XML

Syllabus for XML course at the School of Information and Library Science, UNC Chapel Hill, Fall, 2007.

This is an original document.
Fall 2007Hugh A. Cayless hcayless@email.unc.edu AIM: philomousos, Yahoo: hcayless

Main Course Page

Course Goals

By the end of the class you should: know what XML is and what it is not. be able to put "XML" on your résumé and not be lying. be able to use tools to create and manipulate XML.

XML both widely used and often widely misunderstood. In this class, we will try to clear up some of the confusion, so that you will know when to use XML, when to avoid it, and how to figure out what's wrong when it doesn't work properly.

Assignments and grading assignments (50%) project (20%) final exam (15%) class participation (15%)

All written assignments will be turned in electronically in XML format. We will talk about how to do this in class.

The class participation grade includes (obviously) showing up, talking (on topic) in class, participating in online discussions and bringing useful information to the attention of the class.

"XML" is a pretty vast topic, because XML is ubiquitous. There are plenty of XML applications in areas where I don't have much experience. So I'm more than happy to take suggestions and make adjustments to this syllabus, and to learn new stuff myself.

There is no book for this class. There are a number of good books out there, but all the information you're likely to need is available free on the internet. Still, if you really want to buy a book, here are a couple of good and fairly recent ones.

Elliotte Rusty Harold W. Scott Means XML in a Nutshell, Third Edition 2005 . This is available on campus through O'Reilly's Safari Books Online interface. You can access it through the library web site. Elliotte Rusty Harold XML 1.1 Bible 2004 see also: All the XML books in print (or nearly so)
Software and References XML Database eXist XML Database (1.1.2 pre-release) eXist Documentation XML Editors jEdit is a Free, Java-based text editor, with plugins for doing work with XML oXygen is a non-free, but reasonably priced XML editor.
Topics and Readings

<date>August 22</date>: What is Markup? / XML boot camp

<date>August 29</date>: XML boot camp: tools / Some history: digital documents and SGML

Reading A Gentle Introduction to XML David M. Levy A Bit of Digital History from Scrolling Forward 2001 Jon Bosak The Birth of XML

<date>September 5</date>: How to read a W3C Recommendation / Syndication with RSS and Atom By "reading" for the first two items, I mean get as much as you can out of the text in a reasonable amount of time without going crosseyed or insane. W3C recommendations are notoriously hard to read.

Reading Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Fourth Edition) Namespaces in XML 1.0 (Second Edition) RSS (file format) Atom (standard)

<date>September 12</date>: Consuming RSS / XSLT / Validation

Reading Miloslav Nic XSLT Tutorial Read at least through the section on variables. Get familiar with the W3C Recommendations for XSLT 1.0, XPath 1.0, and CSS 2.1. By "get familiar" I mean look them over enough to know their structure and understand how to use them as references when you need them. Dave Pawson's XSLT FAQ is a lifesaver.

<date>September 19</date>: More XSLT / DTDs / XML for publishing

Reading Steven J. DeRose David G. Durand Elli Mylonas Allen H. Renear What is Text, Really? Journal of Computing in Higher Education 1 2 3-26. Winter 1990 Mark Pilgrim Why Specs Matter

<date>September 26</date>: TEI

Reading C M Sperberg-McQueen and Lou Burnard, TEI P5 Guidelines

<date>October 3</date>: More XSLT / More TEI

Reading Tim Bray Don't Invent XML Languages Tim Bray On XML Language Design

<date>October 10</date>: XQuery: XML as Database

Reading Download and install eXist. Read for some introduction, and go through this XQuery tutorial.

<date>October 17</date>: No class -- Fall Break

<date>October 24</date>: Advanced XQuery / Web Services

Reading A Web Services Primer

<date>October 31</date>: No Class -- TEI Annual Meeting

<date>November 7</date>: Schema Languages

Reading James Clark John Cowan MURATA Makoto RELAX NG Compact Syntax Tutorial XML Schema Tutorial Rick Jelliffe Family Tree of Schema Languages (v6) (right click and view image to see the whole thing)

<date>November 14</date>: XML and Digital Libraries

Reading METS: An Overview & Tutorial

<date>November 21</date>: No class -- Thanksgiving

<date>November 28</date>: XML Alternatives Projects due. No reading assignment

<date>December 5</date>: Wrapup

Reading Bob DuCharme Documents vs. Data, Schemas vs. Schemas Pete Lacey They can't hear you Theodor Holm Nelson Embedded Markup Considered Harmful