leah blogs

May 2004

26may2004 · System Architecture with XML

System Architecture with XML by Berthold Daum and Udo Merten, what a generic title. And so is the book; it gives a really nice overview about the various uses of XML and their (co-)standards.

The book was published in 2003 and features all important W3C specs, XML, XML Schema—RELAX NG is unfortunately missing—, XPath, XPointer, XInclude, Namespaces and XML Base. XQuery and XSL, SOAP and the various security-related XML specs are included too. All specifications are shown with an understandable sample and some discussion.

RDF and XTM are handled in their own chapters, a section shows up the differences between them. Webservices are discussed in a business-related way.

Of course, the book can’t go very deep into all these standards; but it’s enough to get seriously interested in various standards one hasn’t yet found a simple introduction into. Two sections handle the philosophical aspects of ontologies, contexts, and topic maps.

A large index at the end of the book makes finding certain sections again easy.

I can fully recommend that book to anyone with only a little or no knowledge about XML at all that want to get an introduction into the most important, (mostly) business-related specifications and standards. Advanced XML people certainly don’t need it.

NP: Pearl Jam—Strangest Tribe

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