Structured Web

Documents
in XML
(a)

Adapted from slides from Grigoris

Antoniou and Frank van Harmelen
 Outline
(1) Introduction
(2) XML details
(3) Structuring
– DTDs
– XML Schema
(4) Namespaces
(5) Accessing, querying XML documents: XPath
(6) Transformations: XSLT
 Role of XML in the Semantic Web

l The Semantic Web involves ideas and

languages at a fairly abstract level, e.g.: for
defining ontologies, publishing data using them
l XML is a
– Source of many key SW concepts & technology bits;
– Potential alternative for sharing data that newer
schemes must improve on; and
– Common serialization for SW data
To paraphrase Jamie Zawinski

Some people, when confronted

with a problem, think, "I know, I'll
use XML."
Now they have two problems.

“Some people, when confronted with a problem,

think "I know, I'll use regular expressions." Now
they have two problems.”
-- Wikiquote
 History
l XML’s roots are in SGML
– Standard Generalized Markup Language
– A metalanguage for defining document markup languages
– Extensible, but complicated, verbose, hard to parse, …
l HTML was defines using SGML, ~1990 by TBL
– A markup language, not a markup metalanguage
l XML proposal to W3C in July 1996
– Simplified SGML to greatly expand power and flexibility of Web
lEvolving series of W3C recommendations
– Current recommendation: XML 5 (2008)
 An HTML Example

<h2>Nonmonotonic Reasoning: Context-

Dependent Reasoning</h2>
<i>by <b>V. Marek</b> and
<b>M. Truszczynski</b></i><br>
Springer 1993<br>
ISBN 0387976892
 The Same Example in XML

<book>
<title>Nonmonotonic Reasoning: Context-Dependent
Reasoning</title>
<author>V. Marek</author>
<author>M. Truszczynski</author>
<publisher>Springer</publisher>
<year>1993</year>
<ISBN>0387976892</ISBN>
</book>
 HTML versus XML: Similarities

l Both use tags (e.g. <h2> and </year>)

l Tags may be nested (tags within tags)
l Humanusers can read and interpret both
HTML and XML representations “easily”
… But how about machines?
 Problems Interpreting HTML Documents

Problems for a machine trying to get the author

names of the book
– Authors’ names could appear immediately
after the title
– or immediately after the word “by” (or “van” if
it’s in Dutch)
– Are there two authors or just one, called “V.
Marek and M. Truszczynski”? <h2>Nonmonotonic Reasoning: Context-
Dependent Reasoning</h2>
<i>by <b>V. Marek</b> and <b>M.
Truszczynski</b></i><br>
Springer 1993<br>
ISBN 0387976892
 HTML vs XML: Structural Information

l HTML documents don’t carry structured

information: pieces document and their
relations
l XML more easily accessible to machines since
– Every piece of information is described
– Relations defined through nesting structure
– E.g., <author> tags appear within <book>
tags, so they describe properties of a
particular book
 HTML vs XML: Structural Information

lA machine processing the XML document can

assume (deduce/infer) that
– author element refers to enclosing book
element
– Without using background knowledge,
proximity or other heuristics
l XML allows definition of constraints on values
– E.g., a year must be a integer of four digits
 HTML vs. XML: Formatting
l HTML representation provides more than XML
representation:
– Formatting of the document is described
l Main use of an HTML document is to display
information: it must define formatting
l XML: separation of content from display
– same information can be displayed in
different ways
– Presentation specified by documents using
other XML standards (CSS, XSL)
 HTML vs. XML: Another Example
In HTML
<h2>Relationship matter-energy</h2>
<i> E = M × c^2 </i>

