Critical reflection on XML for E-business

Critical reflection on XML for E-business:

XML:

XML, (eXtensible Markup Language), is a meta language based on an earlier markup language called Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). Meta is derived from a Greek word that means “above, higher or beyond”, in the sense that it transcends normal language. So as a Meta language, XML is beyond normal computer languages because it provides the rules that facilitate the development of industry and application-specific markup languages. These specialized XML languages allow for the transmission of data between users regardless of the platform or operating system being used.

As XML standards become more developed and authoring tools become more wide-spread, its relative value is becoming clearer.

XML and e-business:

The greatest driver of business change today is e-business, brought about by the Internet. In the near term, this revolution will have the most impact on business-to-business transactions.

XML opens up data so that you can share it among your organization, partners, customers, and suppliers — without sharing or integrating your critical business systems.

From the development team’s point of view, this means they no longer have to use proprietary mechanisms for formatting data passed between applications or stored in files or databases. From the vendors’ and business partners’ points of view, this means they can easily exchange information.

Finally, for the e-business, XML provides an open, cross-platform way to transact, manage, and share information. Businesses can leverage data currently residing in hard-to-reach or non-integrated legacy systems and share information across the heterogeneous environment of the Web. XML helps improve business-to-business transactions by combining the power of electronic data interchange (EDI) with the simplicity of the Web. This combination of technologies fuses Web data interchange — based on XML— with existing EDI business methods and structures.

For example, using an XML-based solution, the health care industry can create vocabularies for medical patient information that can be easily shared among doctors, insurance companies and patients. This capability enables medical professionals to access common information — without worrying about the hardware and software that they use to run their respective businesses. In this way, patients will benefit of a more efficient processing of medical claims between doctors and insurance companies, tighter integration of patient history, and better customer service.

Following is a list of the main advantages that XML provides in e-business. XML is:

• Simple It is a text-based tag language that people and computers can easily understand.

• Extensible Diverse data with specific meaning for a given community can be freely exchanged. You can invent custom tags and vocabularies for any purpose and share them across interest groups.

• Interoperable Data sharing does not depend on any particular software or hardware platform.

• Mature Although the specification was announced in February 1998, it is a simplification of the proven SGML technology that originated from IBM research in the 1960s.

• International Built-in support for Unicode, an international language encoding standard that supports any script in the world today. This makes transnational data accessible to the program.

References of Review Questions:

http://www.21newmedia.com/resources/articles/css/xhtml-kicking-and-screaming-into-the-future.asp

http://www.digital-web.com/articles/the_document_object_model/

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6880125-description.html

http://www.skillsforaccess.org.uk/howto.php?id=129

Question No 5:

The current recommendation of W3C is to use XHTML as an alternative to HTML.

Answer:

xhtml is the current standard set by the W3C. The w3c continues development of XHTML, and xhtml 2.0 will replace the current standard in the future. Learning and using xhtml today will help designers prepare for tomorrow. Valid XHTML produces no errors that might slow down a browser, and the code produced is clean and efficient. This saves in file size and helps designers better accomplish their search engine optimization goals. Learning xhtml is primarily about learning a new way to lay out pages. Though frustrating at first, the long term benefits far outweigh any initial inconvenience.

Question No 4:

What are DOMs and why were they developed?

Answer:

A Document Object Model (DOM) is a model of how the various HTML elements in a page (paragraphs, images, form fields, etc.) are related to each other and to the topmost structure: the document itself. So the document is represented as a kind of tree, in which each HTML element is a branch or leaf, and has a name.

I see the use of the DOM as a kind of naming magic. If you call on an HTML element using its proper name, you are granted access and you can influence the element, forcing the browser to react to your arcane incantations. Of course, like in fairy tales, if you use a wrong name or try to influence the wrong property, terrible things may start to happen.

Therefore it is very important that you know the proper incantations (plural, because sometimes you need to know several names for the same element).

For instance, when you write a rollover script you access a certain image in the page by using its correct name:

document.images['thename']

When you are granted access, you can change its src property. As soon as you do that, the browser reacts to your “spell” by loading another image in the place of the first. If the image you try to name doesn’t exist, however, or if you misspelled the name, the browser gives error messages and your magic won’t work.

