An Example of a "Learning Process" Journal (using the 2 colored box format)

• Teach Yourself XML in 21 days (2003) by Steven Holzner: Day 6

7:00 am

I have skipped chapters 4 & 5 since the book says that schemas are far more important that Document Type Definitions. Ron Dubien also focused on schemas and gave me a brief demonstration on Thursday on creating schemas using XMLspy. I read the chapter and did some yellow highlighting yesterday on this chapter.

I like the strategy of reading a chapter one day and then reviewing it the next while making these notes.

Day 6 [p. 179 - 205]

• "XML schemas allow you considerably more precision that DTDs" [p. 179]
• XML schemas provide additional information on the nature of the data in an XML file. However an XML schema is a separate XML file.
• An XML schema allows one to determine if the data in an XML file is valid. In this sense it acts as a data editor.
• I will use XMLspy as my schema-generating software since it is much more powerful than Dreamweaver for this task.
• http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-0 (tutorial)
• http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/ (description of data types)
• there are free online XML schema generators that will create a schema for an existing XML document ( http://www.hitsw.com/xml_utilities/ )
• Once I have a schema file (it will have the extension .xsd) (extensible schema document), I can validate the original xml file using http://www.w3.org/2001/03/webdata/xsv
• I can also use Internet Explorer to validate schemas.
• I downloaded and installed MSXML 4.0 Service Pack 2 from Microsoft.
• I copied some code from this text's files and inserted them in my amportal3 file (following the instructions on page 185)
• I followed the examples on pages 185-189.

• I tried the XML schema generator at http://www.hitsw.com/xml_utilities/ but it failed to return a result after 5 minutes. (using Opera browser)
• I then tried it with Explorer and received 2 lines of code before it stopped.
• Not too impressive. Finally, I tried "XML schema generator" in google. This didn't help either.
• A search for "msxml" on my computer indicated that I had versions 2 and 3, but not 4.
• Downloading the MSXML 4.0 was a bit of a diversion, but everything seems to be working.
• The next step, and the important one, is to begin creating my own XML schemas.
• I am on page 189 and have been working for about 100 minutes. I will take a break and then continue when I am fresh.

8:40 am

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