[thelist] XML

[Nicole Parrot]

Hi Paul

That's where the fun begins.  Depending on what you want to do with your
XML, you're going to have to learn totally different things.
In short:
1. XML is strictly a cross-platform data sharing method
2. Once you have your XML file, you'll need to parse it to do something with
it. The parsing method varies according to your platform, and technology. It
can be done in any language, PHP, ASP, C++, Perl, etc...  Parsing normally
results in a tree structure.
3. Once you parsed your file, you can either store it into your local
database, or manipulate it further for presentation purposes. Your choice,
depending on your project and goals. One standard manipulation as far as the
web is concerned is to change from XML format to HTML (or XHTML) format by
applying a XSLT to it (stylesheet transformation).  XSLT allows you to go
from one XML format to another XML format. XHTML is nothing but another XML.
Once you have it into XHTML, you can get it to display in a browser.

Does that help?
Nicole



----- Original Message -----
From: "Paul Backhouse" <paul.backhouse at 2cs.com>

> Ive been reading up on it - still confused about the data handling part of
> XML - i can see how XML can help, you can class your own elements
> etc...hence being better for assigning elements to data - but how do i
> manipulte the data with databases, using ASP etc....i found some
information
> on XML -Ql, is this the area I should be looking at?
> Can anyone point me into the right direction?