How This Book Is Organized

Chapter 1, “The XMLSPY Game,” introduces XML technologies and how they are used to solve various programming challenges in industry today. It also provides an overview of the XMLSPY development environment and tells you how to obtain and install XMLSPY 5.

Chapter 2, “Editing XML Documents with XMLSPY 5,” covers XML 1.0 syntax and how to build XML documents using the XMLSPY editing environment. In addition, I present various common editing operations including converting documents or databases to XML format, or the reverse.

Chapter 3, “DTD Editing and Validation,” is about using DTDs and XMLSPY to build content models that structure XML documents. I also cover document validation using XMLSPY.

Chapter 4, “Editing XML Schemas with XMLSPY,” is the first of two chapters on XML Schema development. It discusses viewing XML Schemas using the XMLSPY Schema Editor. The chapter includes designing and building your first XML Schema, which you then use to validate XML documents. All basic XML Schema syntax and language constructs are covered.

Chapter 5, “Advanced XML Schema Development,” covers building modular, reusable XML Schemas. It discusses advanced topics including XML namespaces, object-oriented XML Schema design techniques, and other advanced XMLSPY schema-editing features.

Chapter 6, “Introduction to XSLT,” is the first of two chapters on XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Transformations). This chapter is a departure from the other chapters in the book in that it shows how to programmatically write XSLT programs, which are XML documents with a specific XML Schema definition. In this chapter, I cover the basics of XSLT, starting with the process of XSLT, using XMLSPY to debug an XSLT document. Other topics include the various programmatic constructs included in XSLT.

Chapter 7, “Advanced XSLT,” goes beyond the XSLT basics covered in Chapter 6. Specific topics, such as how to work with XSLT templates and the available XSLT functions are discussed. More complex examples are provided to show how you can use XSLT to solve common problems. Also covered is a simple example of how you can combine an XMLSPY plugin with another technology to produce HTML content.

Chapter 8, “Introduction to SOAP and WSDL,” covers the essential concept of Web services. Web services is a new technology that enables computer-to-computer communication with XML. WSDL (Web Services Description Language) and SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) are two XML technologies used in Web services. I show you how a SOAP call can be debugged using XMLSPY and how to build a WSDL file using XMLSPY.

Chapter 9, “Altova XML Developer Certification,” provides an overview of the XMLSPY Developer Certification exam offered through Prometric. It includes sample questions, tips, and strategies for taking and passing the exam.

The appendixes include detailed coverage of XMLSPY technical resources, important XML standards and references, an overview of regular expressions, and a detailed description of what’s on the CD-ROM.