PLEASE NOTE:
IMMEDIATE TUTORIAL SELECTION IS ADVISED -
FOR MOST TUTORIALS WILL SELL OUT IMMEDIATELY.

FULL-DAY TUTORIALS
February 27
9:00am-5:30pm


Information Analysis for XML Applications

This tutorial will teach participants how to approach document (information) analysis for XML and how to design XML applications that are implementable, affordable, and will provide the basis for high precision retrieval. The introduction will cover basic concepts of structured markup and will give participants a grounding in what to look for when analyzing documents and structured information collections. The discussion will include enough detail on grouping, sequencing, and occurrence constructs for the participants to understand what can be expressed in an element declaration. (We will not assume any knowledge of XML syntax or that participants ever need to read or write a DTD.) The tutorial will center around an exercise in which the participants analyze a relatively complex document. Participants will use physical models to record structures using a simple methodology that allows them to analyze, discuss, and record complex relationships without DTD syntax. They will explore ways in which their design can be modified to support various retrieval and reuse requirement.

Instructors: Tommie Usdin, President and Debbie Lapeyre, Vice President, Mulberry Technologies, Inc.

Information Objects in XML

The tutorial will show how compound documents, especially in technical areas, can be built from XML components (or information objects). Participants will be able to see how XML entities, CSS and XSL processing and a variety of technically oriented DTDs (MathML, SVG, graphs, etc.) can be combined into a re-usable XML resource for use in different ways.

Instructor Prof. Peter Murray-Rust Virtual School of Molecular Sciences, University of Nottingham, UK

Target Audience: Technical authors of HTML and XML, including Webmasters.

Prerequisites: Familiarity with HTML authoring, and fluency with installing and running software on PCs. They should have a sense of adventure.

Technology Requirements Participants should have a laptop with a Java platform and should be prepared to install software (preferably on CDROM) such as XED, on or before the tutorial Software details will be posted later. Participants will be able to keep the CDROM and it is unlikely that much "paper" will be distributed.

Miscellaneous Item: This could involve considerable "audience participation"

XML Schema Languages: A Technical Introduction

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 draft recommendation 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.

Instructor: Henry S. Thompson, University of Edinburgh

Target Audience: Consultants, Developers, System Architects, Document Analysts, Technical Staff, . . .

Prerequisites: Familiarity with XML and/or SGML at a detailed technical level; previous experience writing and/or maintaining substantial DTDs.

Technology Requirements: None.

MORNING HALF-DAY TUTORIALS
February 27
9:00am-12:30pm


Scripting Languages for XML

Developers will be relieved to hear that they don't need to learn heavy-duty programming languages to handle basic XML processing. The friendlier worlds of JavaScript, Perl, VBScript, Python, REBOL, and others are all quite capable of handling XML processing. This seminar will give an overview of XML processing in scripts, describe scenarios where scripting XML is the right approach, and present the different approaches taken by a number of scripting environments.|

Instructor: Simon St.Laurent, Book Author

Target Audience: Web Developers and others in environments where scripts and intergration are important.

Prerequisites: Attendees should have a basic familiarity with well-formed XML.

Technology Requirements: A basic understanding of JavaScript will be very helpful, but no understanding of the other scripting languages being covered is required.

XML and Java

XML is the next big revolution in for the World-Wide-Web. As Java greatly impacted distributed programming and web browsing, XML will carry the web to the next phase of e-commerce, internet based document exchange and workflow. XML forms the static aspect of the future of the Web, while Java and OO paradigm form the dynamic aspects. "XML gives Java something to do " said a noted XML evangelist. XML (unlike HTML) is an extensible, structure, and schema validation. XML also separates content from schema, processing, and semantics, thus following the Model-View-Controller (MVC) paradigm prevalent in OO programming. As XML is being seamlessly integrated into Web and non-Web applications, a number of XML processors are becoming available. Object models have been proposed to describe XML schema (XSchema, SOX), the document structure (DOM), and parsing based on event models consortium. Also, as XML specifications are integrated into programming languages, component models like bean architectures become important. A number of design patterns also are supported to enable XML structures to blend with OO applications architectures.

