Introduction to XML (TT4300)

Learning Objectives

This course is an intensive, hands-on introduction to XML, XPath, and XSLT. The course is a balanced mixture of theory and practical labs designed to take students from 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 the fundamentals of XML, including coverage of DTDs and XML Schema. It then moves on to the XPath and XSLT standards, and how to use them to transform XML documents into other documents such as HTML documents or other XML documents. This course provides indoctrination in the practical use of W3C standards (including XSL and XML Schema) and of implementing tools and technologies. This course is programming language independent, making it useful for Java, .NET, C++, and any other programming orientation. Graduates will hit the ground running, applying XML to projects at both an architectural as well as a line-by-line coding level. We can easily adapt this course to industry and client-specific needs. In addition to valuable knowledge and working examples, students receive a copy of the "Xtensil" product. This unique software was developed to assist in implementing, testing, and fielding XML applications. Xtensil is used as both a teaching aid and a straightforward, basic, fully functional XML toolkit that students can use on Windows and Linux platforms.
Working in a hands-on learning environment students will learn to:
Write well-formed XML documents
Model business requirements using XML
Handle XML reserved characters
Validate an XML document with a DTD and with a Schema
Centralize data and markup definition with entities
Create DTDs and Schemas using XML tools
Generate XML documents from databases
Write XSL templates to transform XML documents into HTML
Integrate XML, XSL and the DOM to implement a complete solution