Catálogo de publicaciones - libros

In this chapter, you’ve been introduced to some of the basic concepts relating to XML. I’ve covered XML syntax in some detail, and I’ve shown you the benefits that XML provides for web developers. I’ve also shown you some of the tools that you can use to work with XML documents.

In Chapter 2, I’ll show you some of the related XML recommendations. You’ll learn how to work with DTDs and XML schemas. You’ll also find a brief introduction to XSLT, XPath, XLinks, and XPointer.

In this chapter, I’ve covered some of the related XML recommendations from the W3C, including the role of namespaces, the use of DTDs and XML schemas in specifying XML vocabularies, and the application of XSLT in transforming XML documents for different purposes. I’ve also provided a brief introduction to XPath and shown you some of the main points about XLinks and XPointers.

In Chapter 3, I’ll show you some web-specific XML vocabularies and examine XHTML, Mathematical Markup Language (MathML), Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), and web services in detail.

This chapter presented an introduction to several XML vocabularies. I examined XHTML, the primary vocabulary in use on the web today. I also discussed SVG, MathML, and vocabularies involved with web services, along with some other, less well-known vocabularies.

In the chapters that follow, you’ll learn how to use some of the common vocabularies of XML, and learn how they work together to create XML applications.

In this chapter, you’ve examined the XML support available in current versions of the major browsers. You’ve seen the different ways that you can process XML in a web browser, including some advanced functionality offered by IE. I’ve also shown you three different approaches to using XML in web applications.

Chapters 5 to 10 examine how to implement the areas that you’ve examined in this chapter. Chapter 5 looks at styling XML documents with CSS, and Chapters 6 and 7 cover XSLT in detail. Chapter 8 looks more closely at scripting in the browser, while Chapter 9 examines one browser scripting approach, called Ajax. In Chapter 10, I’ll introduce you to Flash as an alternative method for working with XML.

Many of the more sophisticated techniques and algorithms to process spatial data in spatial models are currently not or hardly available in GISystems. This raises the question of how spatial models should be integrated with GISystems. This chapter discusses possibilities and problems of interfacing spatial interaction models and GISystems from a conceptual rather than a technical point of view. The contribution illustrates that the integration between spatial analysis/modelling and GIS opens up tremendous opportunities for the development of new, highly visual, interactive and computational techniques for the analysis of spatial flow data. Using the Spatial Interaction Modelling [SIM] software package as an example, the chapter suggests that in spatial interaction modelling GIS functionalities are especially useful in three steps of the modelling process: zone design, matrix building and visualisation.

Many of the more sophisticated techniques and algorithms to process spatial data in spatial models are currently not or hardly available in GISystems. This raises the question of how spatial models should be integrated with GISystems. This chapter discusses possibilities and problems of interfacing spatial interaction models and GISystems from a conceptual rather than a technical point of view. The contribution illustrates that the integration between spatial analysis/modelling and GIS opens up tremendous opportunities for the development of new, highly visual, interactive and computational techniques for the analysis of spatial flow data. Using the Spatial Interaction Modelling [SIM] software package as an example, the chapter suggests that in spatial interaction modelling GIS functionalities are especially useful in three steps of the modelling process: zone design, matrix building and visualisation.

Many of the more sophisticated techniques and algorithms to process spatial data in spatial models are currently not or hardly available in GISystems. This raises the question of how spatial models should be integrated with GISystems. This chapter discusses possibilities and problems of interfacing spatial interaction models and GISystems from a conceptual rather than a technical point of view. The contribution illustrates that the integration between spatial analysis/modelling and GIS opens up tremendous opportunities for the development of new, highly visual, interactive and computational techniques for the analysis of spatial flow data. Using the Spatial Interaction Modelling [SIM] software package as an example, the chapter suggests that in spatial interaction modelling GIS functionalities are especially useful in three steps of the modelling process: zone design, matrix building and visualisation.

This chapter showed you how to use JavaScript to work with XML in the browser. You learned about the W3C XML DOM and worked through some of the key interfaces. The chapter covered the most important methods and properties of each interface. You also saw some of the MSXML-specific methods and properties.

Within the chapter, I used the xDOM wrapper to generate cross-browser JavaScript capable of working with both IE 6 and Mozilla. I used the wrapper in a real-life example to load contacts into a web page. The application used XML, XSLT, and JavaScript to include dynamic content without the need for refreshing the interface. I also extended the example to see how it might work with large amounts of XML content.

As you saw, Mozilla and IE don’t offer universal support for XML and XSLT. Opera 8.5 has no XSLT support, although this is likely to change with the release of Opera 9. The use of a DOM wrapper allows you to create a cross-browser application that takes advantage of client-side XML and XSLT. In the next chapter, I’ll extend this concept further and look at the Ajax approach to working with XML in the browser.

This chapter introduced the Ajax style of creating XML applications. Ajax uses a combination of XML, the XMLHttpRequest object, JavaScript, XSLT, XHTML, and CSS to create responsive web applications. Because you’d seen the other technologies earlier in the book, I focused on the new XMLHttpRequest object in this chapter.

You saw how to use the XMLHttpRequest object to make server requests. You were able to display a HEAD request and retrieve content from an XML document. You looked at two simple examples—validating a username in a form, and creating an address-book application.

I showed how to use the Sarissa library to create cross-browser code, and I listed some of the other toolkits that may help. I finished by looking at criticisms of Ajax and some ways to address these. I also covered some of the Ajax best practices.

In the next chapter, I’m going to look at a totally different approach to working with XML on the client. You’ll see how to use Flash to load and display XML content.

Many of the more sophisticated techniques and algorithms to process spatial data in spatial models are currently not or hardly available in GISystems. This raises the question of how spatial models should be integrated with GISystems. This chapter discusses possibilities and problems of interfacing spatial interaction models and GISystems from a conceptual rather than a technical point of view. The contribution illustrates that the integration between spatial analysis/modelling and GIS opens up tremendous opportunities for the development of new, highly visual, interactive and computational techniques for the analysis of spatial flow data. Using the Spatial Interaction Modelling [SIM] software package as an example, the chapter suggests that in spatial interaction modelling GIS functionalities are especially useful in three steps of the modelling process: zone design, matrix building and visualisation.