It is often necessary to make your C++ objects serializable to/from XML. It is simple to do so in Java or C#, for example, by using reflection, but not always in C++. It would be interesting to introduce some brief but portable way to describe objects' serializable properties. The prototype presented allows defining XML serializable objects using macros in an MSVC++ 7 unmanaged code attributes-like manner because each serializable object/property needs to be described only once in the class definition, for example:

A simple wrapper class using DOM (Document Object Model) to manipulate XML files.

Last December at XML 2003, I met with Jonathan Robie, one of my XML heroes. You’ll find his name on such core XML specifications as DOM, XML Schema, and XQuery. Jonathan is both a co-inventor of XQuery and, as XML program manager at DataDirect, a leading implementer of that standard. So he gets to combine theory with practice — nice work, if you can get it.

This week's XML Deviant is a tale of two specifications. One, a scruffy ragtag affair that barely seems to do the job. The other, a well-heeled, aristocratic sort of document, groomed for longevity. You know what's coming next, of course. The tramp of which I speak, the unlikely RSS, goes from strength to strength. But the latest offspring in the noble line of XML, version 1.1, is doomed.

World's Largest Independent XML Trade Conference Slated for Nov. 15-19 in Washington, D.C.; Event Sponsors Include Adobe, Arbortext, DataDirect, Sun Microsoft, SchemaSoft, and TRADOS. The will be numerous sponsors and exhibitors for XML Conference and Exposition 2004, being held Nov. 15-19 at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C. Organizations sponsoring this year's event include industry leaders Adobe Systems, Arbortext, DataDirect Technologies, Sun Microsystems, SchemaSoft and TRADOS.

The five weeks up to and including the middle of September were interesting (to say the least) here in sunny Florida. Depending on how you count, we had somewhere between three and five named tropical storms and hurricanes pummel our coastline and interior. We knew in advance the storms were coming, of course. We just didn't know when or exactly where.

Dare Obasanjo describes how to use the Schematron XML validation language to enforce constraints on XML documents beyond the capabilities of the W3C XML Schema.

Newspapers are conservative when it comes to embracing new technology, says David Cole, a consultant who helps publishers devise better publishing workflows and systems selections. "Historically, major newspapers have been mired in proprietary technologies, and they turn over their systems only once every 10 to 15 years," he says. Perhaps it's fitting, then, that one of the few pioneers willing to bet on new XML-based technologies is the publisher of the Las Vegas Sun, a paper that has served the nation's gambling capitol since 1950. Greenspun Media Group, which publishes the Sun as well six magazines and affiliated Web sites, is breaking with specialized newspaper publishing systems to move into multichannel publishing and reuse with XML-tagged content.

For 30 years, a few strident voices have warned us that the world is running out of oil. With low energy prices, it used to be easy for some to dismiss them as tree-hugging cranks, but now with oil costing more than $40 per barrel and rising, maybe their dire predictions are finally coming true. Similarly, for 15 years we've been hearing that paper as a medium of financial transactions would be replaced by electronic media. That promise — or threat, depending on where your interests lie — has also been laughingly dismissed by the content management community as a pointy-headed fantasy. So far the naysayers have been right. Despite the hype, e-forms have never become a major factor in critical business processes. Sure, the Web is great for ordering books and music, but for getting a mortgage, filing an insurance claim or submitting a tax return, paper is still more secure, more legally enforceable and more user-friendly. I believe that a steep decline is finally in sight for high-volume paper-based transactions. We still won't have paperless offices or an upsurge in e-forms software, but in five years, much of the business handled today by paper forms scanning and data capture will have moved to XML data transmitted over the Web.

The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) provides maps for assembling topics into deliverables. By specializing the map elements, you can define a formal information architecture for your deliverables. This architecture provides guidance to authors on how to organize topics and lets processes recognize your organizing principles, resulting in a consistent, clear experience for your users.

A critical issue in designing XML formats is figuring out how to arrange elements and represent relationships between them. Element design works best when it naturally corresponds to how people think about the concepts that each element represents. This article discusses best practices for organizing information into XML elements, focusing on the use of container elements.

Get an in-depth look at the features and functionality of XMLBeans. This article introduces the technology with a simple example, takes you through the step-by-step process of compilation and binding, and discusses advanced features like XML cursors, tokens, and XQuery expressions. It also discusses how XMLBeans is more powerful than other XML-Java technology data binding techniques.

A Declarative Xml Parser In Less Than 300 Lines Of Code.

The .NET platform includes full XPath support, so developers can easily combine .NET and XML to locate necessary information. Here's how it works.

Microsoft Office 2003 adds a number of significant features for working with XML data. This article explores the XML-related objects, methods, and properties for Microsoft Office Access 2003. Detailed information on these new members is provided as well as code samples illustrating their use. After completing this article, you will have a better understanding of how you can put these features to use in your own solutions.

Microsoft Office Excel 2003 adds a number of significant features for working with XML data. This article explores the XML-related objects, methods, and properties for Excel 2003 and provides code samples illustrating their use. After completing this article, you will have a better understanding of how you can put these features to use in your own solutions.

Content-centric XML hasn't followed its original five-year script. Celebrating its fifth birthday as a standard last February, XML was supposed to supplant HTML, shift the burden of processing Web sites from servers to underutilized client PCs, and achieve the holy grail of "create once, reuse many times." Although use of XML to transfer information between applications was one of the World Wide Web Consortium's original goals, emphasis was on content-centric XML: Web pages and documents. What happened in the past five years to divert XML from its original use, and how does this affect plans for your content today? Imagine a worldwide content network where every piece of content on one network node was understandable by every other node.

For the past two years, writer, poet, and 'real' football player Uche Ogbuji has expounded, often humorously, on XML and Web services on the pages of Application Development Trends and on our Web site. Click below to read articles and columns from our archives.

Did you know that Word documents can be saved in XML format? As of Microsoft Office 2003, the second option in Word's Save As dialog--right under "Word Document (*.doc)"--is "XML Document (*.xml)". This format is Microsoft's own XML vocabulary for Word documents, called WordprocessingML (or sometimes just WordML).

Lately I've seen HTML parsing problems everywhere. One project needed a web crawler with specialized features provided through Python code that processed arbitrary HTML. There have also been several threads on mailing lists I frequent (including XML-SIG) featuring discussions of mechanisms for dealing with broken HTML by converting it to decent XHTML. This article focuses on Python APIs for converting good or bad HTML to XML.