Accessing XML using Java Technologies

By Balaji Bashyam
Posted Thursday, September 2, 2004

The most important benefit of XML is its simplicity. Though it is simple it is powerful enough to express complex data structures. Java is one of most important programming languages that is used for creating your web pages. It is an object oriented language whose main purpose was to be used with embedded systems such as cell phones. But later it gained more importance to be used with Web pages that were dynamic in nature. Java Applet and servelets are the important mechanisms for implementing this.

Another advantage of using Java is the concept of JavaBeans, which is a software component model for Java that allows the rapid development of an application by using a visual buider.DOM is one of the methods for accessing the structure of an XML document. An alternative is to use an event driven API.SAX is a simple API designed for XML.DocumentHandler is very important since it is called every time an element is found. A DocumentHandler is used as follows:

Step 1: Importing the parser interface
Step 2: Create an instance of SAX driver.
Step 3: Using this driver, create a parser object
Step 4: Register an instance of class MyHandler as a DocumentHandler.

JOX is a set of Java libraries that allows you to transfer data between XML documents and JavaBeans. JOX matches XML document to the fields of a bean and it will use a DTD when writing an XML document when one is available.JOX, unlike the other libraries, allows you to use any form of an XML document and any JavaBean without creating a separate schema to describe the mapping between Java and XML.

XP is an XML parser written in Java. The following are the advantages of XP:

* XP is designed to be 100% conformant and correct
* XP aims at High performance
* Apart from the high level parser API, it also provides a low level API that supports the construction of different kinds of parser.

Breeze XML Binder is the most complete Java/XML data binding solution available. Breeze creates JavaBeans directly created from the XML structures.

Visit (http://www.xml-training-guide.com) for a complete introduction to XML programming. Learn XML, DTD, Schema, XSLT, Soap and other related technologies.

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