Chapter 2

Structured Web Documents in XML

Grigoris Antoniou
Frank van Harmelen

1 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 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

2 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 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>

3 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 HTML versus XML: Similarities

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

 Tags may be nested (tags within tags)
 Human users can read and interpret both
HTML and XML representations quite easily
… But how about machines?

4 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Problems with Automated
Interpretation of HTML Documents

An intelligent agent trying to retrieve the names

of the authors of the book
 Authors’ names could appear immediately
after the title
 or immediately after the word by
 Are there two authors?
 Or just one, called “V. Marek and M.
Truszczynski”?
5 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer
 HTML vs XML: Structural Information

 HTML documents do not contain structural

information: pieces of the document and their
relationships.
 XML more easily accessible to machines because
– Every piece of information is described.
– Relations are also defined through the nesting structure.
– E.g., the <author> tags appear within the <book> tags, so
they describe properties of the particular book.

6 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 HTML vs XML: Structural Information (2)

 A machine processing the XML document

would be able to deduce that
– the author element refers to the enclosing book
element
– rather than by proximity considerations
 XML allows the definition of constraints on
values
– E.g. a year must be a number of four digits

7 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 HTML vs XML: Formatting

 The HTML representation provides more

than the XML representation:
– The formatting of the document is also described
 Τhe main use of an HTML document is to
display information: it must define formatting
 XML: separation of content from display
– same information can be displayed in different
ways

8 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 HTML vs XML: Another Example
 In HTML
<h2>Relationship force-mass</h2>
<i> F = M × a </i>
 In XML
<equation>
<meaning>Relationship force-mass</meaning>
<leftside> F </leftside>
<rightside> M × a </rightside>
</equation>

9 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 HTML vs XML: Different Use of Tags

 In both HTML docs same tags

 In XML completely different

 HTML tags define display: color, lists …

 XML tags not fixed: user definable tags
 XML meta markup language: language for
defining markup languages

10 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 XML Vocabularies

 Web applications must agree on common

vocabularies to communicate and collaborate
 Communities and business sectors are
defining their specialized vocabularies
– mathematics (MathML)
– bioinformatics (BSML)
– human resources (HRML)
– …

11 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Lecture Outline

1. Introduction
2. Detailed Description of XML
3. Structuring
a) DTDs
b) XML Schema
4. Namespaces
5. Accessing, querying XML documents: XPath
6. Transformations: XSLT
12 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer
 The XML Language

An XML document consists of

 a prolog
 a number of elements
 an optional epilog (not discussed)

13 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Prolog of an XML Document

The prolog consists of

 an XML declaration and
 an optional reference to external structuring
documents

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

<!DOCTYPE book SYSTEM "book.dtd">

14 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer
 XML Elements

 The “things” the XML document talks about

– E.g. books, authors, publishers
 An element consists of:
– an opening tag
– the content
– a closing tag
<lecturer>David Billington</lecturer>

15 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 XML Elements (2)

 Tag names can be chosen almost freely.

 The first character must be a letter, an
underscore, or a colon
 No name may begin with the string “xml” in
any combination of cases
– E.g. “Xml”, “xML”

16 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Content of XML Elements
 Content may be text, or other elements, or nothing

<lecturer>
<name>David Billington</name>
<phone> +61 − 7 − 3875 507 </phone>
</lecturer>

 If there is no content, then the element is called

empty; it is abbreviated as follows:
<lecturer/> for <lecturer></lecturer>

17 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 XML Attributes

 An empty element is not necessarily

meaningless
– It may have some properties in terms of attributes
 An attribute is a name-value pair inside the
opening tag of an element
<lecturer name="David Billington"
phone="+61 − 7 − 3875 507"/>

18 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 XML Attributes: An Example

<order orderNo="23456" customer="John Smith"

date="October 15, 2002">
<item itemNo="a528" quantity="1"/>
<item itemNo="c817" quantity="3"/>
</order>

19 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 The Same Example without Attributes

