Sunday Tutorials

Building XML Applications

Full-day tutorial: Sunday March 7th

Instructor: Simon St. Laurent

Why Attend? Basics, Programming

Building XML Applications will explore the tools available to developers who want to create XML-based applications of a variety of scales. Modular approaches and layered approaches for document structure and processing will receive particular attention, as will the special needs of Internet and Intranet implementations. XML makes it easy for developers to apply generic technologies to specific problems, and this seminar will make it easy for developers to find and apply the tools they need.

Practical Formatting Using XSL

Full-day tutorial: Sunday March 7th

Instructor: Ken Holman

Why Attend? Basics, Hands-On, XSL

This tutorial introduces the concepts and formatting basics of the proposed Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL), expected to be standardized in mid-1999. The course combines the use of lectures and hands-on exercises to convey the material. For the practical exercises, attendees are invited to bring a personal computer with their own XSL environment or they can use public-domain XSL software that will be made available for either a Java-based or a Windows-based environment. The objectives of the course are to understand the role and utility of the standard, to successfully write XSL scripts for both print and display devices, and to efficiently navigate the available documentation and resources.

References:

• XSL Reference Collection
• XSL Course/Presentation Handouts
• Crane Conference Training Schedule
• Crane Softwrights Ltd. [Ken Holman]

XLink QuickStart

Full-day tutorial: Sunday March 7th

Instructor: Eliot Kimber

Why Attend? Basics, Linking

XML Link is an application of XML designed to provide high-function hyperlinking for Web-based XML documents. This course introduces the basic concepts and syntax of the Xlink and Xpointer specifications. The instructor provides enough syntax detail to enable the recognition and creation of XLink documents.

References:

• XML Linking Reference Collection
• Eliot Kimber Home Page

Introduction to XML

Half-day tutorial: Sunday March 7th (Morning)

Instructor: Tim Bray

Why Attend? Basics, Theory

This tutorial is a crash introduction to XML for those who are new to it. Some familiarity with the Web in general and HTML in particular will be helpful to attendees. The topics covered include:

• Theory of markup
• Why XML was needed
• History of the development of XML
• Documents and Processors
• Well-formedness and Validity
• A survey of XML syntax
• Namespaces
• New developments in XML

Attendees should expect to leave with a good basic grasp of XML concepts and syntax.

Extending Mozilla or How to Do the Impossible

Half-day tutorial: Sunday March 7th (Morning)

Instructor: Heikki Toivonen [and Johnny Stenbäck]

Why Attend? Netscape, Metadata

The Mozilla development has been doomed from the beginning because it was clearly impossible to develop anything within the constraints of the project. This tutorial puts you on the way to do the impossible and become a Mozilla developer everyone will be envious of.

[Tutorial Abstract: This document will contain information on how to create new components with XPCOM, how to add functionality without XPCOM and how to embed the Mozilla browser in other applications (either as an ActiveX control or programmatically). There will also be information on how to create plugins according to the new XPCOM interface. Sample code will be included for all cases." See also the longer/full [handout] abstract.

Tutorial materials are available online at http://www.doczilla.com/development/index.html

XML and Electronic Commerce

Half-day tutorial: Sunday March 7th (Afternoon)

Instructor: Dr. Robert J. Glushko

Why Attend? Basics, E-Commerce, Management

XML is rapidly taking hold as the foundation of "document-based computing" through which the Web will become "smart enough" to overcome the limitations of HTML and to enable the new business models of the network economy. The winners in the network economy will be those companies that can best identify, aggregate, manage, and distribute information.

This tutorial describes the information requirements for conducting electronic commerce and explains why HTML can't meet them. It positions XML as the solution and explains how a company can make the transition to XML given various HTML starting points. It describes the "domain-specific languages" for commerce, including the OBI, OTP, RosettaNet, and ICE specifications to raise the issue of interoperability between XML applications. Finally, it describes the Common Business Library approach being developed by Veo Systems and the CommerceNet eCo framework project whose goal is to build upon the CBL idea and create an architectural foundation for future domain-specific commerce languages.

Unicode and XML

Half-day tutorial: Sunday March 7th (Afternoon)

Instructor: Dave Peterson

Why Attend? Basics, Internationalization

The attendee at this tutorial should have some awareness of how characters are used in computers and the existence of various different character sets and fonts. (For example, MacOS, DOS, Windows, and Unix computers generally each use different character character sets. Times Roman and Helvetica on one of these systems are different font implementations implementing glyphs for the same character set--but Symbol either implements a different character set or badly misrepresents the characters in the system character set, depending on your point of view.)

The attendee will gain a sharper understanding of these basic concepts, and will learn the different ways "the Unicode character set" can be understood and the problems that arise when the differences are ignored or not recognized. He or she will learn what "Unicode compliance" means, what character code standards exist or are being proposed for the World Wide Web, how XML does and does not conform to those standards, and whether the differences will be important for their applications of XML.

Outline

• Abstractions and their computer representations
• Abstract characters
• Abstract glyphs
• Sets of characters and sets of glyphs, and their representations
• Real-life sloppiness between coded character sets and coded glyph sets (fonts)
• A closer look at Unicode
• Paradigms for coping with Unicode anomalies

Monday Tutorials

RDF, Metadata and Dublin Core

Full-day tutorial: Monday March 8th

Instructors: Ora Lassila and Bob Schloss

Why Attend? Basics, Metadata

There are a large class of applications in which properties of digital objects that can be named (whether files, Web served documents, etc.) or properties of collections of objects need to be specified. If different properties are encoded at different times and by different organizations and applications, if properties can have multiple or alternative values, or if there are dependencies between the properties or between the digital objects, numerous ways of using XML or other data interchange formats could be specified.

In order to prevent application developers from re-inventing a data model and XML DOCTYPEs and conventions and redeveloping code, the W3C created the Resource Description Framework. This data model, based on directed labeled graphs, and this set of conventions for XML encoding of descriptions, is not an XML DOCTYPE and is far more than an XML namespace .... and yet is the basis for numerous data encoding standards, such as the Dublin Core and IMS cataloging systems, the P3P and CC/PP client-to-server protocols, Netscape's site table-of-contents format, and the DCD approach to XML Schemas. It is also under consideration for use in RosettaNet. Initial exploratory work on the use of RDF is part of the European Concerto DL Research program, and in proposals and prototypes related to electronic book distribution in Japan and MPEG-7 control streams.

