The Extensible Markup Language (XML) has been anointed as the universal duct tape for all software integration problems despite XML's relatively humble origins in the world of document management systems. Essential XML presents a software engineering-focused view of XML and investigates how XML can be used as a component integration technology much like COM or CORBA. Written for software developers and technical managers, this book demonstrates how XML can be used as the glue between independently developed software components (or in the marketecture terminology du jour, how XML can act as the backplane for B2B e-commerce applications).

Authors Don Box, Aaron Skonnard, and John Lam cover the key issues, technologies, and techniques involved in using XML as the adhesive between disparate software components and environments. They explain the fundamental abstractions and concepts that permeate all XML technologies, primarily those documented in the XML Information Set (Infoset). XML-based approaches to metadata, declarative, and procedural programming through transformation and programmatic interfaces are covered. Don Box, co-author of the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) specification, provides readers with insight into this emerging XML messaging technology for bridging COM, CORBA, EJB, and the Web.

Readers acquire a better understanding of XML's inner workings and come to see how its platform, language, and vendor independence--along with its accessibility--make it an extraordinarily effective solution for software interoperation.

0201709147B04062001

XML holds out the promise of a universal and standard means of object/component communication that vastly reduces the need for reliance on competing ORB standards such as Enterprise JavaBeans, COM, and CORBA. In this book, Don Box covers every key issue, technology, and technique involved in using XML as the "ultimate translator" between disparate software components and environments.KEY TOPICS: Essential XML starts by contrasting the XML approach to software interoperability with pre-XML practices, technologies, and methodologies, including COM, CORBA, and EJB. Next, it examines XML-based approaches to metadata, declarative and procedural programming through transformation, and programmatic interfaces -- showing how XML's platform, language and vendor independence -- and its accessibility -- make it a far more effective solution for software interoperability than any alternative. The book also contains detailed coverage of the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), an XML/HTTP-based protocol for accessing services, objects and servers in a platform-independent manner.MARKET: For experienced XML developers, and for all software architects, designers, developers, and business decision-makers seeking better ways to integrate software components.