<order>
<orderNo>23456</orderNo>
<customer>John Smith</customer>
<date>October 15, 2002</date>
<item>
<itemNo>a528</itemNo>
<quantity>1</quantity>
</item>
<item>
<itemNo>c817</itemNo>
<quantity>3</quantity>
</item>
</order>

20 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 XML Elements vs Attributes

 Attributes can be replaced by elements

 When to use elements and when attributes is
a matter of taste
 But attributes cannot be nested

21 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Further Components of XML Docs

 Comments
– A piece of text that is to be ignored by parser
– <!-- This is a comment -->
 Processing Instructions (PIs)
– Define procedural attachments
– <?stylesheet type="text/css"
href="mystyle.css"?>

22 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Well-Formed XML Documents

 Syntactically correct documents

 Some syntactic rules:
– Only one outermost element (called root element)
– Each element contains an opening and a
corresponding closing tag
– Tags may not overlap
 <author><name>Lee Hong</author></name>
– Attributes within an element have unique names
– Element and tag names must be permissible

23 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 The Tree Model of XML Documents:
An Example

<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>

24 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 The Tree Model of XML Documents:
An Example (2)

25 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 The Tree Model of XML Docs

 The tree representation of an XML document

is an ordered labeled tree:
– There is exactly one root
– There are no cycles
– Each non-root node has exactly one parent
– Each node has a label.
– The order of elements is important
– … but the order of attributes is not important

26 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Lecture Outline

1. Introduction
2. Detailed Description of XML
3. Structuring
a) DTDs
b) XML Schema
4. Namespaces
5. Accessing, querying XML documents: XPath
6. Transformations: XSLT
27 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer
 Structuring XML Documents

 Define all 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.
 If such structuring information exists, the
document can be validated
28 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer
 Structuring XML Dcuments (2)

 An XML document is valid if

– it is well-formed
– respects the structuring information it uses
 There are two ways of defining the structure
of XML documents:
– DTDs (the older and more restricted way)
– XML Schema (offers extended possibilities)

29 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 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)>

30 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 The Meaning of the DTD

 The element types lecturer, name, and phone may

be used in the document
 A lecturer element contains a name element and a
phone element, in that order (sequence)
 A name element and a phone element may have
any content
 In DTDs, #PCDATA is the only atomic type for
elements

31 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 DTD: Disjunction in Element Type
Definitions

 We express that a lecturer element contains

either a name element or a phone element as
follows:
<!ELEMENT lecturer (name|phone)>
 A lecturer element contains a name element
and a phone element in any order.
<!ELEMENT lecturer((name,phone)|(phone,name))>

32 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Example of an XML Element

<order orderNo="23456"
customer="John Smith"
date="October 15, 2002">
<item itemNo="a528" quantity="1"/>
<item itemNo="c817" quantity="3"/>
</order>

33 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 The 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>

34 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Comments on the DTD

 The item element type is defined to be empty

 + (after item) is a cardinality operator:
– ?: appears zero times or once
– *: appears zero or more times
– +: appears one or more times
– No cardinality operator means exactly once

35 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Comments on the DTD (2)

 In addition to defining elements, we define

attributes
 This is done in an attribute list containing:
– Name of the element type to which the list applies
– A list of triplets of attribute name, attribute type,
and value type
 Attribute name: A name that may be used in
an XML document using a DTD
36 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer
 DTD: Attribute Types

 Similar to predefined data types, but limited selection

 The most important types are
– CDATA, a string (sequence of characters)
– ID, a name that is unique across the entire XML document
– IDREF, a reference to another element with an ID attribute
carrying the same value as the IDREF attribute
– IDREFS, a series of IDREFs
– (v1| . . . |vn), an enumeration of all possible values
 Limitations: no dates, number ranges etc.

