All posts by : Oleg Tkachenko

151 of 182 | XQuery in .NET story isn`t over yet - Btw, talking with .NET developers recently (XML geeks and non-geeks) about XQuery and XSLT support in .NET 2.0 I realized that shocking fact - about 80% of devs I was talking to still have no idea XQuery support in .NET 2.0 was cut. They were listening all the road to XQuery hype, they had that idea about how XQuery is better than XSLT in mind, they are working with XQuery implementation in .NET 2.0 Beta1, they are reading "What`s New in System.Xml for Visual Studio 2005 and the .NET Framework 2.0 Release" and "XQuery and SQL Server XML Support in the .NET Framework" documentation at MSDN. Oh, apparently they don`t read blogs! Here is a nice one from today`s xsl-list: I`m working w......

152 of 182 | XInclude goes W3C Recommendation! - Hey, what a surprise from the W3C! XInclude 1.0 has been published as W3C Recommendation today. That was fast! Less than 3 months in Proposed Rec status - and here it is, XInclude 1.0 - another standard XML Core technology. I was about to release XInclude.NET version conforming to the September`s XInclude spec tomorrow. So it`s just in time. As far as I see no significant changes were instroduced, so couple days for aligning, fixing documentation - and then expect new release of the Mvp.Xml library (including Common, XInclude.NET and XPointer.NET modules) and then nxslt.exe update. For those unfamiliar with XInclude, take a look at my MSDN article "Combining XML Documents with XInc......

153 of 182 | Architecture of the World Wide Web, Volume One - W3C at last published the "Architecture of the World Wide Web, Volume One" as W3C Recommendation. It was cooked in long hot discussions by Web heavyweights and geeks. Here is what`s that about: This document describes the properties we desire of the Web and the design choices that have been made to achieve them. It promotes the reuse of existing standards when suitable, and gives guidance on how to innovate in a manner consistent with Web architecture. That`s a must reading for all developers working with Web, XML and URIs. We can make the Web a better place by following principles, constraints and practices defined in that document. It`s 47 printed pages and I had no ......

154 of 182 | In other .NET related XML news - Some XML news in no any order: Irwin Dolobowsky says we should expect very interesting articles at MSDN XML Dev Center, especially I`m looking forward to this one - "Helena Kupkova will show us how to create bookmarks in XML Streams with the ResetableXmlReader." Hmmm, sweet. AFAIR we`ve been discussing it with my fellows XML MVPs, but concluded we need to rewrite XmlTextReader substantially to achieve it. Microsoft XML Team has a team blog now - subscribe here. Mike Champion nicely wraps up a discussion on the recent changes in thinking on the the next generation of Microsoft XML-related products. Convincing enough. What I still dislike is the lack of a consistency. A subset of XQ......

155 of 182 | Red pill for Michael Champion - Oh that big news - Michael Champion is now Program Manager for XML Standards in the Microsoft`s XML WebData team. Wow, wow, wow - that`s the only words I can say. Here is his intro on his new blog (hey, he is a Microsoft employee, so it`s http://blogs.msdn.com/mikechampion, not http://weblogs.asp.net/mikechampion, but actually both URLs work). Subscribed. The focus of my job at MS (as I understand it -- I`m still new!) is to help the WebData team track XML technologies and specifications as they emerge, mature, and are standardized, and to be a source for information needed to decide which specs to support in what timeframes. I think we can translate that as "my job is to help Mic......

156 of 182 | Would you like to see XSLT1.1 + EXSLT in .NET2 - Hey, I`ve got another idea. XQuery and XSLT2 are surely huge undertakings (we can truly thank W3C for that), but still there is plenty of plain poor .NET devs struggling with limitations of XSLT 1.0 and XPath 1.0. What if Microsoft implements XSLT 1.1 + EXSLT in .NET 2.0, would you like to see it XSLT 1.1 is that officially frozen XSLT version, which was supposed to improve XSLT in an evolutionary way - by solving only the most irritating problems in XSLT 1.0. Changes from XSLT 1.0 are small: that nasty result tree fragment data type is eliminated, so no need for xxx:node-set() function; XML namespaces quirks are fixed; support for XML Base is added; multiple output is supported ......

157 of 182 | Adam Kinney`s new site is running XSLT2 (Saxon.NET engine) - This is amazing. Adam Kinney (Xamlon guy) runs his new blogsite on XSLT 2.0 (using Saxon.NET as XSLT engine): Adam Kinney.com has been redesigned, restructured and refactored. The new site has been inspired by my hate fo comment spam, interest in XSLT 2.0, desire to lose SQL and move to XML, wanting to build more than just a blog (i.e. articles, art galleries, events) and my continually desire to build all my own tools over and over again. As a matter of interest his site is rendered as both HTML and XAML - that reminds me that XSLT was actually designed exactly for such stuff. [Via ] ...

