Querying XML

Chapter 1

XML

1.1 Introduction

The title of this book is Querying XML, so we start by introducing XML, describing what we mean by “querying,” and then discussing the special challenges in querying XML.

XML – the Extensible Markup Language – defines a set of rules for adding markup to data. Markup adds structure to data, and gives us a way of talking about the meaning of that data. The family of XML technologies provides a way to standardize the representation of data, so that we can process any data with standard programs, share data across applications, and transfer data from one person or application to another. In this first chapter, we introduce XML by looking at what markup is and what it’s good for. Then we look at a number of different ...