Foreword

If you are holding this book in your hands, chances are pretty good that you are a Web developer, programmer, database architect, or IT professional and that you’ve already heard about XML or Web services in some form or the other. Who hasn’t, with all the buzz and marketing hype surrounding these topics lately? But wait. Is it really hype that we are dealing with here? Consider for a moment that Microsoft and Sun, Oracle and IBM are all releasing product after product built on XML. Such common ground among competitors is, indeed, highly unusual. Might there actually be some interesting technology behind all that hype?

You bet! XML is the foundation of all these new products for a good reason: It is simple, it is powerful, it is extensible, and it is here to stay. XML—the Extensible Markup Language defined by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in 1998—has already been called the lingua franca of the Internet by many. That is certainly true: No other language has the expressive power to describe texts from the Digital Dictionary of Buddhism (www.acmuller.net/ddb) as well as from the genome sequence of Drosophila melanogaster—the common fruit fly (www.fruitfly.org/ sequence). XML owes this flexibility to the elegant, yet simple concept of markup—the idea that documents are comprised of text, which can be tagged to give it meaning.

Based on this foundation, XML has grown over the past years and is now widely used in diverse applications ranging from document management to business-to-business (B2B) communication. In these applications, XML is usually augmented by related technologies, such as XML Schema for expressing content models, XSLT for transforming data, and Web services for communicating between systems.

To take advantage of all these XML-related technologies, you need one environment, where all of them can be brought into perspective—and with XMLSPY 5, Altova has created just that: the ultimate tool for all things XML. Multiple views let you see XML documents in a whole new light and drill right down to the core of XML! Edit XML Schema content models in a graphical view, debug XSLT stylesheets step-by-step, create definitions for Web services, connect from XML to databases, create Java or C++ source code automatically, or migrate old-style HTML Web sites to XML.

Part of the new v5 Altova product line, XMLSPY 5 is the premier XML development environment and builds on the success of previous XMLSPY versions. Both XMLSPY 5 and its previous versions have won numerous industry awards, including PC Magazine’s Editors’ Choice Award, Java Developer Journal’s Readers’ Choice Award for best XML Tool, and Visual Studio Magazine’s Best XML and XSLT Software.

The XMLSPY Handbook is your secret decoder ring to the entire world of XML and XMLSPY 5. With Larry Kim as your guide, you will master XML, namespaces, XML Schema, XSLT, WSDL, and many other acronyms that may seem daunting at first. You will discover a whole new level of productivity provided with these new technologies. Larry’s long-term experience in the development–tools market and his insight into XML enables him to present these fundamental concepts in an easy-to-understand way. With the XMLSPY 5 software provided with this book, you can try out everything immediately. As you progress to the more advanced topics, Larry explains even the most complex aspects of XML Schema through his very structured, yet easy-to-read style. In no time, you will find yourself as a true Master of XML.

May the journey begin!

Alexander Falk
President & CEO
Altova, Inc.