37 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 DTD: Attribute Value Types

 #REQUIRED
– Attribute must appear in every occurrence of the element
type in the XML document
 #IMPLIED
– The appearance of the attribute is optional
 #FIXED "value"
– Every element must have this attribute
 "value"
– This specifies the default value for the attribute

38 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 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>

39 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 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>

40 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 XML Entities

 An XML entity can play the role of

– a placeholder for repeatable characters
– a section of external data
– a part of a declaration for elements

 We can use the entity reference &thisyear instead

of the value " 2007 "
<!ENTITY thisyear " 2007 " >

41 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 A DTD for an Email Element

<!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>

42 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 A DTD for an Email Element (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>
43 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer
 Interesting Parts of the DTD

 A head element contains (in that order):

– a from element
– at least one to element
– zero or more cc elements
– a subject element
 In from, to, and cc elements
– the name attribute is not required
– the address attribute is always required
44 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer
 Interesting Parts of the DTD (2)

 A body element contains

– a text element
– possibly followed by a number of attachment
elements
 The encoding attribute of an attachment
element must have either the value “mime”
or “binhex”
– “mime” is the default value

45 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Remarks on DTDs

 A DTD can be interpreted as an Extended

Backus-Naur Form (EBNF)
– <!ELEMENT email (head,body)>
– is equivalent to email ::= head body
 Recursive definitions possible in DTDs
– <!ELEMENT bintree
((bintree root bintree)|emptytree)>

46 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Lecture Outline

1. Introduction
2. Detailed Description of XML
3. Structuring
a) DTDs
b) XML Schema
4. Namespaces
5. Accessing, querying XML documents: XPath
6. Transformations: XSLT
47 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer
 XML Schema

 Significantly richer language for defining the

structure of XML documents
 Tts syntax is based on XML itself
– not necessary to write separate tools
 Reuse and refinement of schemas
– Expand or delete already existent schemas
 Sophisticated set of data types, compared to
DTDs (which only supports strings)

48 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 XML Schema (2)

 An XML schema is an element with an

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

49 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 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

50 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Attribute Types

<attribute name="id" type="ID“

use="required"/>
< attribute name="speaks" type="Language"
use="default" value="en"/>
 Existence: use="x", where x may be
optional or required
 Default value: use="x" value="...", where x
may be default or fixed

51 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Data Types

 There is a variety of 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.
 There are also user-defined data types
– simple data types, which cannot use elements or
attributes
– complex data types, which can use these

52 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Data Types (2)

 Complex data types are defined from already

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

53 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 A Data Type Example

<complexType name="lecturerType">
<sequence>
<element name="firstname" type="string"
minOccurs="0“ maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
<element name="lastname" type="string"/>
</sequence>
<attribute name="title" type="string"
use="optional"/>
</complexType>

54 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Data Type Extension

 Already existing data types can be extended by

new elements or attributes. Example:
<complexType name="extendedLecturerType">
<extension base="lecturerType">
<sequence>
<element name="email" type="string"
minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1"/>
</sequence>
<attribute name="rank" type="string" use="required"/>
</extension>
</complexType>
55 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer
 Resulting Data Type

<complexType name="extendedLecturerType">
<sequence>
<element name="firstname" type="string"
minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
<element name="lastname" type="string"/>
<element name="email" type="string"
minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1"/>
</sequence>
<attribute name="title" type="string" use="optional"/>
<attribute name="rank" type="string" use="required"/>
</complexType>

56 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Data Type Extension (2)

 A hierarchical relationship exists between the

original and the extended type
– Instances of the extended type are also instances
of the original type
– They may contain additional information, but
neither less information, nor information of the
wrong type

57 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Data Type Restriction

 An existing data type may be restricted by adding

constraints on certain values
 Restriction is not the opposite from extension
– Restriction is not achieved by deleting elements or attributes
 The following hierarchical relationship still holds:
– Instances of the restricted type are also instances of the
original type
– They satisfy at least the constraints of the original type

58 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Example of Data Type Restriction

<complexType name="restrictedLecturerType">
<restriction base="lecturerType">
<sequence>
<element name="firstname" type="string"
minOccurs="1" maxOccurs="2"/>
</sequence>
<attribute name="title" type="string"
use="required"/>
</restriction>
</complexType>

