Java XML
Table of Contents:
1. What is XML?
2. HTML vs. XML
3. XML Basics
4. Why use XML in Java?
5. Application areas of XML
6. Standards
7. Setting up the environment for XML and Java
8. JAVA XML API
9. Simple API for XML (SAX)
10. Document Object Model (DOM)
11. Basics of programming using DOM
12. Should I use DOM or SAX?
The eXtensible Markup Language (XML) is a universal way of structuring documents and other data.
Markup Languages have existed for many years before the start of the World Wide Web. WordPerfect and Rich Text Format (RTF) have used markup tags to provide special formatting commands that apply to specific words and text. Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) is the markup language used for web pages.
HTML has gained widespread use and is easy to understand. Both HTML and XML are derived from the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML).
1986 SGML (document markup language)
1992 HTML (web page specific markup language)
1997 XML (web page and general documents markup language)
2001 XML 1.1
Previously anyone who wanted to create web pages would have to learn HTML syntax and make the page using simple text editors.
More advanced HTML specific editors appeared that checked the web pages and HTML tags. When applications such as MS FrontPage appeared, people could author web pages without learning all the HTML tags. Many thousands of web pages were created daily, mostly showing personal homepages or company marketing information. As the use of websites became more sophisticated, the limitations of HTML as become apparent. The next section covers the similarities and differences between HTML and XML.
HTML vs. XML
Those developers that are familiar with HTML will recognize syntax used in XML, however XML describes the data better than HTML.
Those developers that are familiar with HTML will recognize syntax used in XML, however XML describes the data better than HTML.
Similarities with HTML:
Firewalls do not need to be reconfigured
Known system for security (same web server, firewall, protocols).
Differences between XML and HTML:
XML is a standard for data interchange
HTML has a fixed set of tags, whereas XML allows you to define your own custom tags.
HTML was designed for rendering information from computer to human.
XML has a large overhead in tags used to define the document elements.
To see how XML separates data from the presentation format, the following example is provided.
After reading the HTML displayed above, you can see that it is not exactly clear what is being displayed. We can guess that it is a web site and an email address. A computer program will have great difficultly understanding what this text is in a reliable way.
Below is XML equivalent to represent the same text and data
You can figure out what this means, but the main reason is that the computer program can make use of it. XML takes more space but it defines the information more precisely and robustly.
HTML has a fixed set of tags, whereas XML allows you to define your own custom tags.
HTML was designed for rendering information from computer to human.
XML has a large overhead in tags used to define the document elements.
To see how XML separates data from the presentation format, the following example is provided.
After reading the HTML displayed above, you can see that it is not exactly clear what is being displayed. We can guess that it is a web site and an email address. A computer program will have great difficultly understanding what this text is in a reliable way.
Below is XML equivalent to represent the same text and data
You can figure out what this means, but the main reason is that the computer program can make use of it. XML takes more space but it defines the information more precisely and robustly.
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