COAP:COAP-2180/week3

Week 3 COAP 2180

On week three we will learn how to create your own DTDs

• Defining an information architecture (sketching out elements and attributes)
• Defining DTD rules and attributes

This homework can be a prototype for a part of your term project.

Teaching materials

Tour de XML (This week

to be announced)

Defining a DTD

• DTD tutorial

Examples files (same as before)

• DTD and XML templates example directory

Textbook chapters

If you find that my lecture notes and slides are incomplete, too short or not good enough, reading either one or both texts is mandatory !

• XML in a Nutshell, Chapter 3 Document Type Definitions (start here)
• Learning XML, Chapter 4 Quality Control with Schemas (additional reading)

These chapters are available through the world classroom.

For the adventurous

• XML Category (All XML-related articles in this wiki)
• XML (on Wikipedia)

Homework 3 - Week 3

Deadline and submission:

• Monday week 4 (before start of class)
• Use the worldclassroom: https://webster.blackboard.edu/
• Submit the *.dtd, the *.xml test file and an optional report file (see below)

Task

Do not worry about rendering (display). It will be done in homework 4

Evaluation criteria (roughly)

Work considered as weak:

• Correct DTD that contains at least 5 elements and a somewhat valid XML example file

Work considered as minimalistic:

• A correct DTD that fits a purpose (including a valid XML example file)

Good work may include one or several of the following

• Inserted comments in the DTD and that explains the purpose of the DTD, the purpose of each elements, authorship, date, etc.
• A DTD that is "interesting" and useful for a given domain, e.g. it should include more than just 5 elements.
• Use of attributes and/or entities
• A DTD that is more complex than a simple table (e.g. contains recursive elements)
• A good example that uses all elements more than once.

Excellent work (A-) includes in addition

• A 1-2 page report that discusses your information architecture (the DTD structure) and results (what do you think of it, how could you improve it, etc.)

Brilliant work (A)

• Does all of the above, i.e. produces a DTD that could be used for real plus a good documentation.