As you might have guessed, older browsers only give access to a limited number of HTML elements, while the newest browsers give access to everything. Also, you can change only a few things in older browsers, while you can change pretty much anything in the newest browsers. Therefore it’s always important to know if the various browsers can do what you want them to do. If you give them orders they can’t execute, they start sulking and give JavaScript Error Message Alerts.

Question No 3:

Do you think adopting XHTML is a wise move?

Answer:

Technical obstacles to adopting xhtml may be quite steep as well, especially as regards large, existing websites with complex scripting. Yet the time may eventually come where yesterday’s “tried and true” html is little more than an ancient language, unable to be interpreted by modern electronic devices. Whether one agrees with the direction the w3c takes in the development of html is irrelevant, you are just along for the ride. With some perseverance, getting the hang of xhtml is possible. In form, it is not as different from html as Japanese is from English. Knowing html grants a basic knowledge of the language, it simply becomes a matter of learning a particular dialect. Even an original nay-sayer such as myself managed to do it.

Question No 2:

SMIL is an application of XML. What is the purpose of this technology? Where does it apply?

Answer:

Providing captions enables media that contains spoken or other audio information (on-or off-screen sound effects, or background music) important to understanding the media’s content to be accessible to anyone who has difficulty hearing, or is unable to hear, the media soundtrack. SMIL is an open standard created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) – and therefore in theory media player or format-independent – for creating accessible media through combining caption and audio description files with media files and providing information on their synchronisation and display. General Principles

SMIL is based on Extensible Markup Language (XML). Version 1.0 has been around since 1998; the specification for version 2.0 was published at the beginning of 2005. A SMIL file is a simple text file, so like HTML, it can be created using a basic text editor. In practice, though, they are created more effectively and quickly using authoring software like MAGpie.

Real Player and QuickTime both support SMIL, but Windows Media Player uses a separate technology (Synchronised Accessible Multimedia Interchange, SAMI – confusingly also provided with the file extension .smi or .sami). Microsoft have also developed HTML+TIME as a technology for synchronising embedded media within a web page. Version 2.0 of HTML+TIME is a subset of SMIL 2.0, and is currently only supported by Internet Explorer (from version 5.5).

Since all three main media players can open files with the .smi extension, to avoid the wrong media player opening the SMIL file, it is necessary to provide the reference to the SMIL file in a separate player-specific file (for example .ram for Real Player, and .mov or .sml for QuickTime). Technique Details

SMIL is a powerful technology, and to discuss in depth its capabilities would be beyond the scope of this resource. From an accessibility perspective, the process of adding captions to a video file using SMIL involves:

Creating a caption file containing individual captions, either from a pre-existing transcript or by playing the video and transcribing the spoken content plus any important non-spoken sound, and associating a timestamp with each caption.

Creating a SMIL file which references the media file and caption file (and audio description files if provided). It can also define properties of the area of the screen to be used to show the media, the area of the screen to be used to show captions, and provide metadata about the clip. All assets must reside in the same folder – the digitised video, caption and audio description file(s), and SMIL file.

Making the SMIL file available on a web page, using HTML. This is normally more complex than might be expected, given the lack of native browser support for SMIL and the unknown factor of which media player on a user’s computer will open the SMIL file. The way the SMIL file is referenced in a web page thus depends on the media player the resultant captioned video will open in, but generally requires creation of a media-player specific meta-file, which in turn references the SMIL file.

Review Questions..

Question No 1:

What are some developers using SAX instead of DOM for document processing?

Answer:

XML is quickly becoming a core technology for interoperability and data manipulation, and parsing XML has become a standard function in most computing environments. Two main approaches exist at the present time. One of these approaches is the Simple API for XML Processing, or “SAX”. The other approach is the Document Object Model, or “DOM”. Each of these approaches has certain benefits and drawbacks, although SAX presently has more momentum as an XML processing API. Efficient XML processing can be fundamental to a server. As more documents become XML based, more traffic on the server will be XML. The latest push into web services currently utilizes the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) as a transport. SOAP is a lightweight, XML-based protocol for exchanging information in a decentralized, distributed environment. This push has highlighted the need for fast, solid XML processing. Web services can utilize XML over HTTP as the transport for remote procedure calls. If the XML parser is slow, these calls cannot be made in a timely manner.

