HL/TE - XML and APIs for Java Developers
Instructor: Ian F. Darwin, Java Developer & Trainer, Darwin Open Systems
Java is a great programming language, and XML is a great markup language. This tutorial explains the rudiments of XML and the numerous ways in which Java and XML can work together. Java Developers will learn XML syntax from the ground up, including all basic notions of XML tagging, DTDs and Namespaces and a very brief introduction to Schemas. DTDs - Document Type Definitions - are the conventional means of specifying what tags or elements are allowed in a document. Namespaces allow you to include document specifications from multiple sources. Schemas are an eventual replacement for DTDs, and include mechanisms for type safety, inheritance and extensibility, and more.

After learning these basics, we apply Java to XML. Examples of reading and writing XML will be presented using the standard APIs SAX and DOM promulgated by the World Wide Web Consortium. SAX, the Simple API for XML, provides sequential, event-based handling of XML elements (a la AWT), while DOM provides an in-memory tree of objects representing the elements in the XML document. The Java-centric JDOM (a Sun Java Community Process standard-in-progress). will be presented as an alternative to SAX and DOM. I'll show an example like using XML in the configuration file for a desktop application in both DOM and JDOM to contrast these two APIs.

The instructor will present information on transforming XML into other formats using XSLT, the XSL Transformation Language and its constituents. XML people use the term "Style" for transforming XML into other formats. Another part of XSL, "formatted objects", provides for rendering XML into printable form (PDF anyone?).

Several implementations of most of these standards are available to the Java developer. Sun's JAXP (Java API for XML Parsing), bundled with JDK1.4, provides a full complement of parsing tools, and eases the process of trying out different vendors' parsers. Sun also provides Translets, which pre-compile the XSL transformation into Java byte code for efficiency. The Jakarta project of the Apache Foundation has been vigorously applying Java to XML; a survey of all their Java-XML technologies will conclude this section.

All XML and Java code samples will be available on the author's web site after the presentation.

Java Developers - Come on over to XML!

HL/TE - XML Data Conversion
Instructor: Dale Waldt, Director, aXtive Minds
Creating robust XML data requires effective conversion process design and planning. Legacy data and processes need significant enhancement to deliver the benefits of XML. This workshop will examine processes and tools for creating sophisticated XML content.

Pre-requisites / Basic understanding of XML systems is helpful.

TE - XML Web Services: Description, Discovery and Execution
Instructor: Alex Ceponkus, Technical Lead, Web Services Standards, Bowstreet
Discover the latest activities in XML Web services standards and get an understanding of key specifications such as SOAP, XMLP, WSDL, ebXML, UDDI, SAML and BTP. Attendees will learn the status of each specification and how they fit into the bigger Web services picture.

HL/TE - Adopting XML - A Business Perspective
Instructor: Geoffrey Nolan, Senior Systems Engineer, Turn-Key Systems
This tutorial is designed to assist management and IT staff in maximizing the benefits of switching to XML, while keeping the inevitable cost and inconvenience to a minimum.

TE - Linking Technologies at Work
Instructor: Eric van der Vlist, CEO, DYOMEDEA
Defining relationships between nodes of a tree is always an involved topic. XML has revived the linking problem, and presents multiple ways in which to solve it. In this tutorial, we will explore some of the many ways to deal with expressing links.

Pre-requisites / A good knowledge of XML, namespaces is required. Some knowledge of XSLT and W3C XML Schema is preferable.