In XML
<equation>
<gloss>Relationship matter energy </gloss>
<leftside> E </leftside>
<rightside> M × c^2 </rightside>
</equation>
 HTML vs. XML: Different Use of Tags

l All HTML documents use the same tags

– HTML tags come from a finite, pre-defined collection
– Define properties for display: font, color, lists …

l XML documents can use completely different

tags
– XML tags not fixed: user definable tags
– XML is a meta markup language, i.e., a language for
defining markup languages
 XML Vocabularies

l Applications must agree on common

vocabularies to communicate and collaborate
l Communities and business sectors define their
specialized vocabularies
– mathematics (MathML)
– bioinformatics (BSML)
– human resources (HRML)
– Syndication (RSS)
– Vector graphics (SVG)
– …
 Outline
(1) Introduction
(2) Description of XML
(3) Structuring
– DTDs
– XML Schema
(4) Namespaces
(5) Accessing, querying XML documents: XPath
(6) Transformations: XSLT
 The XML Language

An XML document consists of

l A prolog
l A number of elements
l An optional epilog (not discussed, not
used much)

XML documents are tree data structures

 Prolog of an XML Document
The prolog consists of
l An XML declaration and
l An optional reference to external structuring
documents

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-16"?>

<!DOCTYPE book SYSTEM "book.dtd">

 XML Elements

l Elements are the things the XML document

talks about
– E.g., books, authors, publishers, …
l An element consists of:
– An opening tag
– The content
– A closing tag

<lecturer> David Billington </lecturer>

 XML Elements

l Tag names can be chosen almost freely

l First character must be a letter,
underscore, or colon
l No name may begin with the string
“xml” in any combination of cases
– E.g. “Xml”, “xML”
 Content of XML Elements
l Content is what’s between the tags
l It can be text, or other elements, or nothing
<lecturer>
<name>David Billington</name>
<phone> +61 − 7 − 3875 507 </phone>
</lecturer>

l If
there is no content, then element is called
empty; it can be abbreviated as follows:
<lecturer/> = <lecturer></lecturer>
 XML Attributes

l An empty element isn’t necessarily meaningless

– It may have properties expressed as
attributes
l An attribute is a name-value pair inside the
opening tag of an element

<lecturer
name="David Billington"
phone="+61 − 7 − 3875 507" />
 XML Attributes: An Example

<order orderNo="23456“
customer="John Smith"
date="October 15, 2017" >
<item itemNo="a528" quantity="1" />
<item itemNo="c817" quantity="3" />
</order>
The Same Example without Attributes
<order>
<orderNo>23456</orderNo>
<customer>John Smith</customer>
<date>October 15, 2017</date>
<item>
<itemNo>a528</itemNo>
<quantity>1</quantity>
</item>
<item>
<itemNo>c817</itemNo>
<quantity>3</quantity>
</item>
</order>
 XML Elements vs. Attributes

l Attributes can be replaced by elements

l When to use elements and when attributes
is a mostly matter of taste
l But attributes cannot be nested
 Further Components of XML Docs

l Comments
–A piece of text that is to be ignored by parser
<!-- This is a comment -->

l Processing Instructions (PIs)

– Define procedural attachments
<?stylesheet type="text/css“
href="mystyle.css"?>
 Well-Formed XML Documents

Constraints on syntactically correct documents:

– Only one outermost element (root element)
– Each element contains opening and corresponding
closing tag (except self-closing tags like <foo/>)
– Tags may not overlap
<author><name>Lee Hong</author></name>
– Attributes within an element have unique names
– Element and tag names must be permissible
e.g.: can’t use strings beginning with digit "2ndbest"
 The Tree Model of XML Docs
The tree representation of an XML document is
an ordered labeled tree:
– Exactly one root
– No cycles
– Each non-root node has exactly one parent
– Each node has a label
– Order of elements is important
– … but order of attributes is not
 Tree Model of XML Documents
<email>
<head>
<from name="Michael Maher"
address="[email protected]" />
<to name="Grigoris Antoniou"
address="[email protected]" />
<subject>Where is your draft?</subject>
</head>
<body>
Grigoris, where is the draft of the paper you
promised me last week?
</body>
</email>
(2) XML details
Tree Model of XML Documents
 Outline
(1) Introduction
(2) Description of XML
(3) Structuring
– DTDs
– XML Schema
(4) Namespaces
(5) Accessing, querying XML documents: XPath
(6) Transformations: XSLT
 Structuring XML Documents

