Summary

We have taken a look at the XML Schema specification and how to define our XML documents. There are many ways to declare the same data set, so make your design decisions carefully. Ultimately, you are going to work with your data, so you need to keep efficiency in mind, not just validity. While the development of compression techniques for XML is coming, efficient utilization of XML will always be of benefit. This not only will help with the network load, but also will help to streamline our application by requiring the lowest possible overhead.

We also looked at the various methods for defining XML documents. Keep in mind that, while you have many options for defining XML documents, you really only have control over how you use them in your organization. So, although you may standardize on XML Schemas, you will still have to support DTDs if you want to interact with many external partners. Make sure that you also use namespaces smartly and do not overuse them. The decisions you make will affect your implementations.

With what we have learned so far, we can build and define our data, but we really haven't done anything with it. It is now time to start working with our XML data programmatically.