Since its inception XML has at times been seen as the cure-all for every problem related to Web applications and integration projects. However, poorly written XML can either slow down an integration project, or worse, cause the integration project to collapse.

Garbage in, garbage out - it's an axiom that applies to many aspects of enterprise development, but none more so than building reliable and robust Web applications and integration projects with XML. Since its inception, XML has been seen as the cure-all for every problem related to Web application development.

This article compares Document Type Definition (DTD) and XML Schema elements. Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE) developers use DTDs and schemas in J2EE/XML applications. When a DTD for an XML document is provided and validation with an XML Schema is required, the DTD-to-XML Schema conversion creates an XML Schema document corresponding to the DTD document.

Most non-programmers think of transactions as associated with buying and selling, credit-card authorizations, and the like. But in the jargon of computer science, the word transaction has a very specific meaning: the interaction and managed outcome of a well-defined set of tasks.

One of the things I enjoy most about working with XML and its related technologies is that there is always more to learn. I have been using XML for three years, but not a week goes by that I'm not pleasantly surprised to find something new I can do with it - or, even better, to find an easier way to do something I thought I had already figured out.

This article will give you enough information to use the major features of XSL Formatting Objects (XSL-FO) in conjunction with Apache's FOP API for rendering documents in Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF).

Complex technical documentation presented on the Internet calls for user interfaces or navigational options that empower readers to quickly gain access to the information that suits their needs. If your readers are viewing documents in an Internet Explorer-only environment, you can let them select the level of detail that will be displayed by combining XML, XSLT, script, and methods of the Document Object Model.

We developed a 'patent mining' tool for our company utilizing XML. Corporate leaders wanted to provide company-wide browser access to our corporate patent portfolio as well as in-depth analysis of our patent data. They saw this as a way to assist our company in strategic and investment decisions and to encourage innovation and collaboration.

In developing Web applications, the most common method for displaying multiple rows of data on a Web page has been to use the HTML element. Presenting the user with a static table of data might be fine in some instances, but if you're trying to develop a more user-friendly application, there are a few features missing that you'd find in a typical rich-client data grid.

Wireless transmission is becoming more and more common for many document types, and XML is no exception. But XML itself presents a number of challenges to the wireless medium. This article, the first in a two-part series, describes these challenges, and describes techniques that can be used to tailor an XML-aware system to the wireless world.

The power and elegance of XSLT - the Extensible Stylesheet Language for Transformations - stems from its ability to transform XML documents into other output formats like HTML, fulfilling one of the original promises of XML: separating content from presentation. XSLT is particularly powerful because a single stylesheet can format all the XML documents conforming to a DTD into HTML for publication on a Web site. The stylesheet can also be used to automatically generate such features as a hyperlinked table of contents, the building of which requires substantial manual work without XML.

You've probably heard the propaganda by now: XML blesses you with a way to separate content from presentation. Separation in turn yields productive gains over HTML and other data formats used to manage content. In a process sometimes called single sourcing, the content of an XML document can be formatted for display in a Web browser, reformatted for delivery to such devices as mobile phones and handheld computers, and converted into a PDF file suitable for printing.

Introductions to XML all too often ignore the power of the attribute. It gets neglected in favor of the element's ability to capture the structure of a document or the meaning of content. But in developing flexible, reusable document models and in capturing metainformation about structure or content, the attribute's overlooked utility quickly comes into focus.

No, the abbreviation DTD is not etymologically related to a similar abbreviation from medical science, namely, DTs (or delirium tremens), a violent delirium with tremors, which is induced by the prolonged use of alcohol. Though in absorbing the intricacies of DTDs and trying to develop your first one, you may begin to wonder whether the two terms are somehow connected.

This month's tutorial, the second in a series, picks up where last month's left off - on the path toward publishing your résumé on the Internet as an XML document. Last month (XML-J, Vol. 2, issue 5) I presented an overview of XML, described its basic building blocks, and demonstrated how to create a simple XML document.

XML. And XSLT, DTD, XPath, XSL-FO, XLink, XPointer, SAX, and DOM. To the uninitiated, all the talk about XML quickly dissolves into an alphabet soup of W3C recommendations, abbreviations, and acronyms.

By 2005 XML and its derivatives will be fundamentally redefining the process and technology by which literally every business transaction is conducted. All major software and hardware players in the market are claiming to support XML. But do you (or your colleagues) need to learn it? Will your business survive if you don't?

At Tradeum Inc. we became early adopters of XML just a few months after the publication of the XML standard in February 1998. Our reasons were compelling: we were creating a dynamic trading engine that implements auctions and true exchanges in a business-to-business environment.

Of all the standards to accompany XML that are currently in progress at the W3C, few are more anxiously awaited than the Schema standard - the specification that provides an alternative to XML 1.0 DTDs as a way to describe a document's structure. But what's wrong with XML 1.0 DTDs? How many alternatives have been proposed, and by whom? Why didn't the W3C address these concerns in the original XML 1.0 specification instead of waiting until now? I'll answer those questions in this column, and in my next column we'll look at the current state of the W3C Schema Working Group's unfinished proposal.