l Some XML documents must follow constraints

defined in a “template” that can…
– define the element and attribute names that
may be used
– define the structure
– what values an attribute may take
– which elements may or must occur within other
elements, etc.
l If
such structuring information exists, the
document can be validated
 Structuring XML Documents

l An XML document is valid if

– it is well-formed XML
– respects the structuring information it uses
l Ways to define structure of XML documents:
– DTDs (Document Type Definition) came first, was
based on SGML’s approach
– XML Schema (aka XML Schema Definition, XSD) is
more recent and expressive
– RELAX NG and DSDs are two alternatives
 DTD: Element Type Definition
<lecturer>
<name>David Billington</name>
<phone> +61 − 7 − 3875 507 </phone>
</lecturer>
DTD for above element (and all lecturer elements):

<!ELEMENT lecturer (name, phone) >

<!ELEMENT name (#PCDATA) >
<!ELEMENT phone (#PCDATA) >
 The Meaning of the DTD
<!ELEMENT lecturer (name, phone) >
<!ELEMENT name (#PCDATA) >
<!ELEMENT phone (#PCDATA) >

l The element types lecturer, name, and phone

may be used in the document
l lecturer elements contain a name element and a
phone element, in that order (sequence)
l name and phone elements may have any
content
In DTDs, #PCDATA is the only atomic element
type; stands for “parsed character data”
 Disjunction in Element Type Definitions

l We say that lecturer elements contains either

a name or a phone element like:
<!ELEMENT lecturer ( name | phone )>
l A lecturer element contains a name element
and a phone element in any order
<!ELEMENT
lecturer((name,phone)|(phone,name))>
l Do you see a problem with this approach?
 Example of an XML Element

<order orderNo="23456"
customer="John Smith"
date="October 15, 2017">
<item itemNo="a528" quantity="1” />
<item itemNo="c817" quantity="3” />
</order>
 Corresponding DTD
<!ELEMENT order (item+)>
<!ATTLIST order
orderNo ID #REQUIRED
customer CDATA #REQUIRED
date CDATA #REQUIRED >

<!ELEMENT item EMPTY>

<!ATTLIST item
itemNo ID #REQUIRED
quantity CDATA #REQUIRED
comments CDATA #IMPLIED >
 Comments on the DTD
l The item element type is defined to be empty
– i.e., it can contain no elements
l + (after item) is a cardinality operator:
– It specifies how many item elements can be in an order
– ?: zero times or once <!ELEMENT order (item+)>
<!ATTLIST
– *: zero or more times order orderNo ID #REQUIRED
– +: one or more times
customer CDATA #REQUIRED
date CDATA #REQUIRED >
– No cardinality operator: <!ELEMENT item EMPTY>
once <!ATTLIST
item itemNo ID #REQUIRED
quantity CDATA #REQUIRED
comments CDATA #IMPLIED >
 Comments on the DTD

l In addition to defining elements, we define

attributes
l Done in an attribute list containing:
– Name of element type to which list applies
– List of triples of attribute name, attribute
type, and value type
l Attribute name: name that may be used in an
XML document using a DTD
 DTD: Attribute Types
l Similar
to predefined data types, but limited …
l The most important types are
– CDATA, a string (sequence of characters)
– ID, a name that is unique across the entire XML
document (~DB key)
– IDREF, reference to another element with ID attribute
carrying same value as IDREF attribute (~ DB foreign key)
– IDREFS, a series of IDREFs
– (v1| . . . |vn), an enumeration of all possible values
l Limitations: no dates, number ranges, etc.
 DTD: Attribute Value Types
l #REQUIRED
– Attribute must appear in every occurrence of the
element type in the XML document
l #IMPLIED
– The appearance of the attribute is optional
l #FIXED "value"
– Every element must have this attribute
l "value"
– This specifies the default value for the attribute
 Referencing with IDREF and IDREFS

<!ELEMENT family (person*)>

<!ELEMENT person (name)>
<!ELEMENT name (#PCDATA)>
<!ATTLIST person
id ID #REQUIRED
mother IDREF #IMPLIED
father IDREF #IMPLIED
children IDREFS #IMPLIED >
 An XML Document Respecting the DTD

