Final Thoughts

Building Noverant's Web site was a useful project in beginning to explore the capabilities of XML, XSLT, and the XML DOM. As good as this site looks for a proof-of-concept piece, it needs more work before it will be ready for production use.

The document model is somewhat simplistic. The <doclet> element in particular needs to be expanded to accommodate different media types, relative priority, and advanced layout requirements. The query page can be enhanced to provide a more flexible query mechanism for a user. More skins need to be written to handle different browsers. The XSLT style sheet(s) should be able to handle more intelligent positioning than is currently possible. The doclet helper should allow for better management of content in the site. Finally the controller should be changed to take advantage of the multithreaded XML parser.

In this chapter we introduced some new XML technologies, such as XSLT, and have seen how they can impact traditional Web application design. The Noverant Web storefront served as a useful example of a Web site designed around XML. Hopefully you have picked up a few ideas that will be of use to you in your Web applications.

By separating presentation from content, XML can help to solve many of the maintenance problems that have plagued traditional Web applications. I recommend that you begin thinking about ways in which you can incorporate XML into new Web projects. In Chapter 6 we will see how XML can be used to develop application user interfaces.