59 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Restriction of Simple Data Types

<simpleType name="dayOfMonth">
<restriction base="integer">
<minInclusive value="1"/>
<maxInclusive value="31"/>
</restriction>
</simpleType>

60 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Data Type Restriction: Enumeration

<simpleType name="dayOfWeek">
<restriction base="string">
<enumeration value="Mon"/>
<enumeration value="Tue"/>
<enumeration value="Wed"/>
<enumeration value="Thu"/>
<enumeration value="Fri"/>
<enumeration value="Sat"/>
<enumeration value="Sun"/>
</restriction>
</simpleType>

61 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 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>

62 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 XML Schema: The Email Example (2)

<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>

63 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 XML Schema: The Email Example (3)

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

 Similar for bodyType

64 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Lecture Outline

1. Introduction
2. Detailed Description of XML
3. Structuring
a) DTDs
b) XML Schema
4. Namespaces
5. Accessing, querying XML documents: XPath
6. Transformations: XSLT
65 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer
 Namespaces

 An XML document may use more than one

DTD or schema
 Since each structuring document was
developed independently, name clashes may
appear
 The solution is to use a different prefix for
each DTD or schema
– prefix:name
66 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer
 An Example

<vu:instructors xmlns:vu="http://www.vu.com/empDTD"
xmlns:gu="http://www.gu.au/empDTD"
xmlns:uky="http://www.uky.edu/empDTD">

<uky:faculty uky:title="assistant professor"

uky:name="John Smith"
uky:department="Computer Science"/>

<gu:academicStaff gu:title="lecturer"
gu:name="Mate Jones"
gu:school="Information Technology"/>
</vu:instructors>

67 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Namespace Declarations

 Namespaces are declared within an element

and can be used in that element and any of
its children (elements and attributes)
 A namespace declaration has the form:
– xmlns:prefix="location"
– location is the address of the DTD or schema
 If a prefix is not specified: xmlns="location"
then the location is used by default
68 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer
 Lecture Outline

1. Introduction
2. Detailed Description of XML
3. Structuring
a) DTDs
b) XML Schema
4. Namespaces
5. Accessing, querying XML documents: XPath
6. Transformations: XSLT
69 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer
 Addressing and Querying XML
Documents

 In relational databases, parts of a database

can be selected and retrieved using SQL
– Same necessary for XML documents
– Query languages: XQuery, XQL, XML-QL
 The central concept of XML query languages
is a path expression
– Specifies how a node or a set of nodes, in the
tree representation of the XML document can be
reached

70 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 XPath

 XPath is core for XML query languages

 Language for addressing parts of an XML
document.
– It operates on the tree data model of XML
– It has a non-XML syntax

71 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Types of Path Expressions

 Absolute (starting at the root of the tree)

– Syntactically they begin with the symbol /
– It refers to the root of the document (situated one
level above the root element of the document)
 Relative to a context node

72 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 An XML Example
<library location="Bremen">
<author name="Henry Wise">
<book title="Artificial Intelligence"/>
<book title="Modern Web Services"/>
<book title="Theory of Computation"/>
</author>
<author name="William Smart">
<book title="Artificial Intelligence"/>
</author>
<author name="Cynthia Singleton">
<book title="The Semantic Web"/>
<book title="Browser Technology Revised"/>
</author>
</library>

73 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Tree Representation

74 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Examples of Path Expressions in
XPath

 Address all author elements

/library/author
 Addresses all author elements that are
children of the library element node, which
resides immediately below the root
 /t1/.../tn, where each ti+1 is a child node of
ti, is a path through the tree representation

75 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Examples of Path Expressions in
XPath (2)

 Address all author elements

//author
 Here // says that we should consider all
elements in the document and check
whether they are of type author
 This path expression addresses all author
elements anywhere in the document

76 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Examples of Path Expressions in
XPath (3)

 Address the location attribute nodes within

library element nodes
/library/@location
 The symbol @ is used to denote attribute
nodes

77 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Examples of Path Expressions in
XPath (4)