In this tutorial, we will cover:

• what the RDF data model is
• how RDF/XML is encoded
• the schema and type facilities of RDF
• software available for building applications that create or utilize RDF data
• the W3C view of how RDF relates to XML
• RDF's facilities for naming what is being described
• RDF's facilities for complex values
• the concepts behind modular cataloging data, including the Warwick Framework and the Dublin Core
• how RDF can be embedded inside HTML without affecting rendering by old browsers
• 12 case studies of different metadata applications and which RDF facilities they would utilize.
• how RDF relates to the simplest metadata (as in WebDAV) and to much more complex metadata (as in XMI)

XML Processing with Python

Half-day tutorial: Monday March 8th (Morning)

Instructor: Paul Prescod

Why Attend? Basics, Programming

Python is quickly gaining popularity as a fundamental technology for Internet applications. According to a recent "top100" survey, the Python Web page ranked in the top 25 most popular pages for software developers. Python's popularity is driven by its easy, intuitive syntax, clean design and powerful class libraries. These libraries give access to string manipulation, relational and object databases, URLs, various Internet protocols and HTML, XML, and SGML parsing. XML concepts manifest themselves naturally in Python's simple syntax.

Python is mentioned at most SGML and XML conference, but opportunities to learn it from an instructor are rare. Although there is an established Python programming community, most people in the XML world are new to it. This tutorial presents a rare opportunity to learn from someone who has used XML and Python together for several years.

The talk will presume XML knowledge and will cover Python's basic features and XML processing based on SAX, DOM and grove processing APIs.

Document Analysis

Full-day tutorial: Monday March 8th

Instructors: B. Tommie Usdin and Deborah A. Lapeyre

Why Attend? Basics, Management, Theory

Document Analysis is the key to success in developing XML applications just as it is in SGML, relational databases, and any other structured information management environment. Analysis of text involves special problems, and there are some well-understood techniques for doing document analysis that newcomers to structured information may not know.

In this tutorial we teach students how to approach document analysis for XML (or SGML - there is no difference as far as the analysis is concerned). The introduction will cover basic concepts of structured markup and give a grounding in what to look for when analyzing documents. The discussion will include enough detail on grouping, sequencing, and occurrence constructs that the participants will understand what can be expressed in an element declaration. (We will not assume any prior XML or SGML syntax knowledge or that participants ever need to read or write a DTD.)

The grounding in Document Analysis will include examples of what to look for when analyzing documents, with special emphasis on analyzing for what is useful compared to analyzing for every insignificant detail. Specific examples of usefulness for increasing the precision of a search or reusing content will be given. The tutorial will center around an exercise in which the participants analyze a relatively complex document. Participants will use colored and shaped post-it notes to record structures, using a simple methodology that allows them to analyze, discuss, and record complex relationships without DTD syntax.

XML and Java

Full-day tutorial: Monday March 8th

Instructor: Neel Sundaresan, Ph. D.

Why Attend? Basics, Java, Programming

XML and Java are the Yin and Yang of the next generation of Web computing. XML forms the static aspect and Java forms the dynamic aspect of these combined technologies. XML provides features like structural constraints, extensibility, and separation of content from schema and from processing. Java provides a language for Object-Oriented Paradigms and Component model building using Java beans, and an extensive facility to implement software design patterns. This tutorial will discuss how XML and Java can leverage from each other, how this has been and can be used to build tools for parsing and processing XML, incorporating XML structures as objects in traditional and non-traditional applications, and using XML to communicate between Java-based business applications.

Perl and XML

Half-day tutorial: Monday March 8th (Afternoon)

Instructor: Clark Cooper

Why Attend? Basics, Programming

The tutorial begins as an introduction to perl. This is an abbreviated version of a perl tutorial given at GE Power Systems. Particular attention is paid to references and the object style used by XML::Parser. An overview of XML::Parser is presented next, explaining the architecture and programming model of the module. The salient features of XML::Parser are explained and demonstrated with small examples. Finally, we walk through several examples that integrate the material covered.

Presentation slides at: http://wwwx.netheaven.com/~coopercc/Xtech99/

An Introduction to ICE

Half-day tutorial: Monday March 8th (Morning)

Instructor: Neil Webber and Dianne Kennedy

Why Attend? Basics, E-Commerce

Information and Content Exchange (ICE) is an emerging standard for formalizing the syndicator/subscriber relationship for the Web. ICE is a standardized mechanism for managing access to content on the Web. Ice will enable the selecting, presenting, delivering, constraining, and monitoring the use of content through a "syndication relationship." This tutorial will provide publishers with a high-level background in this important new standard and help them to understand the potential ICE holds for creating new business opportunities for Web Publishing.

Outline:

• History and Status of the ICE Project
• Understanding Web Syndication Relationships
• Introduction to the ICE Operational Model
• The ICE Protocol using XML Tagging
• Understanding the Business Potential
• ICE in Action (brief case studies of the initial deployment of ICE)

References:

• Information on ICE

The W3C Document Object Model

Half-day tutorial: Monday March 8th (Morning)

Instructor: Dr. Lauren Wood

Why Attend? Basics, Programming

This half-day tutorial will session will give participants an overview of the W3C Document Object Model specification. The DOM is a platform- and language-neutral interface that will allow scripts and applications to navigate and manipulate the content, structure and style of Web documents (HTML, XML, CSS). Level 1 has now been finalized, so the tutorial will consist of a discussion of the finalized Level 1 as well as the current work on Level 2, which is planned to contain ways of modelling events, CSS and a query interface.

Tuesday March 9, 1999

Welcome

Plenary session: Tuesday March 9th, 9:00 AM

Presenter: Tim Bray

Conference information, logistics, and announcements. If there is any last-second breaking news that affects the conference program, here's where you'll hear about it. Since this is XML, there is almost certain to be such news.

The State of the Union

Plenary session: Tuesday March 9th, 9:10 AM

Presenter: Jon Bosak

Jon Bosak, the Chair of the World Wide Web Consortium XML Coordination Group, and generally regarded as the father of XML, shares his thoughts on where we stand now, what problems face us, and what we ought to do next.

Standards Update

Plenary session: Tuesday March 9th, 10:00 AM

Moderator: Jon Bosak

This is a survey of the current landscape in the area of standards. Most of these standards will be XML-related and hosted at the W3C, but we will cover any other activities that seem material. It will be a panel session, speakers being representatives of the various standards development activities.

Taking Web graphics to the Next Level

Pretty-Face Session: Tuesday March 9th, 11:00 AM

Presenter: Jon Ferraiolo (Adobe)

Why Attend? Basics, Graphics

Jon Ferraiolo will discuss the benefits of Web based Vector Graphics formats defined in XML syntax, including Adobe's PGML proposal and the W3C's standardized version (now under active development) named Scaleable Vector Graphics (SVG), and give a demo of the latest implementation that Adobe has of SVG.

