Understanding XML Standards

PART III

Applied XML

IN THIS PART

19       Understanding XML Standards

20       Implementing XML in e-Business

21       Delivering Wireless and Voice Services with XML

22       Applied XML in Vertical Industry

Chapter 19

Understanding XML Standards

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Standards and Vocabularies

Standards Organizations: Who Is Creating the Standards?

•       Standards Stack Layers

•       Standards Stack Aspects

•       Community Vocabularies Layer

So far, you have heard all about XML and the various components that make up the tech-nology. Already you’ve been immersed in an alphabet soup of acronyms and abbrevia-tions—XML, XSL, XPath, XLink, DOM, and SAX—and this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are literally hundreds of XML-based specifications and standards that leverage these “core” XML specifications. How can we identify these various initiatives and keep them separated in our minds from other initiatives and specifications?

In many different technology practices, a common metaphor has been used to identify the wide set of specifications and standards that impact that particular technology seg-ment. This metaphor is called the standards stack, because it not only shows the various specifications and standards but also how they interrelate. This metaphor, which is more visual rather than logical, helps to separate and identify the key specifications worth tracking and those that are tangential to the problem being solved.

In this chapter, we will examine standards stacks and explore the stack that is most relevant to the XML universe. In particular, you will learn

   What exactly an XML standard is

   What organizations are involved in standards setting

   What the standards stack is

   What the horizontal “layers” in the XML standards stack are

   What the vertical “aspects” to the XML standards stack are

   What convergence is happening in the XML standards space