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Answer 1

+2 A:

Strictly speaking, you need nothing. XML, even without a schema definition, works.

A schema definition (in XSD, RelaxNG or DTD) helps various tools that work with the XML, because they can verify that the structure of the XML conforms to what you want.

An XSLT translation to HTML is nice if the XML contains information you'll want to look at with a browser. It's far from necessary, though.

To query the XML with XPath or XQuery, you need an XPath or XQuery processor.

Sebastian Redl 2008-09-15 17:22:40

Answer 2

+1 A:

For a XML document to be queryable using XQquery you do not have to define a DTD or XSD. The purpose of DTD or XSD is to define the strict structure of a XML document and to allow validation before usage.

Modern browsers interpret XML files very nicely and show a DOM tree. If enhanced formatting of XML for browser display is necessary you have to create a XSLT transformation file and then add a directive to the original XML document pointing to the XSLT file. The browser picks that directive and uses the built-in XSLT processor to obtain the output that is then interpreted by the browser.

info.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="info.xslt"?>
<info>
    <appName>My App</appName>
    <version>1.0.129</version>
    <buildTime>10-09-2008 12:44:03</buildTime>
</info>

info.xslt

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"&gt;
    <xsl:template match="/">
        <html>
            <head>
                <title>Application</title>
                <style type="text/css">
                    body { font-family: Lucida Console; }
                    #outer { text-align: left; }
                    #name {
                        font-weight: bold;
                        font-size: 1.2em;
                    }
                    #logo {
                        float: left;
                        padding-right: 20px;
                        padding-bottom: 200px;
                    }
                </style>
            </head>
            <body>
                <xsl:apply-templates select="info" />
            </body>
        </html>
    </xsl:template>

    <xsl:template match="info">
        <img id="logo" src="image.png" />
        <div id="outer">
            <div id="name">
                <xsl:value-of select="appName"/>
            </div>
            <div id="version">
                <xsl:value-of select="version"/>
            </div>
            <div id="date">
                <xsl:value-of select="buildTime"/>
            </div>
        </div>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

smink 2008-09-15 17:30:04

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