Vocabularies: Opportunities for Efficiency and Reliability

Strong-Back Session: Tuesday March 9th, 11:00 AM

Presenter: Steve Newcomb (TechnoTeacher)

Why Attend? Theory, Programming, Metadata

In an XML resource, the use of a given vocabulary creates complex expectations in information recipients and in the applications that those recipients will use to interpret and use the information. If accuracy and reliability are important, and if the vocabulary is large or complex, and especially if the information is expected to be useful in multi-vendor application environments, it is essential to know what those expectations are, to describe them comprehensively, rigorously and unambiguously, to be able to determine whether a given XML resource will make sense to its recipients, and to implement vocabulary-sensitive applications at reasonable cost. (If, on the other hand, your use of XML is in purely application-internal and/or single-software-vendor contexts, these concerns probably don't apply. In such a case, though, it's hard to see any point in your use of vocabularies at all; the primary reason for using vocabularies is to allow information to be interpretable by a variety of applications in an open environment.)

This presentation outlines techniques and technologies for increasing the reliability of vocabulary-based information interchange, and for reducing the cost of implementing applications that must be sensitive to vocabularies.

"Summary: XML needs to support validation of inheritable vocabularies. Modularity and models are the keys. The standards, methodologies, and software already exist (ISO 10744:1997, SX, GroveMinder) and are in commercial use."

References:

• Slides from the presentation are available at: http://www.hytime.org/papers/srnXTech99/.
• ISO/IEC 10744:1997
• James Clark's SX; see also SX - An SP application for SGML to normalized XML
• GroveMinder System
• Groves, Grove Plans, and Property Sets in SGML/DSSSL/HyTime

Java Based XML and XSL Technology; Cross-platform Software for Cross-platform Standards

Pretty-Face Session: Tuesday March 9th, 11:45 AM

Presenter: Norbert Mikula (DataChannel)

Why Attend? Java, XSL

XML and XSL form the base layer for next generation Intranet and Internet architectures. Microsoft and DataChannel have been working jointly to provide the community with leading XML technology on the Java platform. This presentation will offer a comprehensive Java-based XML development framework that provides software for XML parsing, XSL processing, and pattern matching. Special attention will be paid to architectural work using these components and the utility provided by cross-platform software based on technologies such as XML and XSL

Rapid XML prototyping with Perl and XML::Parser

Strong-Back Session: Tuesday March 9th, 11:45 AM

Presenter: Clark Cooper (Independent Consultant)

Why Attend? Programming

These days, new ideas for applications of XML are popping up like bubbles in champagne. And many potential standards that build on and extend XML are in their experimental stages. There's a great need for prototype building and seeing how workable and robust these ideas are.

Perl, with its excellent text processing features, it's large set of ready-made open-source modules, and flying its banner - "There's more than one way to do it" - makes a great lab bench. XML::Parser, the perl module that provides perl access to James Clark's efficient and robust XML C library, expat, has evolved with flexibility as an important requirement.

Examples will be presented that demonstrate how easy it is to develop non-trivial XML prototypes with only a moderate amount of programming using perl and XML::Parser.

Presentation slides at: http://wwwx.netheaven.com/~coopercc/Xtech99/

How can we give you what you need to give us what we need?

Pretty-Face Session: Tuesday March 9th, 2:00 PM

Presenter: Rick Jelliffe (Academia Sinica)

Why Attend? Internationalization, Programming

This paper is a call for a new kind of internationalization process: the focus should be on making life easy for developers. The "Chinese XML Now!" project at Academia Sinica, Taiwan, and XML itself are the examples considered.

Non-Western communities should make part of their strategic plan to develop Websites clearly expressing their cultural and linguistic requirements. These requirements should be practical, DTD or code-level requirements. In particular, standards-making bodies should be redirected to this "informational" function, and academic research programs should be structured so the results will be presented in "developer-friendly" ways as well as formal academic fora.

The talk provides a checklist for basic level of support for developers, and look at some other developments along the same lines.

References:

• Chinese XML Now! - Home Page
• Information on the project

Enabling Databases for the Web using DataCraft

Strong-Back Session: Tuesday March 9th, 2:00 PM

Presenter: Neel Sundaresan (IBM)

Why Attend? Databases, Metadata

The Web is becoming the standard medium for applications, communication and commerce. At the same time most of the world's data is locked away in traditional databases. Any technology that will alleviate enabling the data locked up in traditional databases for the Web will be a boon to the emerging Web applications.

DataCraft is a system which enables traditional databases for the Web. It models a traditional database schema as an RDF schema graph. It provides a visual representation of this graph which is liberated from the schema structure of the database and allows the user to build queries while navigating this graph. The queries are converted to the query language of the underlying database (SQL in case of relational systems) and run in the underlying system. The results are published as RDF graphs which can be exported to applications. One application would be to publish the query results or the query skeleton as an HTML form to be published on an e-commerce site. Thus such a system would liberate the site builder or the database administrator from the details of the database schema and query language.

In this talk we will discuss design, implementation and usage of DataCraft and demonstrate how it can be used to enable a simple e-commerce application.

References:

• DataCraft - IBM Web site

The World's Coolest Client-Side XML Application

Pretty-Face Session: Tuesday March 9th, 2:45 PM

Presenter: Tony Stewart (RivCom)

Why Attend? Case-Study, E-Commerce, XSL

This presentation examines a recently completed interactive e-commerce application in which XML and style sheets are used to generate sophisticated data manipulation, styling and presentation in the browser. The application uses XML both as a data serialization format and as a foundation for sophisticated styling, both of which are manipulated by the user. The talk demonstrates the application and discusses the key underlying issues, including the conceptual and technical choices made by the project team, and the lessons learned.

XML-Enabling Enterprise Databases to Simplify Internet Apps

Strong-Back Session: Tuesday March 9th, 2:45 PM

Presenter: Steve Muench (Oracle)

Why Attend? Databases, E-Commerce, Management

To stay ahead of their competition, leading companies in the New Economy will need to cleverly exploit the synergy of Electronic Commerce, Data Warehousing, Content Management, and Back Office Integration to do better business and do business better over the Web.

Building the Internet applications that drive these businesses is hard stuff. Developers are looking for a technology which makes it dramatically easier to acquire, integrate, repurpose, and exchange any information with any partner over the Internet to make their ever-expanding enterprise databases work even harder to their strategic advantage.

Integrating XML with Enterprise Databases gives developers a leg up in satisfying the increasing demand for access to information. We'll discuss the approach Oracle is taking to integrate XML into its Oracle8i database to achieve these benefits.