Instructor: Neel Sundaresan, Manager, eMerging Internet Technologies, IBM Research

XLink

This half-day tutorial, given by a co-editor of the XML Linking Language (XLink) and XML Pointer Language (XPointer) specifications, will cover the state of the art of XML linking. Topics include simple linking and extended linking with XLink, external linksets and linkbases, specifying link traversal behavior using arcs, where link behavior fits in, addressing into XML resources with XPointer, and a survey of some current linking implementations. We will also cover hot-off-the-press news about all of the linking-related specifications.

Instructor: Eve Maler, Staff Engineer, Sun Microsystems

Target Audience: XML language designers who want to learn how to use standardized linking.

Prerequisites: Familiarity with (e.g., the ability to "read") XML DTD and document constructs.

Technology Requirements: None.

AFTERNOON HALF-DAY TUTORIALS
February 27
2:00pm-5:30pm


Introduction to Python

Python is quickly gaining popularity as a fundamental technology for Internet applications. Python's popularity is driven by its easy, intuitive syntax, clean design and powerful class libraries. These libraries give access to string manipulation, relational and object databases, URLs, various Internet protocols and HTML, XML, and SGML parsing. XML concepts manifest themselves naturally in Python's simple syntax. Although there is a large Python programming community, most people in the XML world are new to it. This tutorial presents an opportunity to learn from someone who has used XML and Python together for several years. The talk will presume programming knowledge and will cover Python's basic syntax, runtime environment, available implementations, popular extensions and the directions of the language's evolution.

Instructor: Paul Prescod, Consulting Engineer, ISOGEN/DataChannel

Prerequisites: Attendees should be familiar with some programming language such as Java, C, Basic or Fortran. Omnimark or Javascript are sufficient if the attendee has made advanced use of them.
Attendees should also be familiar with XML syntax.



Apache: XML Publication Techniques

The tutorial will introduce the listeners to XML and how it can be used in website publication. We will cover from the importance of a good XML structure (DTD or schema) design to how the content will be styled into HTML or PDF before being delivered to the clients. We will also describe how Apache and its related tools (Cocoon, Xerces and Xalan) come into play when talking about XML.

Instructor: Pierpaolo Fumagalli, Apache

XML Hacking with Perl & XML::Parser

This tutorial should provide programmers already basicly familiar with perl the facts they need to start programming XML applications in perl. Course outline: Intro to XML Overview of XML::Parser Example XML applications Survey of other perl XML modules.

Instructor: Clark Cooper, Technical Director, Logic Technologies, Inc.

Prerequisites: Basic familiarity with perl is assumed.

Technology Requirements: A laptop with perl installed is helpful but not required.

FULL-DAY TUTORIALS
February 28
9:00am-5:30pm


Working with XSL

This single-day tutorial will provide a brief overview of XSLT, but will focus on XSL Formatting Objects: the intent behind the design, reference semantics of the area model, the coordination with CSS and I18N W3C Working Groups, description and explanation of each of the FOs, and detailed "working" examples.

Instructors: Sharon Adler, Senior Manager, Extensible Technologies, IBM Research and Anders Berglund, Research Staff Member, IBM Research

Target Audience: Potential implementors and users of XSL Formatting Objects.

Prerequisites: Some working knowledge of the XSL Public Draft published by the W3C on
January 12, 2000.

Technology Requirements: None.



OmniMark

This one-day tutorial introduces the OmniMark language and programming practices for processing XML. For the past ten years, OmniMark's unique and effective approach to structured markup processing has simplified the life for thousands of programmers. Using sample OmniMark code, this tutorial will demonstrate that XML processing can be straightforward and easy.

Instructor: Brian Nolan, OmniMark Specialist, OmniMark Technologies Corp.

Target Audience: Audience has technical background in programming and markup languages, but very little or no experience with OmniMark.

Prerequisites: None.

Technology Requirements: None.