To use SAX, one writes handlers, or objects that implement the various handler APIs, which receive callbacks during the processing of an XML document. Some of the main benefits of this style of XML document processing include efficiency, flexibility, and the fact that this approach is relatively low level. It is possible to change handlers during the processing of an XML document, which allows one to use different handlers for different sections within the same document. One drawback to the SAX API is that the programmer must keep track of the current state of the document in the code each time one processes an XML document. This can be an unacceptable amount of overhead for XML processing, and can lead to convoluted document processing code.

DOM, on the other hand, loads an entire XML document into memory and provides APIs to the programmer to manipulate the DOM tree. At first glance, this might seem like a win for the application developer as the developer does not have to write specific parsing code. Unfortunately, this simplicity can take a very serious hit on performance. An entire document must be read into memory, so for very large documents one must read the entire document into memory before taking appropriate actions based on the data. DOM is also restrictive in the way in which it loads data into memory. A programmer must use the DOM tree as the base for handling XML in the document. This can be too restrictive for many application needs. For example, most application server deployment descriptors need to be bound to specific Java classes and not DOM trees.

Technical Report on XML

Technical Report on XML

XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a W3C initiative that allows information and services to be encoded with meaningful structure and semantics that computers and humans can understand. XML is great for information exchange, and can easily be extended to include user-specified and industry-specified tags.

In this article author ‘Kerri Hicks’ specifies that there are heaps of ways to store, work with, and retrieve data on the web. Simple databases, relational databases, XML, even custom flat files can hold our product catalogs, user information, and other repositories of important stuff that we want to share with the world. There are some logical ways to work with different kinds of data.

For example, many people who use MySQL databases for storage will write PHP scripts to hook into their data, because of PHP’s native support for MySQL. On the other hand, XML purists often use XSLT (which is itself also XML) to work with their marked-up files. As web developers, it often comes down to us to make the decisions about how to store new data, and even more importantly, how to work with data that our clients give to us. .

XML continues to gain popularity as a data format on the web, while databases such as MySQL are consistently improving and have an ever-growing user base. Both XML and MySQL allow you to represent your data with key/value pairs

XML offers you a document tree to help lend structure to your data, XSLT to munge the data into submission, and parsers for output. Most MySQL users, on the other hand, will use the power of functions in PHP or other scripting languages to articulate relationships between tables, fields, and values.

There is often no right way to store and serve your data, and practically speaking, the best route to choose is often the one you know best. However, PHP5 has brought with it a new function, SimpleXML, which can help offer you even more options, and is a powerful addition to your scripting toolbox.

Reference:

Kerri Hicks. (2007). PHP and XML Sitting in a Tree. Digital Web Magazine. retrieved 07 April 2008, from

http://www.digital-web.com/articles/php_and_xml_sitting_in_a_tree/

Non-Technical Report on XML

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a simple and very flexible text format which is delivered from Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML). XML is basically designed to meet the challenges of large-scale electronic publishing. It is also playing an increasingly important role in the exchange of a wide variety of data on the web and elsewhere.

XML structures information in documentary systems ranging from financial reports to medical records and business contract. XML standards for specific applications are developed spontaneously by self-appointed technologies or entrepreneurs. XML’s social and economic stakes are considerable, especially when developed for the private law of contracts. XML can reduce transaction costs but also limit the range of contractual expression and redefine the nature of law practice.

To exploit XML’s advantages while minimizing risks, this Article envisions creating a publicly oriented foundation to set XML-based standards for the private law of corporate contracts. The Article’s specific inquiry concerning corporate contracts illuminates XML’s broader implications, making the standard-setting model it contributes adaptable to other contexts.

References:

Cunningham, L (2006).Language, Deals and Standards: The Future of XML Contracts. Social Science Electronic Publishing, May 05. retrieved  08 April 2008, from

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=900616

Liam Quin (2007). Extensible Markup Language (XML). W3C Architecture Domain. retrieved 08 April 2008, from

http://www.w3.org/XML/

References

Norman Walsh. (1998). A Technical Introduction To XML. O’Reilly Media, Inc. retrieved 07 April 2008, from

http://www.xml.com/pub/a/98/10/guide0.html?page=1

Shermin Voshmqir. (1999). XML Tutorial. VistaEdge Technologies. retrieved 06 April 2008, from

http://www.javacommerce.com/displaypage.jsp?name=intro.sql&id= 18238