1. XML at Work John Arnett, MSc Standards Modeller Information and Statistics Division NHSScotland Tel: 0131 551 8073 (x2073) mailto:John.Arnett@isd.csa.scot.nhs.uk http://isdscotland.org/xml

2. Contents XML Usage Enabling Technologies XML Applications –XML Messaging and Web Services –XML in Presentation –XML in Application Logic –XML Data Storage and Content Management

3. XML Usage –Human readable –Structured and searchable –Separates data from presentation –Self-describing –Extensible – any number of tags allowed –Meta-markup language Key features

4. XML Usage Open standard, promoted by many vendor-neutral organisations, incl. –W3C –OASIS (Organization for Structured Information Standards) –HL7 (Health Level 7) –OMG (Object Management Group) –UK Government

5. XML Usage Widely supported by software vendors and open source groups, incl.

6. Enabling Technologies –Language for locating parts of a document –Provides a syntax for navigating XML document trees –Designed for use by XSLT and XPointer XPath (XML Path Language)

7. Enabling Technologies XLink (XML Linking Language) doc1 doc2 –Simple (unidirectional) links doc3 doc2 doc1 –Extended (multidirectional) links –Language for linking resources

8. Enabling Technologies –Language for referencing specific points in a document –Uses XPath –May be used with XLink to reference specific points in linked documents XPointer (XML Pointer Language)

9. XML Applications Data Storage & Content Management Application Logic Presentation Messaging & Web Services Messaging

10. –Ideal for data interchange Text based Open Self describing Extensible –Exchanged between applications on the same network or over the Internet/Extranet XML Messaging XML Messages

11. XML Messaging –Health Care Health Level 7, v3 –Government UK GovTalk TM schemas –B2B transactions ebXML –Financial Services reporting XBRL XML Business Vocabularies, e.g.

12. Web Services Allow systems to communicate over the internet using XML messages Used for –remote lookups and service calls –enterprise application integration –electronic B2B exchange Set of emerging standards, incl. SOAP, WSDL and UDDI

13. Web Services –Lightweight, XML–based protocol for exchanging information over the internet –Language, platform and transport independent –v1.2 W3C Recommendation SOAP (“Simple Object Access Protocol”)

14. Web Services –XML-based language for describing services available on the internet WSDL (Web Services Definition Language)

15. Web Services –Information Services business details (white pages) business categories (yellow pages) available services (green pages) –Operations service registration finding and using services UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery and Integration) directory services

16. XML for Presentation –Developed by WC3 as XML-based successor to HTML –Written using well-formed XML –Backwards compatible –Current version (1.1) designed to be extended using modules XHTML (Extensible HTML)

17. XML for Presentation –Enables XML to be presented in other XML or non-XML formats – esp. as HTML –v1.0 W3C Recommendation –Can be used to create dynamic web-forms, e.g. WSDL to HTML XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language)

18. XML for Presentation –WML (Wireless Markup Language) for mobile devices –SVG (Scaleable Vector Graphics) –Scientific vocabularies CML (Chemical Markup Language) MathML (Mathematical Markup Language) Other XML presentation technologies

19. XML in Application Logic DOM (Document Object Model) –API for in-memory document manipulation using a node-based tree structure

20. XML in Application Logic SAX (Simple API for XML) –Alternative, event-driven API, used for parsing large documents

21. XML Data Storage –Web and file servers –XML enabled databases –Native XML repositories/databases Document storage solutions incl.

22. XML Data Storage –Enables SQL-like querying of XML documents using XPath –W3C Working draft XQuery

23. XML & Content Management –W3C recommendation for describing information contained in web resources i.e. anything that can be addressed with a URL –Dublin Core is an RDF vocabulary for describing web pages RDF (Resource Description Framework)

24. XML & Content Management –Used to automatically send (or push) web content to subscribers e.g. subscibers can obtain regular news updates from a news website –RSS (Rich Site Summary) is a smilar application developed by Netscape Microsoft CDF (Channel Definition Format)

25. XML & Content Management –Framework for indexing data and document resources using URI’s –Consist of: topics associations occurences –XML Topic Maps (XTM) 1.0 Specification – ISO Standard 13250 Topic Maps

26. The XML Standards Family Adapted from http://www.idealliance.org/XMLRoadmap/WEB/xmlstdill.htmhttp://www.idealliance.org/XMLRoadmap/WEB/xmlstdill.htm SGML HTML XML Schema (XSDL) XML XML Core CSS DOM XHTML XSL & XSLT XPOINTER & XLINK XQUERY SOAP WSDL SVG WML CDF ebXML CML RDF PICS P3P

27. In Summary… Open standard, widely supported by many organisations Applications include –Messaging and web services –Presentation and application logic –Data storage and content management

28. Find Out More World Wide Web Consortium –www.w3.orgwww.w3.org

29. Messaging and Web Sevices W3C Web Services Activity –www.w3.org/2002/ws/www.w3.org/2002/ws/ Web Services Interoperability –www.ws-i.orgwww.ws-i.org XMethods –www.xmethods.org/www.xmethods.org/ Enterprise Integration Patterns –www.enterpriseintegrationpatterns.comwww.enterpriseintegrationpatterns.com

30. XML Vocabularies Scottish Health and Community Care XML Steering Group –www.isdscotland.org/xmlwww.isdscotland.org/xml GovTalk Schemas and Standards –www.govtalk.gov.uk/schemasstand ards/schemasstandards.aspwww.govtalk.gov.uk/schemasstand ards/schemasstandards.asp Health Level 7 –www.hl7.orgwww.hl7.org

31. XHTML and XSL W3C HyperText Markup Language (HTML) Home Page –www.w3.org/MarkUp/www.w3.org/MarkUp/ The Extensible Stylesheet Language Family (XSL) –www.w3.org/Style/XSL/www.w3.org/Style/XSL/