 Address all title attribute nodes within book

elements anywhere in the document, which
have the value “Artificial Intelligence”
//book/@title="Artificial Intelligence"

78 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Examples of Path Expressions in
XPath (5)

 Address all books with title “Artificial Intelligence”

/book[@title="Artificial Intelligence"]
 Test within square brackets: a filter expression
– It restricts the set of addressed nodes.
 Difference with query 4.
– Query 5 addresses book elements, the title of which
satisfies a certain condition.
– Query 4 collects title attribute nodes of book elements

79 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Tree Representation of Query 4

80 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Tree Representation of Query 5

81 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Examples of Path Expressions in
XPath (6)

 Address the first author element node in the XML

document
//author[1]
 Address the last book element within the first
author element node in the document
//author[1]/book[last()]
 Address all book element nodes without a title
attribute
//book[not @title]

82 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 General Form of Path Expressions

 A path expression consists of a series of

steps, separated by slashes
 A step consists of
– An axis specifier,
– A node test, and
– An optional predicate

83 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 General Form of Path Expressions (2)

 An axis specifier determines the tree

relationship between the nodes to be
addressed and the context node
– E.g. parent, ancestor, child (the default), sibling,
attribute node
– // is such an axis specifier: descendant or self

84 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 General Form of Path Expressions (3)

 A node test specifies which nodes to

address
– The most common node tests are element names
– E.g., * addresses all element nodes
– comment() addresses all comment nodes

85 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 General Form of Path Expressions (4)

 Predicates (or filter expressions) are

optional and are used to refine the set of
addressed nodes
– E.g., the expression [1] selects the first node
– [position()=last()] selects the last node
– [position() mod 2 =0] selects the even nodes
 XPath has a more complicated full syntax.
– We have only presented the abbreviated syntax

86 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Lecture Outline

1. Introduction
2. Detailed Description of XML
3. Structuring
a) DTDs
b) XML Schema
4. Namespaces
5. Accessing, querying XML documents: XPath
6. Transformations: XSLT
87 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer
 Displaying XML Documents

<author>
<name>Grigoris Antoniou</name>
<affiliation>University of Bremen</affiliation>
<email>[email protected]</email>
</author>
may be displayed in different ways:
Grigoris Antoniou Grigoris Antoniou
University of Bremen University of Bremen
[email protected] [email protected]
88 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer
 Style Sheets

 Style sheets can be written in various

languages
– E.g. CSS2 (cascading style sheets level 2)
– XSL (extensible stylesheet language)
 XSL includes
– a transformation language (XSLT)
– a formatting language
– Both are XML applications

89 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 XSL Transformations (XSLT)

 XSLT specifies rules with which an input XML

document is transformed to
– another XML document
– an HTML document
– plain text
 The output document may use the same DTD or
schema, or a completely different vocabulary
 XSLT can be used independently of the formatting
language

90 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 XSLT (2)

 Move data and metadata from one XML

representation to another
 XSLT is chosen when applications that use different
DTDs or schemas need to communicate
 XSLT can be used for machine processing of content
without any regard to displaying the information for
people to read.
 In the following we use XSLT only to display XML
documents

91 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 XSLT Transformation into HTML

<xsl:template match="/author">
<html>
<head><title>An author</title></head>
<body bgcolor="white">
<b><xsl:value-of select="name"/></b><br />
<xsl:value-of select="affiliation"/><br />
<i><xsl:value-of select="email"/></i>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>

92 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Style Sheet Output

<html>
<head><title>An author</title></head>
<body bgcolor="white">
<b>Grigoris Antoniou</b><br>
University of Bremen<br>
<i>[email protected]</i>
</body>
</html>

93 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Observations About XSLT

 XSLT documents are XML documents

– XSLT resides on top of XML
 The XSLT document defines a template
– In this case an HTML document, with some
placeholders for content to be inserted
 xsl:value-of retrieves the value of an element
and copies it into the output document
– It places some content into the template