MORNING HALF-DAY TUTORIALS
February 28
9:00am-12:30pm


The W3C DOM - Theory

Part one of the tutorial will include discussions on the W3C DOM. The DOM defines a standard interface to XML documents. This means that applications can be built on top of that interface much more quickly and reliably than if developers had to learn a new way of doing things for each software application or language they come across. This tutorial is part one of a two-part tutorial that covers basic navigation and manipulation of an XML document and attached CSS stylesheets, including events.

Instructor: Lauren Wood, SoftQuad Software Inc.

XLink

This half-day tutorial, given by a co-editor of the XML Linking Language (XLink) and XML Pointer Language (XPointer) specifications, will cover the state of the art of XML linking. Topics include simple linking and extended linking with XLink, external linksets and linkbases, specifying link traversal behavior using arcs, where link behavior fits in, addressing into XML resources with XPointer, and a survey of some current linking implementations. We will also cover hot-off-the-press news about all of the linking-related specifications.

Instructor: Eve Maler, Staff Engineer, Sun Microsystems

Target Audience: XML language designers who want to learn how to use standardized linking.

Prerequisites: Familiarity with (e.g., the ability to "read") XML DTD and document constructs.

Technology Requirements: None.

Scripting Languages for XML

Developers will be relieved to hear that they don't need to learn heavy-duty programming languages to handle basic XML processing. The friendlier worlds of JavaScript, Perl, VBScript, Python, REBOL, and others are all quite capable of handling XML processing. This seminar will give an overview of XML processing in scripts, describe scenarios where scripting XML is the right approach, and present the different approaches taken by a number of scripting environments.|

Instructor: Simon St.Laurent, Book Author

Target Audience: Web Developers and others in environments where scripts and intergration are important.

Prerequisites: Attendees should have a basic familiarity with well-formed XML.

Technology Requirements: A basic understanding of JavaScript will be very helpful, but no understanding of the other scripting languages being covered is required.

XML Metadata

Describing the world in XML. This half-day tutorial looks at how XML-based vocabularies can be used to describe XML and non-XML-based resources. Particular vocabularies will be discussed, including XML Schemas, RDF, XMI and XML-Data reduced. The application of these vocabularies to common software development tasks will be emphasized.


Instructor: Don Box, co-founder, DevelopMentor

Target Audience: Developers who want to use XML to describe their world

Prerequisites: A basic knowledge of XML syntax is assumed

Technology Requirements: This talk is largely platform/technology neutral,however, passing familiarity with UML and IDL is assumed.

XML Programming in Java

This course covers everything you need to know to develop XML applications in Java, including how to use parsers, how to use the DOM and SAX APIs, how to do various advanced functions generating DOM trees dynamically, sorting document elements, etc.), with a brief foray into transformations with XSLT.

Instructor: Doug Tidwell, Senior Programmer, IBM Corporation

Target Audience: Programmers wanting to develop XML applications in Java.

Prerequisites: A basic knowledge of Java is assumed, as is familiarity with XML documents, including Document Type Definitions, valid versus well-formed documents, and the basics of XML document structures.

Technology Requirements For best results, attendees should bring laptops with the following software installed: A Java Development Kit, version 1.2 or higher; the Xerces XML Parser for Java, version 1.0.1 or higher; and the Xalan XSLT Stylesheet Processor for Java, version 0.19.2 or higher. The Xerces parser and the Xalan stylesheet processor are both available at xml.apache.org.

AFTERNOON HALF-DAY TUTORIALS
February 28
2:00pm-5:30pm


The W3C DOM - Practical

Part two will be a practical hands-on look at DOM. The DOM defines a standard interface to XML documents. This hands-on tutorial time is spent on giving participants practical DOM implementation techniques, and focuses on the ways in which the DOM can be used to navigate, access, and manipulate an XML document and an associated CSS stylesheet.

Instructor: Lauren Wood, SoftQuad Software Inc.

Technology Requirements: Attendees must bring their own laptops with suitable software for doing the DOM exercises. Most attendees at previous tutorials have used MSIE 5.0 (www.microsoft.com/ie) or Mozilla (www.mozilla.org); either of these are suitable although attendees should ensure that they have the latest versions. Other software which implements the DOM may also be used.