Developing XML-Based Applications — A 4-day course

 Open Public Course Closed In-House Course

Synopsis

In a very short time, XML has been recognised as key to the provision of flexible solutions in a complex and fast-moving world. Nowadays XML is widely used as an underlying technology in most, if not all, eCommerce solutions in both Business-to-Consumer (B2C) and Business-to-Business (B2B) environments. As understanding grows of the situations in which XML can be applied, more and more people are building XML into their enterprise applications.

This course describes how to use XML for data modelling and in all facets of application development and integration. Delegates will learn how to use XML to model business data effectively, and use XML to create web-based solutions and e-commerce systems.

Since XML is supported by a variety of tools and platforms, this course aims to provide insight into how XML can be used in the major current environments. Examples illustrate Microsoft solutions, Java Enterprise Edition solutions and other commercial platforms and product suites.

This comprehensive course will help you understand how best to apply XML in your data modelling and application development projects. The hands-on practice will deliver the confidence for its use.

Course Ojbectives

On completion of this course, you will be able to:

• Understand XML syntax and the capabilities of XML
• Define XML grammars and validate documents
• Use XSLT to transform XML documents
• Program with XML APIs based on DOM, SAX and StAX
• Understand Web Services, security and SOA
• Create and deploy a Web Service Endpoint
• Use XML in web applications and database applications
• Leverage XML for use in Enterprise Systems

Suitable For

Prerequisites

• Delegates should have a basic understanding of XML, the Internet and distributed systems
• Delegates must be proficient in at least one modern programming language such as C#, VB.NET, Java, Perl, JavaScript

Publicly scheduled dates, locations, and prices

Contents

Creating and Using XML

• XML document structure
• Elements and attribute
• Text nodes
• Processing instructions and comment
• Namespaces
• Unicode and character encoding

Defining XML Grammars with DTDs

• What is a grammar?
• Validation
• What is a DTD?
• Writing and applying a DTD

XML Schema Definitions

• What is an XML Schema?
• Writing and applying an XML Schema
• Element groups
• Data types and structures

Transforming XML Using XSLT Stylesheets

• Style sheets: CSS, XSLT
• Benefits of XSLT style sheets
• Obtaining node values
• Applying and matching template rules
• Processing selective nodes with XPath
• XSLT programming with loops and if statements
• Creating new content
• XML grammar transformation

SAX Parsing

• Event-driven parsing
• Push with SAX
• Pull with StAX
• Handling errors

Introduction to DOM Parsing

• Introduction to DOM
• DOM interfaces
• Loading an XML document into a DOM parser
• Navigating a tree
• Accessing elements and attributes

Further DOM Processing

• Creating new content using DOM
• Removing/replacing/rearranging content

XML and Objects

• OO Programming concepts: properties and methods
• Distributed applications and Objects
• Binding technologies, schema generation and code generation

Introduction to Web Services

• Web Service Interactions
• SOAP and WSDL
• Registries: UDDI, ebXML, BizTalk
• Toolkits: AXIS, JAX-RPC & JAX-WS, SOAP-lite, .NET

XML Security

• XML Encryption
• XML Digital Signatures
• SAML
• WS-Security and WSE

Using XML in Web Applications

• XHTML standards
• Using XML to communicate with a server
• AJAX and Web 2.0 Technologies
• Portals

XML and Databases

• Database support for XML
• LINQ and ADO.NET
• JDBC RowSets

Using XML in Enterprise Applications

• EAI and Interoperability
• Oriented Architecture
• Common XML Grammars: FIX, SWIFT, etc
• Architectural options
• Performance issues