Mozilla from the Trenches

Pretty-Face Session: Tuesday March 9th, 4:00 PM

Presenter: Michael Leventhal (CITEC)

Why Attend? Netscape, Programming

As one group of developers that has taken the Mozilla source and done something pretty interesting and ambitious with it we think we have some pretty useful knowledge to share about what Mozilla is, how it works, its component strategy, and how you can build your own components, extending it, or just swallow it whole and make your own "Franken-Browser". We've figured out the ins and outs of the Netscape Public License and can speak to the issue of developing in and around the NPL. We can talk about the concept and the reality of an Open Source project and we give our view as to what is in the Mozilla code, the good and bad, what is worth studying, what is worth mining, and just how much XML and the DOM is built into this next generation browser technology.

The second area of interest is our extensions and how we see the future of XML in browsers and applications which use browser interfaces. Obviously we think that some segments of the marketplace are going to demand more elaborate capabilities than the standard mass-market product can or should offer. In particular we are going after the higher end technical information publishers, the kind of users that have been using SGML and XML already and have been implementing linking systems, IETMs, document repositories, electronic review, document workflow, textual databases, intelligent graphics systems and so forth - without all the benefits of standard Web technology. So we will address the wide area of an application infrastructure on top of standard browser technology. AND we are going to have plenty of demos to show how applications can be constructed on that infrastructure.

References:

• See also: "Extending Mozilla or How to Do the Impossible." By Heikki Toivonen and Johnny Stenbäck.

XML Conformance Development Status

Strong-Back Session: Tuesday March 9th, 4:00 PM

Presenters: Mary Brady (NIST) and Ken Holman (Crane Softwrights)

Why Attend? Case-Study, Theory

The OASIS XML Conformance Technical Subcommittee is a forum where member vendors, content providers, and users discuss issues that are pertinent to XML conformance. The objective of the Subcommittee is to develop tests to improve the quality of XML processors and determine if XML implementations and/or XML instances adhere to the XML 1.0 Recommendation. The development of tests provides implementors with the necessary measures to determine whether their implementation is conformant to the Recommendation, and ultimately, interoperable with other solutions.

This presentation overviews the latest status of the work of the group and the materials available for public use.

References:

• OASIS XML Conformance Subcommittee

Automatic Construction of DTD-directed Editors

Pretty-Face Session: Tuesday March 9th, 4:45 AM

Presenter: Henry Thompson (University of Edinburgh)

Why Attend? Authoring, Programming

Many document-related editing tasks, particularly ones which involve adding, removing or specialising information by adding, removing or articulating markup, can be characterised as DTD-to-DTD upgrading problems. The version these of these tasks we are interested in are NOT the ones susceptible to complete automation, but rather ones where human intervention is in principle necessary, e.g.:

1. Adding sentence markup to a document marked up only to the paragraph level;
2. Identifying and marking up drug names and dosages in a patient discharge summary;
3. Characterising each remark in a transcript as to its rhetorical function, e.g. question, explanation, contradiction.

In many cases large volumes of material need such processing, and it is inappropriate or impossible to expect XML editing skills on the part of those carrying it out. We have designed and implemented a prototype DTD-difference-directed editor construction tool, which given a pair of DTDs will construct a graphical user interface to an XML document stream on the basis of a pair of DTDs characterising the input and desired output. The resulting editor will present users with a suitably configured, angle-bracket-free, component-by-component view of the stream which provides point-and-click and sweep-and-click interfaces as appropriate, specialised to the particular differences at hand. The result is an XML document upgraded to the output DTD. For the examples listed above, the style of interaction would be:

1. paragraph-by-paragraph presentation, click at each sentence boundary;
2. sweep out each drug name or dosage region; select from a menu to indicate which;
3. Each remark is highlighted in turn, a menu of rhetorical functions is presented.

We will demonstrate the prototype, describe what kinds of DTD-pair-differences can be automatically handled and discuss what kind of annotations may be necessary to extend the range of cases handled.

References:

• Henry Thompson's Home Page
• Home Page with publications list
• Language Technology Group Software

Automatically Constructing the Intersection/Union/Difference of Two Schemas

Strong-Back Session: Tuesday March 9th, 4:45 PM

Presenter: Makoto Murata (Fuji Xerox)

Why Attend? Programming, Theory

This talk demonstrates a new technology for automatically constructing the intersection/union/difference of two schemata. The hedge automaton theory provides the foundation of this technology.

First, input schemata (wrriten in XSchema) are converted to hedge automata (formerly called forest automata). Second, by applying boolean operations to these hedge automata, an output hedge automaton is constructed. Last, the constructed automaton is converted to a schema (again, written in XSchema). The internal representation and boolean operations of hedge automata are built on top of the "Grail" automaton construction toolkit.

References:

• Presentation Slides: 'Automatically Constructing the Intersection/Union/Difference of Schemata'. By MURATA Makoto (Fuji Xerox Information Systems).
• Annotated log file from the demonstration and complete .ZIP package format [local archive copy]
• See, in this connection, "Regularity and Locality of String Languages and Tree Languages."
• SGML/XML and Forest/Hedge Automata Theory

Tuesday Management Track

The Next Meta-Shift in Business and Computing

Management Session: Tuesday March 9th, 11:00 AM

Presenter: Mansoor Zakaria (2Bridge Software)

Why Attend? Management

From Websites to portals, from content to metadata, from HTML to XML, from cool idea to business reality....where is the inexorable march of the Internet taking us -both as a technology platform and a fundamental change agent in business and society. And what is the potential for XML in that world.

XML Based Interactive Scientific Publishing

Management Session: Tuesday March 9th, 11:45 AM

Presenter: Dr. Robert Sutor, Dr. Angel Diaz and Samuel Dooley (IBM)

Why Attend? Management, Graphics

Students, scientists, and engineers are now faced with the task of rendering the 2-D presentational structure of mathematics as well as harnessing a wealth of scientific and technical software across international boundaries and markets. The IBM techexploer Hypermedia Browser provides a LaTeX and XML-based solution for bringing interactive scientific and technical documents to the Web user.

XML Newsletter Template System

Management Session: Tuesday March 9th, 2:00 PM

Presenter: Matt Turner (PC World Online)

Why Attend? Management, Case-Study

XML is moving beyond simply document storage and delivery in publishing systems. This example looks at using XML to manage and maintain an email publishing system which has over 70 content feeds in over 300 formats.

