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Free ebooks
 Free programing ebooks Delphi Delphi Developer's Guide to XML - Wordware Publishing
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 Part I introduces the reader to XML, tracing its origins and purpose. Several existing XML applications are presented to show the diversity of uses for XML. The syntax and structure of an XML document is described, along with the corresponding document type definition (DTD). Accompanying standards such as XSLT (XSL Transformations), XLink, XPointer, andXMLSchema are also reviewed. XSLT lets you transformXMLdocuments into other formats, typically into HTML for display in a browser.
XLink defines how documents can be connected in ways beyond the simple hyperlink of HTML. XPointer describes how to address sections within a document for more focused links. And XML Schema is an alternative to DTDs in describing the structure of XML documents.Part II shows how to work with XML using Delphi. The Document Object Model (DOM) specification from theWorldWideWeb Consortium (W3C) is presented, followed by three implementations of it. The DOM is a series of interfaces that provide access to an in-memory structure that represents the XML document. First we discuss Microsoft’s DOM as encapsulated in the MSXML v3 library and available to Delphi as COM objects. Next we look at two packages written in Delphi: one from CUESoft and another from the Open XML project. Part III describes an alternate approach to working with XML: the Simple API for XML (SAX). SAX uses an event-based mechanism for parsing the contents of an XML document, meaning that it does not have to hold the entire document in memory as theDOMdoes. Again, the basic specification is presented, as developed by David Megginson and the XML-DEV mailing group. Microsoft also has a SAX offering in theMSXMLv3 library, which is described in this section. Following that is an implementation of SAX in Delphi and a wrapper around the Microsoft parser that conforms to the Delphi interfaces. Part IV looks at how XML documents can be generated using Delphi. Starting out with simple text output, the chapters also explore using Delphi’s Web modules, the various Document Object Models, and Microsoft’s IMXWriter objects. Also examined are XSL Transformations for pre-formatting data and Delphi’s XMLBroker for thin-client database interactions. Part V delves into applications that use XML as one of their building blocks. It provides examples of how XML can be used and how Delphi is brought to bear on the problem. A customizable mass mail-out program is presented, using XML for its configuration file and for the message template. An example of a customized client program for a particular class of XML documents follows, with a description of how to automatically invoke it for appropriate content downloaded from the Internet. The next two chapters present another client program, this time for an examination class of XML documents, and a Web-based application for providing the same content over the Internet. The Web application uses XSLT to help manipulate the XML. Finally, there is a discussion about the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), which is a remote procedure invocation protocol using XML. Download free ebook of Delphi: Delphi Developer's Guide to XML
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