XML schema languages compared
Eric van der Vlist
Dyomedea, author of two O'Reilly books dedicated to XML Schema and RELAX NG, member of the ISO DSDL working group and the editor of ISO DSDL Part 10 - Validation Management

Even though a schema language isn't necessary to write an XML document, modeling the structure of XML documents through a schema may help to automate a wide range of tasks such as validation or generation of treatments or input forms.

This presentation will introduce and compare the main schema languages that are available today to help developers understand what concepts are hiding behind the misleading term “schema language” and choose the language that best fits their needs.

The approaches of the W3C and its monolithic W3C XML Schema language and of the ISO with the DSDL framework that includes languages such as Schematron and RELAX NG will be covered in this talk. XML Interface Languages

XML Processing moves forward: XSLT 2.0 and XQuery 1.0
Michael Kay
Saxonica, author of Saxon XSLT, XQuery, and XML Schema processor, author of XSLT Programmer's Reference, member of the W3C XSL working group and the editor of XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0

We've been waiting for a long time for new raft of XML processing standards to be finished - XSLT 2.0, XPath 2.0, and XQuery 1.0. But they're now very close, and many people are using them even before they're finished. This talk is not so much a survey of what's in the standards, more a demonstration of their power and potential. It will also provide a comparison of the roles of each of the languages. But the key message is that these languages enable you to do a vast range of things that would previously have been tackled in low-level languages such as Java and C#. Together with other XML-based tools such as XForms and pipeline processing languages, these technologies allow you to build entire distributed applications: not just the presentation, not just the database access but the whole thing.

EXSLT: An example of facilitating the standards process
James Fuller
Webcomposite, s.r.o, co-founder of EXSLT

Influencing XML technology standards, in today's 'rock' of commercial interests and the 'hard place' of standards bodies is a nigh impossible task. The community based initiative EXSLT demonstrated that a small and disparate group of people can influence standards processes; for EXSLT, this was addressing shortcomings in the original XSLT v1.0 specificiation. By providing use cases, functional definitions, and sometimes implementations, EXSLT become adopted by end users and XSLT processor implementators alike. When it came to creation of XSLT 2.0, EXSLT adoption served as 'long memory' and naturally influenced specifications such as XSLT 2.0 and related standards.

One of the original contributors to EXSLT, James Fuller will give a short history of the effort reviewing where it got things right, and where it got things wrong from both a technical and strategic view; making the case that more of these types of efforts can facilitate the generation of future XML technology standards.

Binary XML and its Characterization
Robin Berjon
Expway, chair of the W3C XML Binary Characterization working group, author of more than ten Perl XML modules

The topic of "binary XML" has long been a cause for heated discussion, often based on poorly justified assumptions from both pro- and anti- camps. In order to address the question of the usefulness and feasibility of such technology, the W3C chartered the XML Binary Characterization Working Group to list use cases, properties of binary XML formats, and ways in which to measure the latter, as well as an overarching document characterizing the whole problem and providing a recommendation to either go forward with work in that area or not.

That work is now finished and the final recommendation was to go ahead. In this talk we will look at the general landscape of binary XML and at how the various documents produced by the XBC WG can provide useful information to all those that wish to understand why some need binary XML, show the extreme situations in which XML is being pushed today and why one would wish to use XML instead of an ad hoc binary format, and how that whole issue influences the future of XML technology.

XML experiments in Science and Publishing
Miloslav Nič
ICT Prague, founder of Zvon

Project Zvon has been founded in 1999 as an experiment in utilization of XML technologies in science, education, and publishing. Nowadays, the project is mostly known as a rather popular resource for XML porgrammers (10-20 000 visitors daily). We are now using 6 years of Zvon experience in development of new XML methodologies for scientific research and in publishing of scientific and educational books. The lecture will describe the road from Zvon beginnings to uncorruptible XML editors and marriage of chemistry with XML.

Schema-aware XSLT processing
Michael Kay
Saxonica, author of Saxon XSLT, XQuery, and XML Schema processor, author of XSLT Programmer's Reference, member of the W3C XSL working group and the editor of XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0

A demonstration of schema-aware XSLT processing.

Introduction to XML Editing Shell
Petr Pajas
Institute of Formal and Applied Linguistics at the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University, Prague, author of XSH.

The talk will introduce XSH - a tool authored by the speaker. XSH is a scripting language and a shell environment designed especially for XPath-based processing of XML documents. Its facilities and wide range of available commands make it well-suited for performing most XML-related tasks in a way as straightforward as using a UNIX filesystem via a shell like Bash. XSH is implemented in Perl and highly benefits from its programming power and richness of available modules. On the example of XSH, various aspects of XML programming and authoring will be discussed with a particular emphasis on using open-source resources. Some thoughts on the use of XML databases and the up-coming XML technologies (especially XPath 2.0) will be given along with a prospect of a future development of XSH.

Xdefinitions
Václav Trojan
Syntea software group, a.s.

The Xdefinition technology enables the description of both the structure and the properties of data values in an XML document. Moreover, the Xdefinition allows the description of the processing methods of XML objects. Thus Xdefinitions may displace existing technologies commonly used for XML validation - namely the DTD (Data Type Definitions) or the XML schemas. With the Xdefinition it is also possible to describe the XLM transformations and this way to replace the XSLT technology. The Xdefinitions enables the merging in one source of both the validation of XML documents together with processing of data (with so called "actions"). Compared to the "classical" technologies based on DTD and XML schemas the advantage of Xdefinitions is higher readability, flexibility and maintenance. The implementation of Xdefinitions is designed for processing of very large XML data (the applications of real projects are able to process very large XML files of size of many gigabytes).

The basic property of the Xdefinitions is maximal respect for the structure of the described data. The form of Xdefinitions is - as described for XML data - again the XML document with a very similar structure to the described XML data origin. This fact helps to design very quickly and intuitive way the Xdefinitions for given XML data. The basic principle of Xdefinition design represents in most cases just the replacement of XML data values by simple script used in Xdefinitions. In step-by-step design it is possible to gradually add to the script the actions for data processing. A demonstration of schema-aware XSLT processing.