XMLBased Course Websites Michael Wollowski Computer Science and Software Engineering Department Rose

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XML-Based Course WebsitesMichael Wollowski
Computer Science and Software Engineering
Department Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
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Introduction Background

• My interest is in search engines
• XML promises the development of powerful search
  engines
• Placed CSSE course descriptions into XML
• Wrote a search engine for them
• Realized that editors are easy
• Have to rely on other people to provide contents

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Introduction Benefits of XML

• Separation of form and contents
• Common information can be placed into separate
  files
• Webpages of the same kind are rendered in the
  same way

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Introduction XML in comparison

• Benefits of courseware products
• Ease of use
• Integration with other systems
• Drawbacks of courseware products
• Formatting and functionality are as provided

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Introduction XML in comparison

• Benefits of direct editing
• Complete control over appearance and contents
• Drawbacks of direct editing
• A lot of work formatting contents

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Introduction XML in comparison

• XML promises to share some of the benefits of
  both
• Complete control over appearance and contents
• Ease of contents creation and maintenance
• Additional benefit of XML
• Powerful search engines

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XML The Technology

• Three technologies in one
• DTD
• XML document
• XSL stylesheet

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XML XML Documents

• XML documents contain elements
• An element consists of an opening and closing tag
• Elements are nested
• Element names describe contents
• Elements are not used to format documents

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XML XML Documents

• Example
• ltcourse_descriptiongt
• ltidgtCSSE 100lt/idgt
• lttitlegtIntroduction to Programming
• and Problem Solving
• lt/titlegt
• lt/course_descriptiongt

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XML XML Documents

• Design your own element structure by defining a
  DTD
• Use someone elses DTD

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XML DTDs

• A DTD defines a class of documents
• A DTD specifies
• Elements of the document
• Attributes of elements
• Order and nesting of elements
• Whether elements are necessary

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XML XSL Stylesheets

• Used to transform an XML document into an HTML
  document
• XML documents specify which XSL stylesheet is to
  be used.
• Web-browser receives XML document and then
  requests XSL stylesheet

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XML XSL Stylesheets
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XML XSL Stylesheets

• Uniform appearance of classes of documents use
  same stylesheet
• Stylesheet has to be edited just once
• Separation of form and contents
• Content providers focus on providing contents

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XML XSL Stylesheets

• They are complex
• Determine order of presentation
• Leave out information
• Limited amount of processing, e.g. fill in
  missing information

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XML XSL Stylesheets

• Combine information from several documents
• Minimize repetition of information, by placing
  common information into separate documents
• Ensures consistency of information
• Reduces amount of nuisance editing

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Editing

• Separation of form and contents greatly aids in
  editing
• Contents providers do not have to be concerned
  about formatting
• Three ways to edit an XML document
• Edit a template (good)
• Copy and edit another document (better)
• Use a forms-based editor (best)

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Forms-Based Editor

• A web-page with text-fields for XML elements
• Customized to DTD
• Straight-forward to provide
• Possible to auto-generate

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Forms-Based Editor
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Pinpoint Searching

• Special-purpose search engine tailored to DTD
• Information processing engine

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Pinpoint Searching
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Experience with the Technology

• Course description editor is easy
• Tested syllabus editor on 20 students
• Editor works well for structured XML documents
• HTML can be added and is properly rendered
• Preview of documents is being added

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Experience with the Technology

• Tested course descriptions search engine on 30
  students
• One side of classroom used our XML search engine,
  other side used Google, restricted to RHIT
• Asked a variety of questions, some favored ours,
  some favored Google, and some were neutral

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Experience with the Technology

• Which courses can I take if I passed CSSE230?
  favored XML search
• What are the required CS courses for a CS
  major? favored Google
• What programming languages are used in the CS
  curriculum? favored neither
• XML searchers turned in their results before
  Google searchers

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Future Work

• General purpose search engine
• DTDs for course materials