Using Metadata in XML and Hybrid HTML/XML Documents

Management Session: Tuesday March 9th, 2:45 PM

Presenter: Katriel Reichman (Live Linx)

Why Attend? Management, Metadata

XML and hybrid HTML/XML contain implicit and explicit meta information that can be used to improve document presentation, and dramatically reduce document maintenance costs. This presentation describes how metadata is used by technical documentation groups and reference publishers to automate and maintain hyperlinks to text and media.

Tales From the XML Frontlines

Management Session: Tuesday March 9th, 4:00 PM

Presenter: Dan Appelquist (TheStreet.com)

Why Attend? Management, Case-Study

A case study in implementing an XML-based Web publishing system at TheStreet.com. Do's, don'ts, gotchas, and other war stories.

The Practical Issues of XML

Management Session: Tuesday March 9th, 4:45 PM

Presenter: P.G. Bartlett (Arbortext)

Why Attend? Basics, Management

When building a business case for an automated document management, assembly and publishing system based on XML, it is important to understand which capabilities deliver the key business benefits. This presentation will describe where the pitfalls lie in implementing those capabilities, and how to leverage the benefits of the new system across the enterprise.

Wednesday March 10, 1999

Keynote: General Manager, Windows DNA Infastructure, Microsoft

Plenary session: Wednesday March 10th, 9:45 AM

Microsoft Corporation is an XML pioneer, the sponsor of XIO'99, and a force in every computing-related industry. J. Allard, best known as the man who taught Microsoft about the Internet, shares Microsoft's perception of where XML fits into the big picture of the Web-driven future.

Keynote by David Siegel:
How To Find a Hit-man Online: Murder, Convergence, and Coercion in the XML Future

Plenary session: Wednesday March 10th, 9:00 AM

After receiving a Master's degree in Digital Typography from Donald Knuth at Stanford in 1986, David worked at Pixar, started a business painting Macintosh computers, and designed some of the country's best-selling typefaces (Tekton, Graphite, Eaglefeather). One of Multimedia Producer magazine's Top 100 Producers of 1995, his popular High Five Web-design column appears every week. David has spoken at many industry events, including Seybold, the Center for Electronic Arts, the Game Developer's Conference, Viscomm West, Bay Area Internet User's Group, and Software Entrepreneur's Forum. His latest book, Secrets of Successful Web Sites, is a best-selling industry title.

Bean Markup Language: Using XML to Dynamically Construct, Configure, and Augment Java

Pretty-Face Session: Wednesday March 10th, 11:00 AM

Presenter: David A. Epstein (IBM)

Why Attend? Java, Programming

While Java is an excellent object-oriented language for developing components to be used in larger applications, it does not directly provide a first-class mechanism for representing the component structure of an application, nor does it easily facilitate the externalization of configuration or dynamic wiring and synthesis of application components. This is where Bean Markup Language fits in.

The BML Suite is a set of three components: the BML Language or DTD which is an XML language for describing the configuration of (Java) component-based applications; the BML Player which is a small embeddable run-time kernel which interprets BML documents and document fragments; and the BML Compiler which compiles BML documents into Java code.

We present the Bean Markup Language DTD with a discussion of its elements, a description of the architecture and function of the BML Player, and examples along the BML usage spectrum.

References:

• Bean Markup Language (BML)
• BML Main Page (IBM)
• BML Version 2.1 (updated on 1999-03-15) provides for a new "non-terminated license agreement".

An XML-based Testing Framework for a Financial Application

Strong-Back Session: Wednesday March 10th, 11:00 AM

Presenter: Axel Kramer (Fragment Art & Research)

Why Attend? Finance-Industry, Case-Study, Java

In this talk we describe various aspects of an XML-based testing framework that was developed in the financial industry for a derivatives pricing application. The innovative aspect of this framework is that the test cases are not stated explicitly, but instead, using an XML-based language, in a generative manner that allows for concise descriptions, output specification, as well as the factoring and nesting of tests.

SOX Literate Programming and XSL

Pretty-Face Session: Wednesday March 10th, 11:45 AM

Presenter: Ben Trafford (Veo Systems)

Why Attend? Programming, Theory

The Schema for Object-Oriented Programming contains multiple elements for literate programming. In short, all the documentation for the schema can be included within the schema itself. This documentation increases the reusability of the schema. It allows people to work with schemas designed by others with much greater ease.

Although the elements for literate programming in SOX are HTML-based, they are embedded in the schemas. The question of how to extract that documentation was answered by a small team at Veo. Simply put, they managed the information with XSL stylesheets and processors, pulling it out of the schemas and outputting it in a number of formats.

This talk outlines the techniques that were used, problems they ran into, and what they did to solve those problems. The talk also details how this documentation was received, and how it simplified efforts to use SOX.

In conclusion, this talk outlines the usefulness of SOX, XSL and especially, literate programming.

XFlat, an XML Language for Flat File Schemas

Strong-Back Session: Wednesday March 10th, 11:45 AM

Presenter: Bob Lyons (Unidex)

Why Attend? Finance-Industry, Programming

XFlat is an XML language for describing flat files that contain complex application data (e.g., EDI data files, initialization files, log files, etc.). XFlat is used to convert flat files into XML documents, and convert XML documents into flat files.

Practical High-Performance Implementations of XML in Information Creation and Publishing Systems

Pretty-Face Session: Wednesday March 10th, 2:00 PM

Presenter: Norm Walsh (Arbortext)

Why Attend? Authoring

This presentation will describe how XML and related standards are supported and leveraged in Arbortext’s current and future releases. At the moment, this information is company confidential.

Arbortext demonstrates practical high-performance implementations of XML in information creation and publishing systems.

References:

• ArborText Inc.
• Norman Walsh Home Page

Fast Differentiation and Update of XML Data

Strong-Back Session: Wednesday March 10th, 2:00 PM

Presenter: Francisco Curbera (IBM)

Why Attend? E-Commerce, Programming, Theory

In this talk we present a new differentiation and update mechanism specifically designed to be used with XML documents. This mechanism works directly on the DOM structures of the documents, following a simple design principle: when comparing two DOM tree structures, differences should be reported in terms that relate to the tree structures themselves.

The Next Generation Authoring Tool

Pretty-Face Session: Wednesday March 10th, 2:45 PM

Presenter: Lauren Wood (SoftQuad)

Why Attend? Authoring

XMetaL is the new XML/SGML authoring tool from SoftQuad Software. The presentation will focus on the features that have been added since the product announcement at XML 98. These features will be demonstrated and the underlying technology explained.

