Battery Markup Language (BatML) Standard
XML Basics
A quick search in a search engine on the words XML introduction will yield about 100,000,000 results. Writing yet another introduction to XML will obviously not be a unique contribution nor is it likely to surpass the quality of the existing documents. The challenge is to select a combination of the existing hyperlinks to help to introduce the prospective users of BatteryML. There are few main points that are worth repeating, though:
- eXtensible Markup Language is a markup language.
- XML was designed to transport and store data, and NOT to display the data.
- XML is a meta-language. Users must create the language tags (markups, annotations) and define their use. It is where the attribute extensible comes from.
- XML is not an application. It does not DO anything. However, there are many freely available XML tools, XML-based applications, and a world-wide user base.
The collection of hyperlinks below will give you a quick introduction to the XML. The links may change if we find better ones or if we decide to create our own introduction (very unlikely). The emphasis is on the sites and tutorials that are heavy on examples. Your own search on XML introduction with additional key words may give you a more fitting pace.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) web site has the section on XML technologies including XML Namespaces, XML Schema, XSLT, Efficient XML Interchange (EXI), and other related standards. The W3C web site provides for the latest version of the open standards for the XML. It also contains short introductory material for the XML with examples in section XML Essentials.
XML Introduction Tutorial
A very good introduction to XML concepts can be found on w3schools website. All current Internet browsers support viewing of the XML documents. The XML document tags will be displayed with color-coded root and child element nodes of an XML document tree. The hierarchy of data tree structures between the tags can be expanded or collapsed by clicking on the symbols (triangles, plus, minus) next to the data tags. To view the raw XML source, select "View Page Source" or "View Source" from the browser menu. You can view simple examples of XML files here.
Following the w3schools XML tutorial up to the chapter on XML Attributes will suffice for the understanding of basic XML concepts.
Viewing XML documents in browsers generally does not support relations between the data. More sophisticated editors, such as Aptana Studio can be used for that purpose. Installation of advanced tools is not necessary for learning the basic XML concepts. From the perspective of end-users, the internals of XML are not to be visible. The XML tools are supposed to shield the user from the intricacies of the data manipulation in a similar manner as the Internet browsers are supposed to shield the users from the HTML syntax.
Books on XML
Even though there are great tutorials on the Web, you may want to use a book for a reference. A commonly used books on XML are:
The latest editions are important because of the publication of XML Schema standard in 2001. XML Schema is used in BatteryML to define the rules to which a BatteryML document must conform to constitute a valid document. XML Schema is also used as a basis for data manipulation and transformation.