SGML and XML as Meta- Markup Languages

SGML and XML are formal metalanguage facilities for defining markup languages. SGML has the full power to configure a set of features for markup languages, whereas XML has a fixed set of these SGML features. Since XML is a profile of SGML (rather like a proper subset of SGML features), most introductory presentations about SGML convey relevant information about XML as well.

A collection of references for SGML may be found in "SGML: Introductions and Overviews."

Introductions to XML

The following list of introductory and tutorial articles on XML is extracted from the complete chronological listing of articles collected for the XML Cover Pages, viz., from the Current XML Articles and the archived reference collections. Introductory books are referenced in "SGML/XML Books: Essential and Popular Titles." The documents cited below constitute representative overviews, and are throught to be relatively free of company-specific marketing rhetoric. Succinct and focused overviews of XML are provided in some of the XML FAQ documents. See especially "The XML FAQ" maintained by Peter Flynn. Readers who will benefit from a general introduction to SGML as background to XML may wish to consult some of the very readable documents of this genre.

• "Extending Your Markup: An XML Tutorial." By André Bergholz (Stanford University). From IEEE Computer. July/August 2000. [cache]

• "Media-Independent Publishing: Four Myths About XML. [The W3C's Working Group Chair Dispels Some Myths About XML.]" By Jon Bosak. First appeared in IEEE Computer Volume 31, Number 10 (October 1998), pages 120-122. [local copy; PDF]

• "XML, Java, and the Future of the Web." By Jon Bosak.

• "XML - Questions & Answers." By Jon Bosak (Sun Microsystems).

• "XML: The Universal Publishing Format. [XML & JAVA: Portable Data, Portable Programs.]" By Jon Bosak (Sun Microsystems). Local version with description of accompanying resources.

• "XML and the Second-Generation Web. The combination of hypertext and a global Internet started a revolution. A new ingredient, XML, is poised to finish the job. [How XML Will Fix the Web: Tags categorizing facts, not formats, speed up transactions.]" By Jon Bosak and Tim Bray. In Scientific American Volume 280, Number 5 (May 1999), pages 89-93. For the week of April 12, 1999. Cover story, feature article.

• "Microsoft's Vision for XML." By Adam Bosworth (General Manager, Microsoft Corporation).

• [Tutorial Introduction]: "Declaring Elements and Attributes in an XML DTD." By Ronald Bourret.

• "Beyond HTML: XML and Automated Web Processing." By Tim Bray.

• "An Introduction to the Extensible Markup Language (XML)." By Martin Bryan.

• "SGML and Meta-information: From SGML DTDs to XML-DATA." By François Chahuneau.

• "The Evolution of Web Documents: The Ascent of XML." By Dan Connolly, Rohit Khare, and Adam Rifkin.

• "Multidimensional Documents: There's a Bright Future Beyond HTML." By Dale Dougherty, Jon Bosak, Murray Maloney, and Tim Bray.

• "The Extensible Markup Language (XML)." ETHOS Technology Briefings Series 1 [ETHOS - the Euorpean Telematics Horizontal Observatory].

• Serial article on XML, by Todd Freter. [Part 1:] "XML: Mastering Information on the Web." [Part 2:] "Beyond Text and Graphics. XML Makes Web Pages Function Like Applications." [Part 3:] "XML: It's the Future of HTML." [Part 4:] "XML: Document and Information Management."

• "Introduction to XML." By Lars Marius Garshol.

• "Capturing the State of Distributed Systems with XML." By Rohit Khare and Adam Rifkin.

• "X Marks the Spot. Extensible Markup Language Opens the Door to a Motherlode of Automated Web Applications." By Rohit Khare and Adam Rifkin.

• "Keeping Tabs Online. Doing Business on the Net is Hard Because the Underlying Software is So Dumb. XML Will Fix That." By Michael Krantz.

• "XML: Time to Re-Tool." By Richard Lander.

• Experts' Revolution. XML: A Professional Alternative to HTML." By Ingo Macherius.

• "XML: Enabling Next-Generation Web Applications." By Microsoft Staff. Microsoft White Paper. April 3, 1998.

• "XML Tutorials for Programmers." By Ralf I. Pfeiffer, IBM XML Technology Group. [February] 1999.

• "Building the XML Repository. Part 1: The Data Administrator's View of XML." By David Plotkin (Manager of Data Administration Longs Drug Stores, Inc.). August 2001.

• "Markup and Core Concepts." By Erik T. Ray. Chapter 2 in Learning XML: Creating Self-Describing Data (O'Reilly, 2001; ISBN: 0-596-00046-4).

• "XML and Modern Software Architectures. XML in the World of the Internet, JavaBeans, Software Components, and Controls." By Jonathan Robie. December, 1997.

• "SGML and XML Concepts." From the Society of American Archivists and the Library of Congress. Chapter 6 from the EAD Application Guidelines for Version 1.0. EAD Overview, useful generally as an SGML/XML tutorial.

• "What is XML and Why Should Humanists Care?" By C. M. Sperberg-McQueen.

• "A Gentle Introduction to XML." From the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Guidelines [XML version] Chapter 2. Also in PDF format [cache]

• "Building an XML Application." By Doug Tidwell (IBM XML Technical Strategy Group, TaskGuide Development). October, 1998. [PDF]

• "A Technical Introduction to XML." By Norm Walsh. 1998.

• XML Basics Quick Start. From ZVON.org: The Guide to the XML Galaxy