XMetaL is meant to make life easier for authors of XML documents who don't want to know about XML. Thus the customization capabilities are the most important features, and will be emphasized in the presentation. These customization capabilities use standard technologies such as the W3C DOM Level 1 Core and COM. Care has also been taken in the design to make the customization itself easy to use; common scripting languages such as VBScript and ECMA Script are used for macros and the customization files are written in XML.

Using COM means that XMetaL can be steered from an outside application, and it can also host other COM applications. One or the other of these will be demonstrated using an external application.

References:

• XMetaL

Update: Java Standard Extension for XML

Strong-Back Session: Wednesday March 10th, 2:45 PM

Presenter: Dave Brownell (Sun)

Why Attend? Java, Programming

Sun feels that XML is a mainstream technology and as such, deserves first-class citizen support in the Java programming language. Sun has aggressively been building the support for XML in the JDK.

This talk discusses Sun's design philosophies for supporting XML in Java, and features the latest additions to the toolkit.

References:

• "Sun Unveils XML Technology Support in the Java Platform. Leading Efforts to Define Java Standard Extension for XML Language."
• Java.Sun.Com Web site
• February 26, 1999 news entry

Enabling XML Web Publishing From Desktop Documents Using Office 2000

Pretty-Face Session: Wednesday March 10th, 4:00 PM

Presenter: Katriel Reichman (Live Linx Extensible Solutions)

Why Attend? Authoring, Hands-On, Microsoft

The implications of 'Round-trip HTML' in Word and other applications will mean changes in the document creation, distribution and maintenance lifecycle. The presentation will include suggestions for how to position document preparation today so that you will be ready to take advantage of new opportunities offered by Round-trip HTML in Office 2000 and XML support built-into FrameMaker.

Application Integration using XML-based Descriptions

Strong-Back Session: Wednesday March 10th, 4:00 PM

Presenters: Jeffrey S. Risberg (Tibco)

Why Attend? Finance-Industry, Java

This presentation describes how XML has been used as a common representation for enterprise integration business models. Models include business object definitions, event-driven interconnection, and data marshalling and transformation, and have been run on top of a messaging middleware bus.

Prototyping an Updating Transclusion Tool based on XLink

Pretty-Face Session: Wednesday March 10th, 4:45 AM

Presenter: Richard Tobin (University of Edinburgh)

Why Attend? Linking, XSL

We have implemented prototype support for transclusion of changing material via XLink. Our tool, which makes use of the XML and XSL support in Internet Explorer Beta 2, will style and display XML documents which contain XLinks with actuate='auto' and show='embed' as if the linked-to material was actually contained within the linking element. Furthermore, we have written an update server, so that if any of the URLs contained in the XLinks so processed change, the page will be redisplayed. This update facility is restricted to URLs which are being served from an HTTP server which is also running our update server, but does NOT require polling from the client.

Aside from providing a modest level of support for exploring the benefits of XLink, standoff markup and just-in-time document composition, we think the major contribution of this effort is in illustrating a relatively novel distribution of effort for handling irregularly changing information over the Web.

References:

• Richard Tobin's Home Page

Automatic Integration of XML and Databases

Strong-Back Session: Wednesday March 10th, 4:45 PM

Presenter: Ramin Firoozye (Wizen Software)

Why Attend? Databases, Programming

An overview of DataBase Markup Language, an XML grammar for describing database schema and content. With live demonstrations of Wizen Software's DataXML JavaBean and ActiveX technology to automatically convert conventional databases into XML and populate standard databases with XML data.

Applications include database-Web integration, e-commerce, data-mining, and data conversion.

Wednesday Management Track

XML: Is it for Data? Is it for Documents? Is there a Difference?

Management Session: Wednesday March 10th, 11:00 AM

Presenter: Charles F. Goldfarb (Consultant)

Why Attend? Basics, Management

XML breaks down the artificial barriers between data processing and text processing. Smart executives can exploit this fact to maximize the value of their enterprise information assets.

Electronic Publishing and Client Server: Two Markets Become One

Management Session: Wednesday March 10th, 11:45 AM

Presenter: Sebastian Holst (Inso)

Why Attend? Management

This session will investigate the impact that the melding of the Electronic Publishing and Client Server markets will have on corporate and personal computing. These markets will become one as XML becomes the universal language.

Building Successful Internet Value Networks

Management Session: Wednesday March 10th, 2:00 PM

Presenter: Brad Husick (Vignette)

Why Attend? E-Commerce, Management

This session will discuss the ICE (Information & Content Exchange), a revolutionary standard based on XML and recently submitted to the W3C that is designed to facilitate the controlled exchange and management of electronic assets between networked partners and affiliates. The presentation will illustrate the specification's key role in the future of the electronic economy, and will highlight the impact ICE will have in creating the next generation of commercial Web applications, syndicated publishing networks, Web superstores, and on-line reseller channels, dramatically reducing the costs of doing business on-line.

References:

• Information on ICE
• See also: An Introduction to ICE

Metadata Registries: Averting a Tower of XML Babel

Management Session: Wednesday March 10th, 2:45 PM

Presenter: Frank Olken and John McCarthy (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory)

Why Attend? Management, Metadata

Shared metadata registries (or repositories) are necessary to specify shared semantics to support large scale XML Internet applications. This presentation reviews the adequacy and implementation status of various standards efforts to address these needs, and the need to tie data element definitions to external specifications (legal codes/decisions and accounting standards) that are not yet on the World Wide Web.

[From the extended abstract:] ". . . We discuss the requirements of metadata registries and the adequacy of various existing and proposed registry standards (ISO 11179, ANSI X3.285), schema standards (RDF Schema, XML Schema, XML query languages, KIF, XMI) and other related standards (measurement units, naming standards) to address these problems. Specifically, we consider issues of expressiveness vs. computational tractability, the ability to reference/query schema fragments, support for measurement units and dimensionality, specification of schema mappings, metadata support for aggregation (summarizability), value encodings and translation, etc. We also describe some current efforts underway to implement these standards using XML."

References:

• Extended abstract, [local archive copy]
• Similarly: "Databases on the Web: The Role of Metadata and Data Registries." - "XML (Extensible Markup Language) offers the promise of providing readily parsed structure for web-based information. It is widely expected that it will have a major impact on data exchange formats and web access to databases. However, existing W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) standards (e.g., DTDs (Document Type Definitions) only specify the structure of XML documents, not their semantics. There is an emerging consensus that some means of specifying XML/RDF schemas is needed to encode additional semantics, e.g., datatypes, etc. . ."
• Frank Olken's Home Page

XML: Publish Now, Migrate With the Market

Management Session: Wednesday March 10th, 4:00 PM

Presenter: Brad Young (Enigma)

Why Attend? Basics, Management

Most people are not currently using XML. Does this mean that they should put their publishing requirements on hold until the standards are finalized? Find out why companies should continue to publish using their legacy data formats in conjunction with tools that will ultimately facilitate the migration to XML.

