XML

XML is not…
• A replacement for HTML

• A presentation format

• A programming language

• A network transfer protocol

• A database

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 But then – what is it?

XML is a markup language for

text documents / textual data

XML allows to define languages

(“applications“) to represent text
documents / textual data

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 XML by Example
<article>
<author>Gerhard Weikum</author>
<title>The Web in 10 Years</title>
</article>

• Easy to understand for human users

• Very expressive (semantics along with the data)
• Well structured, easy to read and write from programs

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 XML by Example

<t108>
<x87>Gerhard Weikum</x87>
<g10>The Web in 10 Years</g10>
</t108>

• Hard to understand for human users

• Not expressive (no semantics along with the data)
• Well structured, easy to read and write from programs

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Possible Advantages of Using XML
• Truly Portable Data
• Easily readable by human users
• Very expressive (semantics near data)
• Very flexible and customizable (no finite tag set)
• Easy to use from programs
• Easy to convert into other representations
(XML transformation languages)
• Many additional standards and tools
• Widely used and supported

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 App. Scenario : Content Mgt.

Clients

XML2HTML XML2WML XML2PDF Converters

Database with
XML documents

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App. Scenario : XML for Metadata
<rdf:RDF
<rdf:Description rdf:about="http://www-dbs/Sch03.pdf">
<dc:title>A Framework for…</dc:title>
<dc:creator>Ralf Schenkel</dc:creator>
<dc:description>While there are...</dc:description>
<dc:publisher>Saarland University</dc:publisher>
<dc:subject>XML Indexing</dc:subject>
<dc:rights>Copyright ...</dc:rights>
<dc:type>Electronic Document</dc:type>
<dc:format>text/pdf</dc:format>
<dc:language>en</dc:language>
</rdf:Description>
</rdf:RDF>

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App. Scenario : Document Markup
<article>
<section id=„1“ title=„Intro“>
This article is about <index>XML</index>.
</section>
<section id=„2“ title=„Main Results“>
<name>Weikum</name> <cite idref=„Weik01“/> shows
the following theorem (see Section <ref idref=„1“/>)
<theorem id=„theo:1“ source=„Weik01“>
For any XML document x, ...
</theorem>
</section>
<literature>
<cite id=„Weik01“><author>Weikum</author></cite>
</literature>
</article>
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App. Scenario : Document Markup
• Document Markup adds structural and semantic
information to documents, e.g.
– Sections, Subsections, Theorems, …
– Cross References
– Literature Citations
– Index Entries
– Named Entities

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 XML
Part 2 – Basic XML Concepts

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 XML Documents
What‘s in an XML document?
• Elements
• Attributes
• plus some other details

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 A Simple XML Document
<article>
<author>Gerhard Weikum</author>
<title>The Web in Ten Years</title>
<text>
<abstract>In order to evolve...</abstract>
<section number=“1” title=“Introduction”>
The <index>Web</index> provides the universal...
</section>
</text>
</article>

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 A Simple XML Document
<article> Freely definable tags
<author>Gerhard Weikum</author>
<title>The Web in Ten Years</title>
<text>
<abstract>In order to evolve...</abstract>
<section number=“1” title=“Introduction”>
The <index>Web</index> provides the universal...
</section>
</text>
</article>

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 A Simple XML Document
<article> Start Tag
<author>Gerhard Weikum</author>
<title>The Web in Ten Years</title>
<text>
<abstract>In order to evolve...</abstract>
<section number=“1” title=“Introduction”>
The <index>Web</index> provides the universal...
</section>
</text>
</article>

Content of
End Tag the Element
Element (Subelements
and/or Text)
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 A Simple XML Document
<article>
<author>Gerhard Weikum</author>
<title>The Web in Ten Years</title>
<text>
<abstract>In order to evolve...</abstract>
<section number=“1” title=“Introduction”>
The <index>Web</index> provides the universal...
</section>
</text>
</article>
Attributes with
name and value

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 Elements in XML Documents
• (Freely definable) tags: article, title, author
– with start tag: <article> etc.
– and end tag: </article> etc.
• Elements: <article> ... </article>
• Elements have a name (article) and a content (...)
• Elements may be nested.
• Elements may be empty: <this_is_empty/>
• Element content are strings with special characters, and/or nested
elements (mixed content if both).
• Each XML document has exactly one root element and forms a
tree.
• Elements with a common parent are ordered.

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 Elements vs. Attributes
Elements may have attributes (in the start tag) that have a name
and
a value, e.g. <section number=“1“>.
What is the difference between elements and attributes?
• Only one attribute with a given name per element
• Attributes have no structure, simply strings (while elements can
have subelements)
As a rule of thumb:
• Content into elements
• Metadata into attributes
Example:
<person born=“1912-06-23“ died=“1954-06-07“>
Alan Turing</person> proved that…
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XML Documents as Ordered Trees
article

author title text

number=“1“
abstract section
Gerhard title=“…“
Weikum
In order … The index provides …
The Web
in 10 years Web

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 Well-Formed XML Documents
A well-formed document must adher to, among others, the
following rules:
• Every start tag has a matching end tag.
• Elements may nest, but must not overlap.
• There must be exactly one root element.
• Attribute values must be quoted.
• An element may not have two attributes with the same
name.
• Comments and processing instructions may not appear
inside tags.

