transformations with Java
   a. tree-based programming (DOM)              2          2
   b. event-based programming (SAX)             2          2
   c. rule-based programming (XSLT)             1          2
4. XML, Web Services and Java
   a. communication (SOAP)                      2          2
   b. discovery (UDDI)                          1          1
   c. description (WSDL)                        2          2
   d. programming web services in Java          5          5
                                                ----------------------
                                                30         30

Literature:

1. World Wide Web Consortium - Technical Reports, http://www.w3.org/TR/
2. Kenneth B. Stall. XML Family of Specifications. Addison Wesley, 2003
3. Tyler Jewell, O'Reilly, Java Web Services, Sams, 2002

iistinfo@iist.unu.edu, 2004-08-19

Design and Processing of XML Languages

Software Development with UML

Course Descriptions

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