Filtering XML - The Data You Want, When You Want It

Management Session: Wednesday March 10th, 4:45 PM

Presenter: Mark Murphy (Sapphire Group)

Why Attend? Management

As more and more data becomes available in standardized XML formats, there will be an increasing interest in identifying changes of interest in that data. Learn how filtering of XML data can add value to XML based technologies and see how filtering can be applied to your XML project today to benefit your organization and your end users.

Thursday March 11, 1999

Keynote: Jonathan Schwartz, Director, Enterprise Products, Sun Microsystems

Plenary session: Thursday March 11th, 9:00 AM

This is Sun's chance to present their vision, not just of what they're doing with XML, but how XML fits into the larger picture of write-once-run-anywhere network computing.

References:

• "Sun Unveils XML Technology Support in the Java Platform. Leading Efforts to Define Java Standard Extension for XML Language."
• Java.Sun.Com Web site
• February 26, 1999 news entry

Keynote: Marie Wieck, Director, Technology - Network Computing Software Division, IBM

Plenary session: Thursday March 11th, 9:45 AM

IBM, most visibly at their Alphaworks site, have been aggressive in bringing XML tools and technologies to market. IBM, however, is far more than a purveyor of cool Java middleware. This is another big-picture presentation, giving us IBM's view of XML in the context in the whole spectrum of computing, from legacy mainframe applications to intelligent pocket-sized devices.

XML in IE5 and on the Server

Pretty-Face Session: Thursday March 11th, 11:00 AM

Presenter: (Microsoft)

Why Attend? Microsoft

Keynotes are for visions. Technical-track presentations are for details. In this presentation, Microsoft will give an up-to-the minute view of their XML technology deployment not only in Internet Explorer Release 5, but as a core Microsoft technology at work on both client and server.

References:

• See "A Better Way to Post to the Server" in "Expanded XML Support in Internet Explorer 5." By Charlie Heinemann. In extreme xml [Column] (March 18, 1999).
• Press release for Internet Explorer Version 5
• Download Internet Explorer 5

Schools Interoperability Framework; An XML Case Study

Strong-Back Session: Thursday March 11th, 11:00 AM

Presenter: Manish Sharma (Microsoft) et al

Why Attend? Microsoft, Case-Study

Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF) is an initiative of leading educational software providers. The mission of SIF is to provide interoperability among the various software packages used by school districts across the United States. Currently there is a great deal of data redundancy in school district information because educational software packages do not have common data-object definitions or a protocol for exchanging data. For example, an application that uses student demographics cannot share data with another application that uses the same information. And school district adminstrators have no mechanism for creating reports that require consolidating cross-application data sources. The SIF initiative solves these problems by using XML to define common data objects (such as students, student contacts, teachers, and schools) and a messaging protocol for moving data objects across software packages.

This presentation will provide an overview of the SIF initiative. The design of both the XML-coded data objects and the messaging protocol will be highlighted. A demonstration which shows XML-enabled interoperability among different educational software packages will be featured.

References:

• Reference Information on Schools Interoperability Framework (SIF)
• SIF Home Page

XML and related standards in Gecko

Pretty-Face Session: Thursday March 11th, 11:45 AM

Presenter: Vidur Apparao (Netscape)

Why Attend? Netscape

Gecko is the embeddable, open-source, "next generation" layout and rendering engine currently in development on mozilla.org. Gecko will be the core rendering component in Netscape Navigator 5.0. Among other standards, Gecko supports XML, CSS, DOM Level 1 and XSL. This talk provides an overview of the features of Gecko, specifically those related to the display of XML documents and the application of the Level 1 DOM.

References:

• "NGLayout and XML" On the Mozilla.Org Web site. - "XML, like HTML, is a native document type for NGLayout. Specifically, NGLayout can display XML documents with linked CSS style sheets. Stay tuned to this page for more information about XML support in NGLayout. In the meantime, check out Netscape's presentation at XTech '99 titled "XML and Related Standards in Gecko". See the slides from the presentation. The slides are XML documents displayed using CSS1 and CSS2 style. They should be viewed full-screen in 1024x768 mode. See also the books example, which "demonstrates the use of CSS to display XML data and the use of the DOM to manipulate both the style and structure of XML data in a standards compliant manner. The premise of the demo is that you've done a search on Amazon.com for books whose title contains a specific word. The result of the search is not a HTML document with H1's, TABLE's and other formatting elements, but a XML document with Book elements, each with Title, Author and other descriptive child elements. . ."
• Table of contents example - "demonstrates the use of the DOM as means of performing transformations on a XML document. While transformations can also be done using XSL, the DOM can arbitrarily manipulate a document. In this example, the DOM is used to navigate the document tree and create a new set of elements that form a table of contents. The example also makes use of CSS2 Fixed Positioning for the TOC bar, as well as aspects of the W3C DOM Level 2 Working Draft to manipulate style. As with the previous examples, check out the CSS style sheet and script associated with the example."

Dynamic XML Servers

Strong-Back Session: Thursday March 11th, 11:45 AM

Presenter: Bob Bickel (Bluestone)

Why Attend? Databases, E-Commerce, Programming

Who are the key providers of dynamic XML servers, what benefits do dynamic XML servers give you, when do you need dynamic XML servers, where are dynamic XML servers planned to be used, how would you implement a dynamic XML server solution, why you should consider using dynamic server technology. This discussion topic is quite technically-focussed.

What Does It All Mean?

Plenary Session: Thursday March 11th, 2:00 PM

Presenter: Tim Bray

To close XTech'99, Tim Bray, co-editor of XML 1.0 and XML Namespaces, and probably the world's most voluble XML evangelist, tries to look back at the conference and simultaneously forward at the future, while trying not to fall flat on his face.

Farewell

Plenary Session Session: Thursday March 11th, 2:50 PM

Presenter: Jon Bosak

This is where we say good-bye, announce upcoming events, give away door prizes, and head off into the San Jose sunshine.

Which Sessions to Attend

Authoring

XML is designed so that programs can generate and read it easily; but a lot of it is still built by hand. Find out how.

Authoring sessions: Automatic Construction of DTD-directed Editors, Practical High-Performance Implementations of XML in Information Creation and Publishing Systems, The Next Generation Authoring Tool, Enabling XML Web Publishing From Desktop Documents Using Office 2000

Basics

XML is popular, but it's still very young. If you feel kind of lost, you're far from alone. XTech'99 is a good place to get bootstrapped.

