Unit 7—XML

Since I took IRLS 515 last semester, working with XML is a review for me. In 515 we had to create our own XML schemas, and then describe a few different items using the schemas. This class will be my first experience combining XML with HTML. I knew that XML and HTML worked together, but I didn’t have the experience of adding XML to a webpage in my 515 class.

The W3 schools XML tutorials were my main resources for reviewing XML for this class. One thing that I missed in this set of tutorials was the lack of a chance to apply what I was learning. Since XML is for content instead of forming a document, you can’t see how changing tags changes how something looks like in HTML. I did like the trick of viewing an XML document in a webpage in order to make sure the XML tree is well formed. I went through all the basic steps and took a look at the “XML in real life” part of the advanced section (http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_real_life.asp). It was interesting to see how XML can be used to convey news headlines and weather information to a variety of programs that can display it.

I also looked at the “Just enough XML to survive” video. I found this video to be a good review of the extremely basic XML formatting concepts. I also enjoyed the Irish accent of the video narrator. I did not get around to watching the much longer 504 lecture on XML this week.

The sample XML file (books.xml: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms762271(VS.85).aspx) was very helpful when it came to forming my XML document. I also enjoyed opening my XML document as a webpage in order to check the nesting of the elements.

I am not using a Raspberry Pi, but I am holding on to all course resources in case I want to work with one later.