COAP:COAP-2180/week7

Week 7 COAP 2180

Week seven includes three topics:

1. XML Schema, a more powerful document type definition (gramar) language
2. XSLT Q/R if necessary. Prepare questions for Friday
3. Almost final touches to the term project. Each student should a have a good DTD by the end of the week !

WARNING/REMINDER

• The Wednesday week 7 lesson is canceled. Make-up class is scheduled for next Friday (December 10) at 12.00h .

Teaching materials

• XSD tutorial - Basics‎‎
• xml-schema.pdf (slides with same contents)
• XSD example directory: xsd-examples/ (not really needed)
• XML Schema Part 0: Primer Second Edition (W3C Recommendation 28 October 2004, you should have at least a short look at this).

Textbook chapters

• Ray, Learning XML, Second Edition, Chapter 4, Quality Control with Schemas (ok explanation by example, but a bit too short)
• Harold, XML in a Nutshell, Chapter 17, XML Schema (this text is not too easy to understand, but useful reading anyhow)
• Harold, XML in a Nutshell, Chapter 22, Schemas reference (For reference, in particular for full-time CS students)

Classroom activities

• Translate your "best" DTD to XSD
• Start on hw7
• Discuss term project

Homework 7

Task

• Take the DTD from your term project or homework 4/5.
• Create an XSD from the DTD
• Add extra constraints that are appropriate with respect to your project. Typically you may constrain the number of child elements and add data types for element and/or attribute contents.

Tips:

• Look at examples (includes ones that could be found on the Internet). e.g. you can google something like "XSD datatypes example"

Exchanger can validate the following kind of XML/XSD (as explained in the XSD tutorial)

XML file fragment:

<your_root
  xmlns="http://myrecipes.org/"
  xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
  xsi:schemaLocation="http://myrecipes.org/ recipe.xsd">
 ...
<your_root>

XSD fragment:

 <xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
	    targetNamespace="http://myrecipes.org/" 
	    xmlns="http://myrecipes.org/" 
	    elementFormDefault="qualified">
  ...
 </xs:schema>

If you are not able to get this to work, then you can try to remove all DTD and Schema-related information from your XML and just tell Exchanger where to find the Schema file when you hit the validation button.

To translate a DTD to an XSD, use Menu Schema->Convert Schema.

Deadline and submission:

• Monday week 8 (before start of class)
• Use the world classroom: https://webster.blackboard.edu/
• Submit the *.xsd, the *.xml test files, and an optional optional report file (see below)

Evaluation criteria (roughly)

Work considered as weak:

• Pure translation without any extra hand editing

Work considered as minimalistic:

• Minimal changes, e.g. a single extra constraint with respect to the number of child elements

Good work and excellent work (B to A-) may include one or several of the following:

• Inserted comments in the XSD that explain some (not all) of the schema
• A report (e.g. in HTML, word, PDF etc.)
• All possible sorts of extra constraints you could reasonably use for your problem

Brilliant work (A)

• Does all of the above, i.e. produces a result that could be used in real life.