<family>
<person id="bob" mother="mary" father="peter">
<name>Bob Marley</name>
</person>
<person id="bridget" mother="mary">
<name>Bridget Jones</name>
</person>
<person id="mary" children="bob bridget">
<name>Mary Poppins</name>
</person>
<person id="peter" children="bob">
<name>Peter Marley</name>
</person>
</family>
 Email Element DTD 1/2
<!ELEMENT email (head,body)>
<!ELEMENT head (from,to+,cc*,subject)>
<!ELEMENT from EMPTY>
<!ATTLIST from
name CDATA #IMPLIED
address CDATA #REQUIRED>
<!ELEMENT to EMPTY>
<!ATTLIST to
name CDATA #IMPLIED
address CDATA #REQUIRED>
 Email Element DTD 2/2
<!ELEMENT cc EMPTY>
<!ATTLIST cc
name CDATA #IMPLIED
address CDATA #REQUIRED>
<!ELEMENT subject (#PCDATA) >
<!ELEMENT body (text,attachment*) >
<!ELEMENT text (#PCDATA) >
<!ELEMENT attachment EMPTY >
<!ATTLIST attachment
encoding (mime|binhex) "mime"
file CDATA #REQUIRED>
 Outline
(1) Introduction
(2) Description of XML
(3) Structuring
– DTDs
– XML Schema
(4) Namespaces
(5) Accessing, querying XML documents: XPath
(6) Transformations: XSLT
 XML Schema (XSD)
l XML Schema is a significantly richer language
for defining the structure of XML documents
l Syntax based on XML itself, so separate tools
to handle them not needed
l Reuse and refinement of schemas => can
expand or delete existing schemas
l Sophisticated set of data types, compared to
DTDs, which only supports strings
l XML Schema recommendation published by
W3C in 2001, version 1.1 in 2012
 XML Schema

l AnXML schema is an element with an opening

tag like
<schema
"http://www.w3.org/2000/10/XMLSchema"
version="1.0">
lStructure of schema elements
– Element and attribute types using data types
 Element Types

<element name="email"/>
<element name="head“
minOccurs="1“
maxOccurs="1"/>
<element name="to" minOccurs="1"/>
Cardinality constraints:
– minOccurs="x" (default value 1)
– maxOccurs="x" (default value 1)
– Generalizations of *,?,+ offered by DTDs
 Attribute Types

<attribute name="id" type="ID“ use="required"/>

<attribute name="speaks" type="Language"
use="default" value="en"/>

l Existence: use="x", where x may be optional or

required
l Default value: use="x" value="...", where x may be
default or fixed
 Data Types

lMany built-in data types

– Numerical data types: integer, short, etc.
– String types: string, ID, IDREF, CDATA, etc.
– Date and time data types: time, month, etc.
lAlso user-defined data types
– simple data types, which can’t use
elements or attributes
– complex data types, which can use them
 Complex Data Types

Complex data types are defined from existing

data types by defining some attributes (if any)
and using:
– sequence, a sequence of existing data type
elements (order is important)
– all, a collection of elements that must
appear (order is not important)
– choice, a collection of elements, of which
one will be chosen
(3) Structure: XML Schema
 XML Schema: The Email Example

<element name="email" type="emailType"/>

<complexType name="emailType">
<sequence>
<element name="head" type="headType"/>
<element name="body" type="bodyType"/>
</sequence>
</complexType>
 XML Schema: The Email Example
<complexType name="headType">
<sequence>
<element name="from" type="nameAddress"/>
<element name="to" type="nameAddress"
minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
<element name="cc" type="nameAddress"
minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
<element name="subject" type="string"/>
</sequence>
</complexType>
 XML Schema: The Email Example

<complexType name="nameAddress">
<attribute name="name" type="string"
use="optional"/>
<attribute name="address"
type="string" use="required"/>
</complexType>

l Similar for bodyType

 Next
(1) Introduction
(2) Description of XML
(3) Structuring
– DTDs
– XML Schema
(4) Namespaces
(5) Accessing, querying XML documents: XPath
(6) Transformations: XSLT