Inside XML is an intelligent and easy-to-follow guide to today's proliferating XML standards. Aside from being a road map to the latest and greatest in what's on the horizon with XML, this book gives you what you need to know to be productive with existing XML tools right now.

The tour begins with an introduction to the XML used in real-world applications (like the Chemical Markup Language, CML, and the Vector Markup Language, VML [for graphics]). While many books give you the basics, this one excels at explaining the conventions of designing robust XML document types in detail. With dozens of short examples, you'll learn XML conventions thoroughly, including some of the best practices for creating readable, maintainable content. The author highlights certain lines of XML code, so it's easier to see what's important.

After 200 pages of in-depth material on how to design XML documents, the book turns to using XML in actual browsers (both in Netscape and Internet Explorer). This practical focus means that you get to explore available Microsoft tools and how they sometimes differ from official W3C standards.

Subsequent sections turn to related XML standards, like XLinks and XPointers. Each section lists Web links to the latest online documents, but the emphasis isn't on theory so much as on what you can do right now. You'll learn how to use Java with XML, including navigating the XML Document Object Model (DOM) using IBM's XML for Java (XML4J) package. The tutorial explaining the Simple API for XML (SAX) does a great job of explaining the advantages of this popular tool.

Final chapters delve into displaying XML with several existing standards, including XHTML (for Web browser content), VML (for drawing shapes), and the Resource Description Framework (RDF) for allowing XML-based content searching. Final sections look at combining XML with Perl and Java (through servlets and JSPs) and give a glimpse at wireless content created with the Wireless Markup Language (WML).

Suitable for any developer or IT manager who needs to understand and use XML, Inside XML provides an authoritative yet approachable source of information on a fast-changing set of standards that are almost sure to revolutionize computing over the next few years. --Richard Dragan

Topics covered:

* Comprehensive introduction to XML basics and tools
* Designing XML documents (including "well-formed" XML, tags and elements, and attributes and namespaces)
* Document Type Definitions (DTDs)
* Entities and attributes (including design documents)
* XML Schemas (using Internet Explorer)
* Introduction to JavaScript
* Using JavaScript with the XML Document Object Model (DOM)
* Cascading style sheets (CSS)
* Overview of basic Java programming
* Parsing XML with IBM's XML for Java (XML4J)
* Java and the Simple API for XML (SAX)
* XSL transformations (XSL style sheets and XSL formatting objects)
* XLinks and XPointers
* Introduction to XHTML
* The Resource Description Framework (RDF)
* The Microsoft Channel Definition Format (CDF)
* The Vector Markup Language (VML)
* Using XML with Java
* Perl and ASP on the server
* Quick introduciton to the Wireless Markup Language (WML)
* Reference to the XML 1.0 Specification