XML Essentials | Introduction to XML

Unlock the power of XML for web applications and business-to-business interactions with our hands-on XML Essentials course, designed specifically for software developers eager to master XML's core technologies like XPath, XSLT, and XML Schema.

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Essential Skills Gained

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Understand XML fundamentals and advanced technologies

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Implement XML processing with XPath and XSLT

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Learn XML Schema creation and validation

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Apply XML in diverse web and business contexts

Format

  • Instructor-led
  • 3 days with lectures and hands-on labs.

Audience

  • Software Developers
  • Web Developers
  • Application Architects
  • IT Professionals

Description

The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a standard that is enabling a revolution in web applications and business to business interactions. XML is the basis for Wireless Markup Language (WML), Voice Markup Language (VoiceML), Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), REST data interchange, and numerous industry initiatives such as ACORD (insurance), PXML (proposal/RFP) and OTA (travel). Introduction to XML is a three-day, hands-on course geared for software developers who need to understand what XML is and how to use in with today's systems and architectures. This course covers the topics from tags to architectures. The course is a balanced mixture of theory and practical labs designed to take students from a quick review of the basic fundamentals of XML through to the related advanced technologies. The students walk through the different standards in a structured manner to enable them to master the concepts and ideas, which are reinforced in the lab exercises. The course starts with a quick review of the fundamentals of XML before covering XML Schema in detail. It then moves on to the XPath and XSLT covering advanced topics in both. Finally, XML processing and XML security issues are addressed.

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Course Outline

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XML Content

Lesson: XML Introduction

  1. Convey an understanding of what XML is

  2. Explain its relationship to HTML5 and SGML

  3. Explain the concept of using XML to separate structure, content, and format

  4. Explain some of the motivations for its creation

  5. Explain areas of application using XML

Lesson: XML Mechanics

  1. Understand the rules for XML documents and the reasons for those rules

  2. Comprehend and write well-formed XML documents

  3. Rules for Well-Formed XML

  4. Content as MarkUp

  5. Namespaces Associate Alias with a URI

  6. Lab: Well-Formed XML Documents

XML Structure

Lesson: Namespaces

  1. Understand the basic purpose of Namespaces

  2. Name Collisions

  3. Namespace Scope

  4. Namespaces Best Practices

  5. Lab: Working with Namespaces

Lesson: Structure Using Schemas

  1. Document Type Definition (DTD)

  2. W3C XML Schemas

  3. Elements, Attributes, and Types

  4. Restricting Simple Types: Facets

  5. Complex Types

  6. Attribute Definitions

  7. Derivation by Extension

  8. Using XML Schema with Namespaces

  9. Lab: Create a Simple Schema

  10. Lab: Schema Development and Use

  11. Lab: Extending the Schema

  12. Lab: Using Namespaces and Schemas

  13. Lab: Managing Large Schemas (Optional)

XML Formatting

Lesson: CSS and Rendition XML

  1. Describe the role of CSS in HTML5 styling

  2. Explain how CSS can be used in XML styling

  3. XML/CSS Processing Flow

  4. Discuss CSS’s limitations relative to XML’s formatting and rendering needs

  5. Lab: CSS and Rendering XML

Lesson: XSL Transformations

  1. Explain the family of XSL standards and their relationships

  2. Describe the functions of XSLT, XPath, and XSL

  3. XSLT is Rule-Based Transformation Language

  4. Describe the types of transformations possible using XSLT and an XSLT engine

  5. Describe how to associate a stylesheet with an XML document

  6. Lab: XSLT and Transforming XML

Lesson: XSLT and XPath

  1. XPath Data Model

  2. Location Paths

  3. Additional Filtering

  4. XPath Operators and Functions

  5. XSLT Stylesheet Structure

  6. Templates Are The Rules

  7. Conflict Resolution for Templates

  8. Calling Templates

  9. Looping, Sorting and Conditional Processing Constructs

  10. Lab: Working With XPath

  11. Lab: Xtensil Tutorial (optional)

  12. Lab: XSLT Development and Use

Lesson: Overview of XPath/XSLT 2.0/3.0 (Optional)

  1. Understand the significant enhancements made in XPath 2.0 in terms of data types, conditional processing, set operators.

  2. XPath 2.0 is a proper subset of XQuery 2.0, the former being document oriented, the latter, data oriented.

  3. XSLT 2.0 also includes many improvements, many of which derive their power from XPath 2.0

  4. XSLT 3.0/3.1 bring streaming into processing as well as several additional enhancements

  5. Lab: Transforming XML - XSLT 2.0

Lesson: XSL FO (Formatting Objects)

  1. Describe the architectural use of XSL-FO

  2. Recognize key parts of an XSL-FO document

  3. Understand the relationship between XSL-FO and XSLT

  4. Apache’s FOP: Rendering XML

  5. Page Types Can Be Conditional

  6. Content Flows Into Page Regions

  7. Lab: Working With XSL-FO

Applying XML

Lesson: XML Interoperability

  1. List aspects of applications driving design decisions

  2. Describe options for content management and storage

  3. Explain comparison of relational and hierarchical models

  4. Discuss options for handling the boundary between relational databases and XML

  5. XML From a Data Perspective

  6. XML/Database Interfacing

  7. Challenges to Mapping XML

Lesson: XML Performance Improvements

  1. Developing XML programs is complex with many issues to consider

  2. XML/XSLT/XSL-FO source should be treated just like any other source code/data

  3. Gotchas abound

  4. Lab: Best Practices Review

Lesson: XML Processing Security

  1. Understand the vulnerabilities associated with XML processing

  2. Recognize the many places where XML processing takes place and how to manage them

  3. Appreciate the risks associated with XML-related vulnerabilities

  4. Understand and recognize XML vulnerabilities and attacks

  5. XML Parser Coercion

  6. XML Attacks: Structure

  7. XML Attacks: Injection

  8. Safe XML Processing

  9. Lab: Safe XML Processing

  10. Lab: Dynamic Loading Using XSLT (Optional)

Lesson: XML Applications

  1. Update and explain the status and roles of XML-related W3C specifications

  2. Discuss data modeling from an XML and application perspective

  3. Explain options for using XML in: Server-side or client-side web publication

  4. Application integration

  5. Benefits of XML

  6. Drawbacks of XML

  7. Crossing Boundaries

  8. Challenges to Integration

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