Tutorials on XML-related subjects

["Eve L. Maler" <eve.maler@east.sun.com>]

I promised to send out links to some good XML-related tutorials and 
introductions.

XML itself:

- Norm Walsh's article: http://nwalsh.com/docs/articles/xml/

   This one is accurate when it comes to the straight XML stuff, and gives 
you a taste of namespaces (which were very new when the article was 
written).  Known obsolete parts: the reference to "XLL"/XLink is old (use 
http://www.w3.org/TR/xlink instead) and the reference to the Namespaces 
spec is broken (use http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names).

- XML Classroom free tutorial: http://www.xmlclassroom.com/

   I don't know their work, but they have a free tester tutorial on XML, 
and presumably they have a big incentive to keep it up to date because they 
want to sell you other courses.

XML Schema:

XML Schema is the popular W3C-approved schema language for describing 
constraints on and "meanings" in XML documents.  The original schema 
language was DTDs (document type definitions), baked into XML 1.0.  Other 
ones in use are SOX, Microsoft's XDR, RELAX, TREX, and Schematron.

- Roger Costello's XML Schema tutorial: http://www.xfront.com

   I admire Roger's work, and I'm very confident that he keeps this up to 
date.  He also maintains an "XML Schema best practices" site, sort of like 
schema design patterns.  These are downloadable tutorials with tons of 
examples -- not merely easy reading.

XSLT, XSL, and XPath:

XSLT is the XML-to-XML transformation language design to support styling 
applications.  XPath is the query/expression language used within it to 
pinpoint source XML structures that need transforming.  XSL (or XSL-FO) is 
the target formatting-objects language into which you can choose to 
transform source XML to get high-quality rendering.  Most people use XSLT 
(and sometimes XPath alone), but XSL-FO is gaining in importance.

- Roger Costello's XSLT tutorial: http://www.xfront.com

   As described above...

- Ken Holman's XSLT tutorial: http://www.cranesoftwrights.com/

   Ken's purchasable tutorial is very good and current.  He's now created a 
free downloadable subset of it.

XLink and XPointer:

- My own XML Linking article: 
http://www.sun.com/software/xml/developers/xlink.html

   This is reasonably current; mostly the "status" section is slightly out 
of date.  This will give you a good foundation in the two technologies and 
how they differ, but it does get a little technical; you can always just 
read the intro and be done with it.  I wrote this when I was still co-chair 
of the W3C XML Linking WG.

Hope this helps,

	Eve
--
Eve Maler                                             +1 781 442 3190
Sun Microsystems XML Technology Development  eve.maler @ east.sun.com