From Chaos to Cosmos

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From Chaos to Cosmos

• Corporate Publishing in Relation to SGML/XML
• By Tina Kos / Gerhard Spijkerman

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Content

• Corporate Publishing
• The Chaos
• Find a way to order this chaos
• XML technologies
• Creating XML documents
• Definition and Structure of XML documents
• Data transfer
• Links to other resources
• Display and reporting

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Corporate Publishing

• Corporate publishing process
• Information stream produced by various stages of
  the business process
• (Design - manufacturing - testing - delivery -
  maintenance)
• Information management, workflow management,
  version management.
• Retrieval, publication profiles
• Internal online, customised information
• External manuals, websites, mail-service,
  push-pull

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Three Kinds of Information

• Transactions controlled by databases
• Project data, financial data, administration
• Office automation based information
• Groupware (mail etc), status reports, internal
  presentations
• Strategic information
• Test data, performance data, field services,
  operations procedures, product specifications and
  price information

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How Big Is a Corporate Publisher?

• Boeing, Shell vs small CPs
• (gt 4 million pages)
• Multitude of databases
• Oracle, SQL6/7, Informix, Sybase, ObjectStore,
  Access, Dedicated
• Traditional information process

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Publishing from an existing DBs
Browser
ASP XML/HTML(databinding)
ODBC
Trading Database (Oracle)
Production Database (Access)
CSS/XSL
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Choices

• Internet applications for CP
• Easier acquisition, integration, reuse, exchange
• How can you realise this with XML?
• What kind of systems?
• Which technologies?

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For some it seems a total Chaos

• Structure, meta languages, presentation
• SGML, XML, XSL, DOM, HTML, DTD, XLINK, XPOINTER,
• CSS, RDF, SOX, DCD, XHTML . . .
• Communication, protocols
• EDI, HTTP, TCP/IP, ODBC, JDBC, SET, FTP, PPP,
  WAP, SSL, CGI, . . .
• Graphic formats, standard languages
• Jpeg, PNG, TIFF, VML, PGML, SVG, CGM, MathML, . .
  .
• Other languages, tools, terms
• XQL, ERP, Java, API, SAX, URI, URL, DBMS, EDBMS,
  ASP, Xmetal, CORBA, . . .

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The Three Tier Solution
CLIENT LAYER
DOM, Browser
APPLICATIONLAYER
XSL, CSS, Omnimark, C, C . . .
DATA LAYER
XML docs, DTD, schema, XLINK, Other data
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XML Technologies
Definition and Structure
XML schema
DTD
XML Data Types
Data Transfer
Data Store
Display and Reporting
XML
XSL
Application
CSS
Links to other resources
XPOINTER
XLINK
HTML
Resources
XML
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Creating XML documents

• Well-formed and valid XML documents
• Declaration and version information
• lt?xml version"1.0" ?gt

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Structure and representing Data

• Example of a data treeltworkshopgt
  ltparticipantgt ltnamegt ltfirst-namegtTina
  lt/first-namegt ltlast-namegtKos lt/last-namegt
  lt/namegtlt/participantgtlt/gt

workshop
participant
participant
participant
name
Last-name
First-name
Tina
Kos
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Definition and structure

• DTD
• XML-schemas
• RDF

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DTDs

• DTDs part of XML1.0
• DTDs widespread support
• XML schemas easier to learn and use
• XML schemas provide more extensibility

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XML-Schemas

• Schema-languages
• meta-languages (DDML, DCD, SOX, XML-data)
• different mark-up, one way of processing
• XML-datatypes
• example

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Example
Document instances
XML schemas
Definition of schema language
Report-schema.xml
SOX.dtd
Doc1.xml
ltschema namereport xmlnstestsox.dtdgtltele
menttypename gt
lt?xml version1.0 ?gtlt!ELEMENTschema .gt
Doc2.xml
Schema definescharacteristics ofobjects in the
document
Schema dtd definessyntax for schema
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Namespaces

• Collection of names added to elements and
  attributes
• lt?xml version"1.0"?gtlt!-- both namespace
  prefixes are available throughout
  --gtltwsworkshop xmlnsws'urnwww.grafidata.nl/ws
  xmlnsco'urnwww.sgml-ug.nl/com'gtltwsname
  gtTina Koslt/wsnamegtltconamegtGrafiDatalt/conamegt
• lt/wsworkshopgt

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Data types

• Content text strings (character data)
• Data types define types of data
• Remains text strings for cross-platform
  transmission

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RDF

• Resource Description Framework
• Domain-neutral mechanism for describing metadata
• XML syntax exchanging RDF metadata
• Example

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Data Transfer

• Data store
• Record set
• Applications
• POET, STEP, Interleaf, Excelon, Documentum,
  Astoria
• Example

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Links to other resources

• XLINK
• XPOINTER / XPATH / XSLT
• Topic Maps

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XLINK

• The importance of hyperlinking
• XLINK
• expressed in XML
• multiple targets, order(from A to B to D and
  back via C)
• XML Linking Language XLINK
• Simple links
• Extended links

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XPOINTER
Only part of the document
traversal
XPointer

• XPointer

• XLINK
• Control
• Rule
• Show
• Behavior
• Inline

• XPointer

Out-of-line

• XPointer

• XPointer

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XPATH / XSLT

• XPATH language for addressing (parts of) XML
  documents
• XSL transformation to display elements

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Topic Maps

• Standard to describe a knowledge structure
• Topic group of addressable information objects
• Relationships between topics associations
• A set of one or more interrelated documents is
  called a Topic Navigation Map (TNM)

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Display and reporting

• DOM
• XSL/CSS

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DOM (Document Object Model)

• DOM method to separate content from
  manipulation
• The DOM describes how to access and manipulate
  content objects of the document
• Example

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XSL

• XSL
• Adding style to XML
• XML syntax
• Works with construction rules
• CSS

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Conclusion

• XML is here and now
• Many new initiatives