The XML Schema Complete Reference [Paperback]

Cliff Binstock (Author), Dave Peterson (Author), Mitchell Smith (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0672323745 | ISBN-13: 978-0672323744 | Publication Date: September 26, 2002 | Edition: 1st

This book is designed to help developers leverage the full power of XML Schema using whatever tools and approaches they're most comfortable with. Rather than forcing XML developers down a single path, the authors give them practical insights and sample code for making informed choices. Their detailed examples demonstrate every feature incorporated in the W3C XML Schema Recommendation, while offering practical guidance on integrating XML Schema into many popular platforms, including .NET, Java, and Oracle. They cover virtually every aspect of development with XML Schemas. Coverage includes: applications for schemas; simple and complex types; XML processing; using schemas with DOM and SAX; XML Schema syntax, levels, elements, attributes, the powerful XML Schema Common Type Library, and more. In-depth chapters show XML Schema at work with Java, C++, Visual Basic, SQL relational databases, Web services, and data-oriented Web sites.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

With the successful implementation of XML Schema, developers are learning how to increase productivity, improve software reliability, minimize development time, and decrease time to market. This in-depth reference is an all-in-one resource designed to help developers leverage the power and potential of XML schemas by offering a complete roadmap to their creation, design, and use.

This authoritative reference and tutorial is filled with practical insights and detailed examples. The book begins by providing a conceptual introduction to XML Schema. From there, coverage shifts to the W3C Schema Recommendation and how to apply schemas to specific business goals. The authors provide insight and instruction throughout on integrating XML schemas into existing technologies such as .NET, Java, Visual Basic, Oracle, and more. The book concludes with a complete case study designed to reinforce and illustrate material covered.

Additional topics include:

• Applications for schemas
• Simple and complex types
• XML schema processing and validation
• Namespaces in XML
• Using schemas with DOM and SAX
• XML schema document syntax
• XML Information Sets
• XML Schema applications of XPath

Whether designing a schema from scratch or integrating schemas into contemporary technologies, The XML Schema Complete Reference is the most complete and definitive sourcebook available for the XML Schema environment.

0672323745B08162002

About the Author

Cliff Binstock, the owner of Robust Software, has more than twenty years of development experience, from hands-on architecture and coding to mentoring and project leadership.

Dave Peterson serves on the W3C XML Schema Working Group. Currently principal consultant with his own firm, SGMLWorks!, he has worked with the SGML and XML markup languages for sixteen years, and has been programming and designing software systems for thirty-six years.

Mitchell Smith has seventeen years of experience in software development, including architecture, development, project management, object-oriented analysis and design, and database design and implementation.

Mike Wooding has developed hardware and software products since 1975, and has extensive experience with XML technologies.

Chris Dix is lead developer for Navtrak, where he specializes in .NET development using XML. He is the coauthor of Professional XML Web Services (Wrox Press, 2001).

Chris Galtenberg is a writer, inventor, and methodologist interested in extending human intelligence through philosophy and software.

0672323745AB09232002

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Product Details

• Paperback: 1008 pages
• Publisher: Pearson Education; 1st edition (September 26, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0672323745
• ISBN-13: 978-0672323744
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.4 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,863,791 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Need Help Writing Your Own Schemas? Try this., November 10, 2002

By 

W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The XML Schema Complete Reference (Paperback)

If you are already using XML, it is probably with DTDs, as this was the first implementation of XML. Both came out of SGML, in which the role of DTDs was defined in the early 1990s. Unfortunately, the drawbacks of DTDs were not fully appreciated until they began to be widely used in XML. A DTD cannot easily constrain an integer variable to a range of values from 5 to 10, say. It has no conception of common primitive types like float or double found in many programming languages. Also, the structure of a DTD is quite unlike that of the XML document it supports. From the point of view of writing parsers, you end up effectively needing two parsing algorithms to read a DTD and an XML document. XML Schemas answer all these issues. Plus namespaces are built into them, to handle collisions in tag names when you use multiple Schemas in a document. With DTDs, namespaces came into being after DTDs were first defined, and had to be bolted on in a most awkward fashion. XML Schema notation for namespaces is much more natural.

The problem right now with XML Schema is that it is new. Most XML books use DTDs, in part because when they were written, the Schema specification was not finished by W3C (in May 2001). Some XML books since then do describe Schema. They usually give a good overview and provide examples that work for the XML document examples they describe. So if you have an application that you want to write a Schema for, you can get started. But chances are, you soon run into problems if your application is not a carbon copy of a text's example. You soon need some Schema component or attribute whose usage or even existence was not disclosed in that book.

This book addresses that shortfall. It provides at least one example of how to use every attribute of EVERY Schema element. A formidably comprehensive task. Which accounts for the near thousand page size. But this is far more than just some dictionary-style exposition. They describe important closely related issues, like how to use the DOM and Xerces SAX parsers, and the different outlooks these take. Also, from your viewpoint of how to write a Schema for YOUR application, they offer a top-down approach. Schemas can be result-oriented or data-oriented. You get enough details to help decide which case yours fits. This can greatly aid developing a facile "natural" Schema. One where once you have it and an example XML document that uses it, the layout taxonomy seems axiomatic. Which should be your goal. It is not enough to define a Schema that can hold all the information you have. The skill is in making a Schema that does that and has a clear, obvious logic. Because in many cases others, probably not as technically adept as you, get to fill in documents based on it. So the logic should be clear to them. Even if they do not directly write into an XML document, but build it from a GUI, the clearer the Schema, the easier it is for someone to build a GUI to populate a document based on it.

The authors also provide a website (XMLSchemaReference.com) that has the code described in the book, and many more examples. Worth bookmarking.

So try this book and its website if you need an authoritative guide to writing Schemas.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Use this book all the time, October 1, 2003

By 

P. Vogel "Peter Vogel" (Goderich, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The XML Schema Complete Reference (Paperback)

I've been doing a whole bunch of schema development work lately and I find that I've been referring to this book frequently. My only criticism is that the some of the early chapters are a little too theoretical for a plain old programmer like myself--but the extensive reference material provides me with all the information that I've needed to build a complex set of interlocking schemas.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Certainly not a book for learning about XML schemas, June 4, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: The XML Schema Complete Reference (Paperback)

Certainly not a book for learning about XML schemas, may be used as a reference. Very theoretical, particularly the first few chapters, and strikingly similar to W3 recommendations. If you are just starting with XML schemas, pick a different book.