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 Namespace
<dbs:book xmlns:dbs=“http://www-dbs/dbs“>

Prefix as abbrevation Unique URI to identify

of URI the namespace
Signal that namespace
definition happens

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 Namespace Example
<dbs:book xmlns:dbs=“http://www-dbs/dbs“>
<dbs:description> ... </dbs:description>
<dbs:text>
<dbs:formula>
<mathml:math
xmlns:mathml=“http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML“>
...
</mathml:math>
</dbs:formula>
</dbs:text>
</dbs:book>

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 Default Namespace
• Default namespace may be set for an element and its
content (but not its attributes):
<book xmlns=“http://www-dbs/dbs“>
<description>...</description>
<book>
• Can be overridden in the elements by specifying the
namespace there (using prefix or default namespace)

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 XML
Part 3 – Defining XML Data Formats

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 3.1 Document Type Definitions
Sometimes XML is too flexible:
• For exchanging data, the format (i.e., elements,
attributes and their semantics) must be fixed
Document Type Definitions (DTD) for establishing the
vocabulary for one XML application (in some sense
comparable to schemas in databases)
A document is valid with respect to a DTD if it conforms
to the rules specified in that DTD.
Most XML parsers can be configured to validate.

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 DTD Example: Elements
<!ELEMENT article (title,author+,text)>
<!ELEMENT title (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT author (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT text (abstract,section*,literature?)>
<!ELEMENT abstract (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT section (#PCDATA|index)+>
<!ELEMENT literature (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT index (#PCDATA)>
Content of the text element may
Content of the title element contain zero or more section
is parsed character data elements in this position
Content of the article element is a title element,
followed by one or more author elements,
followed by a text element
 Element Declarations in DTDs
One element declaration for each element type:
<!ELEMENT element_name content_specification>
where content_specification can be
• (#PCDATA) parsed character data
• (child) one child element
• (c1,…,cn) a sequence of child elements c1…cn
• (c1|…|cn) one of the elements c1…cn
For each component c, possible counts can be specified:
– c exactly one such element
– c+ one or more
– c* zero or more
– c? zero or one
Plus arbitrary combinations using parenthesis:
<!ELEMENT f ((a|b)*,c+,(d|e))*>
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 More on Element Declarations
• Elements with mixed content:
<!ELEMENT text (#PCDATA|index|cite|glossary)*>
• Elements with empty content:
<!ELEMENT image EMPTY>
• Elements with arbitrary content (this is nothing for
production-level DTDs):
<!ELEMENT thesis ANY>

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 Attribute Declarations in DTDs
Attributes are declared per element:
<!ATTLIST section number CDATA #REQUIRED
title CDATA #REQUIRED>
declares two required attributes for element section.

element name

attribute name

attribute type

attribute default

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 Attribute Declarations in DTDs
Attributes are declared per element:
<!ATTLIST section number CDATA #REQUIRED
title CDATA #REQUIRED>
declares two required attributes for element section.

Possible attribute defaults:

• #REQUIRED is required in each element instance
• #IMPLIED is optional
• #FIXED default always has this default value
• default has this default value if the attribute
is
omitted from the element instance
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 Attribute Types in DTDs
• CDATA string data
• (A1|…|An) enumeration of all possible values of the
attribute (each is XML name)
• ID unique XML name to identify the element
• IDREF refers to ID attribute of some other element
(„intra-document link“)
• IDREFS list of IDREF, separated by white space
• plus some more

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 Attribute Examples
<ATTLIST publication type (journal|inproceedings) #REQUIRED
pubid ID #REQUIRED>
<ATTLIST cite cid IDREF #REQUIRED>
<ATTLIST citation ref IDREF #IMPLIED
cid ID #REQUIRED>

<publications>
<publication type=“journal“ pubid=“Weikum01“>
<author>Gerhard Weikum</author>
<text>In the Web of 2010, XML <cite cid=„12“/>...</text>
<citation cid=„12“ ref=„XML98“/>
<citation cid=„15“>...</citation>
</publication>
<publication type=“inproceedings“ pubid=“XML98“>
<text>XML, the extended Markup Language, ...</text>
</publication>
</publications>
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 Attribute Examples
<ATTLIST publication type (journal|inproceedings) #REQUIRED
pubid ID #REQUIRED>
<ATTLIST cite cid IDREF #REQUIRED>
<ATTLIST citation ref IDREF #IMPLIED
cid ID #REQUIRED>

<publications>
<publication type=“journal“ pubid=“Weikum01“>
<author>Gerhard Weikum</author>
<text>In the Web of 2010, XML <cite cid=„12“/>...</text>
<citation cid=„12“ ref=„XML98“/>
<citation cid=„15“>...</citation>
</publication>
<publication type=“inproceedings“ pubid=“XML98“>
<text>XML, the extended Markup Language, ...</text>
</publication>
</publications>
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 Linking DTD and XML Docs
• Document Type Declaration in the XML document:
<!DOCTYPE article SYSTEM “http://www-dbs/article.dtd“>

keywords Root element URI for the DTD

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 Linking DTD and XML Docs
• Internal DTD:
<?xml version=“1.0“?>
<!DOCTYPE article [
<!ELEMENT article (title,author+,text)>
...
<!ELEMENT index (#PCDATA)>
]>
<article>
...
</article>
• Both ways can be mixed, internal DTD overwrites external
entity information:
<!DOCTYPE article SYSTEM „article.dtd“ [
<!ENTITY % pub_content (title+,author*,text)
]>
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 Flaws of DTDs
• No support for basic data types like integers, doubles,
dates, times, …
• No structured, self-definable data types
• No type derivation
• id/idref links are quite loose (target is not specified)

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