94 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 A Template

<html>
<head><title>An author</title></head>
<body bgcolor="white">
<b>...</b><br>
...<br>
<i>...</i>
</body>
</html>

95 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Auxiliary Templates

 We have an XML document with details of

several authors
 It is a waste of effort to treat each author
element separately
 In such cases, a special template is defined for
author elements, which is used by the main
template

96 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Example of an Auxiliary Template

<authors>
<author>
<name>Grigoris Antoniou</name>
<affiliation>University of Bremen</affiliation>
<email>[email protected]</email>
</author>
<author>
<name>David Billington</name>
<affiliation>Griffith University</affiliation>
<email>[email protected]</email>
</author>
</authors>

97 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Example of an Auxiliary Template (2)

<xsl:template match="/">
<html>
<head><title>Authors</title></head>
<body bgcolor="white">
<xsl:apply-templates select="authors"/>
<!-- Apply templates for AUTHORS
children -->
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>

98 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Example of an Auxiliary Template (3)

<xsl:template match="authors">
<xsl:apply-templates select="author"/>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="author">
<h2><xsl:value-of select="name"/></h2>
Affiliation:<xsl:value-of
select="affiliation"/><br>
Email: <xsl:value-of select="email"/>
<p>
</xsl:template>
99 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer
 Multiple Authors Output
<html>
<head><title>Authors</title></head>
<body bgcolor="white">
<h2>Grigoris Antoniou</h2>
Affiliation: University of Bremen<br>
Email: [email protected]
<p>
<h2>David Billington</h2>
Affiliation: Griffith University<br>
Email: [email protected]
<p>
</body>
</html>

100 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Explanation of the Example

 xsl:apply-templates element causes all children of

the context node to be matched against the selected
path expression
– E.g., if the current template applies to /, then the element
xsl:apply-templates applies to the root element
– I.e. the authors element (/ is located above the root
element)
– If the current context node is the authors element, then the
element xsl:apply-templates select="author" causes the
template for the author elements to be applied to all author
children of the authors element

101 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Explanation of the Example (2)

 It is good practice to define a template for

each element type in the document
– Even if no specific processing is applied to certain
elements, the xsl:apply-templates element
should be used
– E.g. authors
 In this way, we work from the root to the
leaves of the tree, and all templates are
applied

102 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Processing XML Attributes
 Suppose we wish to transform to itself the element:
<person firstname="John" lastname="Woo"/>

 Wrong solution:
<xsl:template match="person">
<person firstname="<xsl:value-of
select="@firstname">"
lastname="<xsl:value-of select="@lastname">"/>
</xsl:template>

103 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Processing XML Attributes (2)

 Not well-formed because tags are not

allowed within the values of attributes
 We wish to add attribute values into template
<xsl:template match="person">
<person
firstname="{@firstname}"
lastname="{@lastname}"/>
</xsl:template>

104 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Transforming an XML Document to
Another

105 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Transforming an XML Document to
Another (2)

<xsl:template match="/">
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-16"?>
<authors>
<xsl:apply-templates select="authors"/>
</authors>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="authors">
<author>
<xsl:apply-templates select="author"/>
</author>
</xsl:template>

106 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Transforming an XML Document to
Another (3)

<xsl:template match="author">
<name><xsl:value-of select="name"/></name>
<contact>
<institution>
<xsl:value-of select="affiliation"/>
</institution>
<email><xsl:value-of select="email"/></email>
</contact>
</xsl:template>

107 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Summary

 XML is a metalanguage that allows users to

define markup
 XML separates content and structure from
formatting
 XML is the de facto standard for the
representation and exchange of structured
information on the Web
 XML is supported by query languages

108 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer

 Points for Discussion in Subsequent
Chapters

 The nesting of tags does not have standard meaning

 The semantics of XML documents is not accessible
to machines, only to people
 Collaboration and exchange are supported if there is
underlying shared understanding of the vocabulary
 XML is well-suited for close collaboration, where
domain- or community-based vocabularies are used
– It is not so well-suited for global communication.

109 Chapter 2 A Semantic Web Primer