Extreme Markup Languages 2000

Introduction to XSLT (Special notice: Limited seating for this tutorial)
Instructors: Tony Graham and Wendell Piez, both of Mulberry Technologies, Inc.

XSLT is the transformation component of XSL, the stylesheet language associated with XML. A declarative processing language that uses XML syntax, XSLT supports the kinds of transformation necessary for complex rearrangement, transformation, and presentation of XML documents in print, on line, and in alternative media, including (but not limited to) mapping, filtering, rearrangement, sorting, numbering, and conditional processing. In this hands-on class, students will learn the concepts underlying XSLT, develop a simple XSLT stylesheet (converting an XML file into HTML), and add complexity to their stylesheets as they learn more of the language’s capabilities.

Prerequisite skills: Students must be able to: create Well-formed XML documents, create Valid XML documents, read XML DTDs, and tag XML documents according to a DTD.

Technology Requirements: Participants are to bring their own laptops (including a floppy drive for software distribution). Software should include a text editor or XML editor (well-formed XML) and either a currently conformant XSL processor, installed and ready to run, OR JDK 1.2 (we can distribute XT for platforms running Java). We recommend the XT or Saxon XSL processors.

Topic Maps
Instructors: Michel Biezunski, Infoloom and Steven R Newcomb, TechnoTeacher, Inc.

Topic Maps are the ISO-standard SGML/XML-based syntax for interchanging semantic webs and topical finding information; this tutorial explains Topic Maps, the Topic Maps paradigm, and its conceptual foundations. Several actual commercial internet- and intranet-based Topic Maps and Topic Maps applications will be demonstrated and discussed in detail, including the trade-off decisions that informed their designs. During the second day, the full power of the ISO Topic Maps paradigm will be surveyed, including its relationships to the use of ISO "architectural forms" for syntactic and semantic inheritance, ISO "grove" addressing, ISO HyTime hyperlinking and addressing in XML, and the conceptual and syntactic near-identity of HyTime "varlink" and "extended XLink" (both are capable of supporting Topic Maps).

Prerequisite skills: None. A working knowledge of SGML or XML will be helpful

Creating XML DTDs (Special notice: Limited seating for this tutorial)
Instructor: Michael Hahn, Document Management Solutions, Inc.

This hands-on tutorial introduces students to the rationale and techniques behind the development of XML Document Type Definitions (DTDs). Students will learn to write the basic XML syntax declarations: XML Declaration, DOCTYPE, ELEMENT, ATTLIST, ENTITY, and NOTATION, and to properly apply those declarations to the problems of describing information structures..

Technology Requirements: Participants are to bring their own laptops (including a CD ROM or floppy drive for exercises). Laptops should be running Windows 95/98/2000; other operating systems may be accommodates with notice to the instructor no less than two weeks in advance of the class..

Introduction to programming in Perl, with emphasis on working with XML
Instructor: Syd Bauman, Brown University

Programming is often viewed as an extremely technical task that only geeks can do. Rudimentary programming, however, is not hard at all-it only requires that you know a few key parts of a language, and can think as dumb as a computer. This hands-on course will cover the basics of processing generic text files using Perl. Examples will be drawn from tasks which frequently arise in manipulating SGML, HTML, or XML files. The desperate perl hacker has become a figure of XML folklore for good reason: Perl can usefully be deployed both for substantial production projects which process XML, and for one-shot, throwaway programs. By the end of the course, participants will be able to write short Perl programs that perform multiple, moderately complex search-and-replacements on a text file. In Perl, there is more than one way to do it!

Prerequisite skills: familiarity with XML syntax and use of a text editor; no programming experience required. Participants should bring their own laptop and should have downloaded and installed Perl and ensured the program is working before the tutorial (www.perl.com) Please click here for instructions.

Markup for typography
Instructor: Liam Quin

Provides an introduction to typography and graphic design so attendees can work with stylesheets. Attendees learn the basics of typography, including the basic rules of graphic design (alignment, grouping, contrast, color, and proportion), typeface identification, and how to treat text. Typographic information is then placed in the context of automatic markup-driven formatting (measurements, page areas, zones and layouts, and flow objects). This in turn is placed in the context of the underlying printing and screen technologies (fonts that implement typefaces, character encoding, kern pairs, PostScript, and bitmaps and scaled images).

RELAX and enjoy it!
Instructor: Murata Makoto

RELAX (REgular LAnguage description for XML) [http://www.xml.gr.jp/relax] is a specification for describing XML-based languages. XHTML 1.0, for example, can be described in RELAX. RELAX is simpler than XML Schema Part 1; on the other hand, it adopts the built-in datatypes of XML Schema Part 2. Participants will learn how to write RELAX modules, convert DTDs to RELAX modules, verify XML documents against RELAX modules, and generate Java classes from RELAX modules. This technology is available today, and after this tutorial, participants should be able to use it by themselves.

Prerequisite skills: reasonable understanding of XML 1.0. Knowledge of Java will be useful for understanding the generation of Java classes from RELAX modules.

Mirroring a Database in XML Syntax
Instructor: Marcy Thompson, ISOGEN/DataChannel, Inc.

Addresses the problems and challenges inherent in attempting to translate a relational database to a hierarchical XML data format. The course considers two approaches to solving this problem, mirroring the database in XML and creating a hierarchical model which reflects the structures in the database without mirroring them directly. Students try each approach on a very small database. The course concludes with an open discussion on topics such as: When is reflecting a database structure in XML useful? What ways are there to incorporate relational data into XML documents? How can XML-encoded information be used to populate a relational database?

This hands-on tutorial is an introduction to Python in general and to its XML processing features in particular. It shows how Python currently supports both event-based APIs such as SAX and tree-based APIs such as the DOM. It also demonstrates how Python seamlessly integrates these features with access to Java classes, COM and CORBA objects, relational databases, and Internet protocols. In Python, there is just one way to do it: the right way! A brief survey of publicly available Python code for XML work will be included.

Technology Requirements: Participants are to bring their own laptops and should download and install a current version of Python before the tutorial (www.python.org).

XLink
Instructor: Steven J. DeRose, Brown University

"XLink" is the name of a syntax and a paradigm for powerful hyperlinking within and among all kinds of documents. With XLinks, we can add an unbounded variety of "click-and-go" possibilities, not only to documents that we create, but also to documents that we do not have the authority to change. XLink also enables actual link databases; this allows bidirectional traversal, multi-ended links, and link filtering (needed for true scalability). This tutorial begins with a history of hyperlinking, a survey of the limitations of HTML linkikng, and what can be achieved by overcoming them. The goals and the process of developing an XLink Recommendation (expected this year) are then described, along with some of the commercial opportunities that XLink is creating. Finally, the bulk of the tutorial is devoted to the details of linking and addressing in XML: functionality, syntax, design issues, trade-offs, and concepts.

Prerequisite skills: XML concepts, including tags, attributes, and tree structure. Knowledge of HTML linking is helpful.

XML Schema Languages; A Technical Introduction
Instructor: Henry Thompson, University of Edinburgh

XML Schema definition language proposes facilities for describing the structure and constraining the contents of XML 1.0 documents. The schema language, which is itself represented in XML 1.0, provides a superset of the capabilities found in XML 1.0 document type definitions (DTDs.) This tutorial provides a technically detailed examination of the most recent XML Schema by one of its editors. In addition, the tutorial presents an introduction to schema constraints, types, composition and symbol spaces along with terminology used throughout the specification. Part two of the tutorial discusses specifying a language for defining datatypes to be used in XML Schemas.

Prerequisite skills: Technical knowledge of XML, XML DTDs, and computer grammars

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