The Foundations of XML and WSDL

Abstract

XML stands for Extensible Markup Language (http://www.w3.org/XML/), and it has been adopted by industry for exchanging data in a platform, language, and protocol independent fashion. While XML has many benefits during the development stage, it has some performance disadvantages. This chapter provides a quick look at the following topics: 1. Overview of the standard and basic concepts; 2. Basic XML document structure; 3. Information about usage of Document Type Definition (DTD); 4. Structure and usage of XML Schema; and 5. Discussion about the design and performance issues when using XML documents with Web service.