Basics sessions: Practical XSL, XLink QuickStart, Introduction to XML, XML and Electronic Commerce, RDF, Metadata and Dublin Core, XML Processing with Python, Document Analysis, XML and Java, Perl and XML, An Introduction to ICE, The W3C Document Object Model, Taking Web graphics to the Next Level, XML: Publish Now, Migrate With the Market, XML: Is it for data? Is it for documents?, The Practical Issues of XML

Case Studies

You are not alone. Repeat, you are not alone. Other people are solving real-world problems with XML right now, today; come and hear their stories.

Case Study sessions: The World's Coolest Client-Side XML Application, XML Conformance Development Status, An XML-based Testing Framework for a Financial Application, Schools Interoperability Framework; An XML Case Study, XML Newsletter Template System, Tales From the XML Frontlines

Databases

XML and databases are made for each other. How to make this relationship work is maybe the #1 hot topic in the world of XML, and we have a parade of experts.

Database sessions: Enabling Databases for the Web using DataCraft, XML-Enabling Enterprise Databases to Simplify Internet Apps, Automatic Integration of XML and Databases, Dynamic XML Servers

E-Commerce

Everyone from analysts to day-traders agrees: E-Commerce is going to be huge. People at this conference also know that XML is going to be at the center of it all.

E-Commerce sessions: XML and Electronic Commerce, An Introduction to ICE, The World's Coolest Client-Side XML Application, XML-Enabling Enterprise Databases to Simplify Internet Apps, Fast Differentiation and Update of XML Data, Dynamic XML Servers, Building Successful Internet Value Networks

Finance Industry

Money makes the world go around, and XML is increasingly making the Finance industry go around. We have several offerings from the finance community.

Finance sessions: An XML-based Testing Framework for a Financial Application, XFlat, an XML Language for Flat File Schemas, Application Integration using XML-based Descriptions

Graphics

Documents aren't just text, and data isn't just numbers. Graphics and other multimedia are central to XML's future.

Graphics sessions: Taking Web graphics to the Next Level, XML Based Interactive Scientific Publishing

Hands-On

This session lets you get your hands on the tools (you provide the computer) - or at the very least, lets you watch someone else deal with the joys of bleeding-edge technology.

Hands-On sessions: Practical XSL, Enabling XML Web Publishing From Desktop Documents Using Office 2000

Internationalization

This is, after all, the World Wide Web. To make it truly World-Wide, we need to pay attention to internationalization; specifically, multiple character sets. XML and Unicode together make that possible, but not easy.

Internationalization sessions: Unicode and XML, How can we give you what you need?

Java

XML is the world's sexiest data format, and Java its sexiest language. When you get them together, you can expect sparks to fly.

Java sessions: XML and Java, Java Based XML/XSL/XQL Technology, Bean Markup Language, An XML-based Testing Framework for a Financial Application, Java Standard Extension for XML, Application Integration using XML-based Descriptions

Linking

The Web wouldn't be the Web without hypertext. XML makes hypertext better, but this is a moving target; XTech'99 has the experts.

Linking sessions: XLink QuickStart, Prototyping an Updating Transclusion Tool based on XLink

Management

Technologyis exciting, but management is necessary. There's a whole conference track dedicated to management issues, as well as several tutorials.

Management sessions: XML and Electronic Commerce, Document Analysis , XML-Enabling Enterprise Databases , The Next Meta-Shift in Business and Computing, XML Based Interactive Scientific Publishing, XML Newsletter Template System, Using Metadata in XML and Hybrid HTML/XML Documents, Tales From the XML Frontlines, XML: Publish Now, Migrate With the Market, XML: Is it for data? Is it for documents? , Electronic Publishing and Client Server, Building Successful Internet Value Networks, Metadata Registries: Averting a Tower of XML Babel, The Practical Issues of XML, Filtering XML

RDF and Metadata

Most business data processing is metadata-driven. So far, the Web doesn't have any. XML, and in particular some other formats built on top of it, promise to fix that.

RDF/Metadata sessions: Extending Mozilla, RDF, Metadata and Dublin Core, Vocabularies: Opportunities for Efficiency and Reliability, Enabling Databases for the Web using DataCraft, Using Metadata in XML and Hybrid HTML/XML Documents, Metadata Registries: Averting a Tower of XML Babel

Microsoft

In the world of software, whichever way you're looking, Microsoft occupies a large part of the horizon. For right now, it's vital to know how to use their tools, and for the future, it's vital to know what they're thinking and planning.

Microsoft sessions: Enabling XML Web Publishing From Desktop Documents Using Office 2000, XML in IE5 and on the Server, Schools Interoperability Framework; An XML Case Study

Netscape

Netscape used to own the Internet. Now nobody does, which is better. Not too long ago, many of us were writing them off; now they're back, fueled by Open Source energy and AOL money. The software is starting to become available and useful; learn about it here.

Netscape sessions: Extending Mozilla, Mozilla from the Trenches, XML and related standards in Gecko

Programming

XML is programmer-friendly. Lots of programming languages already have lots of XML interfaces; they're all on display at XTech'99.

Programming sessions: Building XML ApplicationsXML Processing with Python, XML and Java, Perl and XML, The W3C Document Object Model, Vocabularies: Opportunities for Efficiency and Reliability, Rapid XML prototyping with Perl and XML::Parser, How can we give you what you need?, Mozilla from the Trenches, Automatic Construction of DTD-directed Editors, Automatically Constructing the Intersection/Union/Difference of Two Schemas, Bean Markup Language, SOX Literate Programming and XSL, XFlat, an XML Language for Flat File Schemas, Fast Differentiation and Update of XML Data, Java Standard Extension for XML, Automatic Integration of XML and Databases, Dynamic XML Servers

Theory

This is a practical conference, but good practical results usually depend on understanding what's going on. That requires a basis in theory, and XTech'99 does the necessary.

Theory sessions: Introduction to XML, Document Analysis, Vocabularies: Opportunities for Efficiency and Reliability, XML Conformance Development Status, Automatically Constructing the Intersection/Union/Difference of Two Schemas, SOX Literate Programming and XSL, Fast Differentiation and Update of XML Data

XSL

XML is invisible until you have a stylesheet. Writing stylesheets isn't easy, writing stylesheet standards is harder, and writing stylesheet-driven display tools is hardest of all. At XTech'99, we cover all three.

XSL sessions: Practical XSL, Java Based XML/XSL/XQL Technology, The World's Coolest Client-Side XML Application, Prototyping an Updating Transclusion Tool based on XLink