XML & varieties, e.g. VoiceXML

By: Shawn Ramdass, Saji Abraham &

Billy Santamorena

XML & varieties, e.g. VoiceXML• What is the Origin and the

perspective goals of XML?• What is the meaning XML?• What are the Benefits of XML?• What are the parts that make XML

work?• What are the different flavors of XML?• What are some examples of XML?

Origin and Goals• XML was developed by an XML Working Group (originally known as the

SGML Editorial Review Board) formed under the auspices of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 1996. It was chaired by Jon Bosak of Sun Microsystems with the active participation of an XML Special Interest Group (previously known as the SGML Working Group) also organized by the W3C. The membership of the XML Working Group is given in an appendix. Dan Connolly served as the WG's contact with the W3C.

• The design goals for XML are:• XML shall be straightforwardly usable over the Internet.• XML shall support a wide variety of applications.• XML shall be compatible with SGML.• It shall be easy to write programs which process XML documents.• The number of optional features in XML is to be kept to the absolute minimum,

ideally zero.• XML documents should be human-legible and reasonably clear.• The XML design should be prepared quickly.• The design of XML shall be formal and concise.• XML documents shall be easy to create.

• Terseness in XML markup is of minimal importance.• This specification, together with associated standards (Unicode and ISO/IEC

10646 for characters, Internet RFC 1766 for language identification tags, ISO 639 for language name codes, and ISO 3166 for country name codes), provides all the information necessary to understand XML Version 1.0 and construct computer programs to process it.

The meaning of XML

• XML is a meta language, which is a fancy way of saying that is a language used to create other markup languages.

• At this point in the presentation it may sound like you are learning another foreign language, in fact it is a foreign language if you never heard of XML and any other type of markup language such as HTML.

The meaning of XML

• Just as some Americans and Foreigners are apprehensive about the proliferation of spoken languages of their native tongue, some web developers who have yet to use XML are fearful of its role future of the Web.

• XML is actually the complements of HTML or in simple words XML is in many ways a parent of HTML, as opposed to a rival sibling.

• XML is not a replacement to HTML or competitor , in fact the best way to compare XML to HTML is to remember that XML establishes a set of strict rules that a markup language must follow.

• HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language• XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language

The Benefits of XML

• Platform independent• Unlimited extensibility• Widespread adoption• In fact this all seems to good to be true, you

might say. While no technology can solve all of our problems.

• XML goes a long way to make programs easier to integrate with other programs, and allows a method of interaction between vendors that isn’t platform specific.

The Implementation of XML

• At this point you should understand how XML complements HTML, but you still don’t know how it works in practical scenario.

The Parts of XML

• The Documentation• Elements• Attributes• Five Commandments of XML• Values

XML Documentation

• An element is used to describe or contain a piece of information; elements form the basis of all XML documents.

• The documentation is similar to HTML with the use of tags, however the tags can be custom made according to the user.

• Also there is no specific way of viewing XML as how a HTML uses a Web browser like internet explorer, netscape, etc.

A typical Example of XMLThe Apartment1. <apartmentbldg>

2. <apartment> 3.<room type=“bedroom”> 4. <furniture type=“dresser”> 5. <belonging type=“t-shirt” color=“navy” size=“L”/>

6. <belonging type=“watch”/>

7.</furniture>8.</room>

9.</apartment>10.</apartmentbldg>

Attributes

XML’s Five Commandments1. Tag names are case sensitive2. Every opening tag must have a

corresponding closing tag (unless it is abbreviated as an empty tag)

3. A nested tag pair cannot overlap another tag

4. Attribute values must appear within quotes.

5. Every document must have a root element

Some Examples of XML-based Language• WML-Web pages for mobile devices• XMLNews-news stories• CDF-Web channels• OSD-descriptions of software• MathML-mathematical equations• RELML-real estate listings• VoxML-voice response scripts• 3DML-three dimensional virtual words• VoiceXML-Tellme, and Ascent Technology• www.VoiceXML.org –Tutorial and other information• ETC.