158 of 182 | Some attractive XQuery papers - Some goodies from Daniela Florescu and the Database Group at the University of Heidelberg: "The BEA Streaming XQuery Processor" (full version), D. Florescu, C. Hillery, D. Kossmann, P. Lucas, F. Riccardi, T. Westmann, M.J. Carey, A. Sundararajan. VLDB Journal. "Implementing Memoization in a Streaming XQuery Processor", Y. Diao, D. Florescu, D. Kossmann, M.J. Carey, M.J. Franklin. Proceedings of the XML Symposium, Toronto, August 2004. The rest is here. ...

159 of 182 | Mike Kay on benefits of using XML syntax for XSLT - Here is a really nice wrap up by Mike Kay on what benefits XSLT gets from using XML syntax: I think the benefits are: (a) many stylesheets consist of two-thirds data to be copied into the result tree, and one-third instructions to extract data from the source document. An XML-based syntax is beneficial for the two thirds that is data, because it means the code in the stylesheet is a template for the final result. This also facilitates a development approach that starts with graphical designers producing a mock-up of the target HTML or XSL-FO page, and then handing it over to a programmer to add the control logic. (XQuery has recognized this by using an XML-like syntax for element ......

160 of 182 | Understanding XSLT project starts on Monday - m.david starts his new project on Monday - sort of community XSLT learning using wonderful "Beginning XSLT" book by Jeni Tennison Anyone and everyone is welcome to join in this effort to become better XSLT programmers. While I intend to do all I can to keep things moving forward throughout the course of this "adventure" there is no set schedule. I plan to submit two to three posts a day to act as food and fodder but by no means will these be the required focus. By utilizing the blog format it allows those who are not ready to move on the ability to stay where they`re at, asking questions via comments and relying on answers from the community to help in better understanding that par......

161 of 182 | Quotes of the day - I arrived at work and found 200+ new posts in xml-dev list. Lovely. XML is still extra hot topic. Here are some nice quotes: For my money, XQuery is a heroic effort by a bunch of incredibly smart people which is crippled - we don`t know how seriously - by its insistence on cohabiting with XSD. Tim Bray XSLT has an construct that does a shallow copy of an element node together with all its namespaces (yes, you`re right, I wouldn`t expect anyone to guess its specification by looking at the element name, any more than I would expect anyone to guess what a left outer join operator does). XQuery has no equivalent. My XQuery example used a computed element constructor, which is the equ......

162 of 182 | Hardware XSLT Acceleration - Wow, I`ve heard about some hardware XML routers, but today I saw an ad banner about hardware XSLT accelerator. Holy cow! Here is some marketing blah-bkah-blah: Standards based XSLT processing is computationally intensive - it overburdens the server infrastructure resulting in poor user experience, high server infrastructure costs and scalability limitations. By delivering order of magnitude or better acceleration for XSLT processing - the XML Speedway significantly reduces the infrastructure costs, improves scalability and availability of the total solution. The XML Speedway provides this world-class performance through Sarvega`s acclaimed highly optimized XESOS™ technology. Furth......

163 of 182 | Why is XML case-sensitive? - Sriram Krishnan asks strange question: I see someone flaming someone else for not being XHTML compliant. Tim Bray - if you`re reading this, I want to know something. Why is XML case-sensitive? No human-being ever thinks in case-sensitive terms. A is a. End of story. So now, I have a situation where writing wouldn`t be XHTML compliant. And what do I get out of XHTML apart from geek-bragging rights and this strange idea of `standards-compliance`? Does it give me more freedom? Does it help my viewers? My customers? Well, this guy is definitely heavily sloppy-HTML-contaminated. What? isn`t XHTML complaint? Thanks GOD! Anyway, Tim Bray does answer his question: XML markup is case......

164 of 182 | XML encoding pedantry - BTW, as nicely pointed out by Michael Kay, XML document with no XML declaration, in encoding other than UTF-8 or UTF-16 is not necessarily malformed! In fact XML spec allows encoding information to be provided externally (e.g. via Content-type HTTP header). ...

165 of 182 | Calling document("") in .NET - There was recently an interesting thread in the microsoft.public.dotnet.xml newsgroup on document(") call in .NET. A guy was portiong some app from using MSXML to .NET. Something didn`t work... You know these usual bitter (and usually completely lame) complains: It is strange, this all works just fine using MSXML4 objects instead of XML.NET I guess between the implementation of MSXML4 and XML.NET they forgot the purpose of the special case document(``). ... W3C spec or not, it is too bad that XML.NET is intrinsically tied to the file system. My program has access neither to write nor read from the file system. I guess I will use MSXML4. So what`s wrong with document(") in .NET......

166 of 182 | Calling document("") in .NET - There was recently an interesting thread in the microsoft.public.dotnet.xml newsgroup on document(") function call in .NET. A guy was porting some app from using MSXML to .NET. Something didn`t work... You know these common bitter (and usually completely lame) complaints: It is strange, this all works just fine using MSXML4 objects instead of XML.NET I guess between the implementation of MSXML4 and XML.NET they forgot the purpose of the special case document(``). ... W3C spec or not, it is too bad that XML.NET is intrinsically tied to the file system. My program has access neither to write nor read from the file system. I guess I will use MSXML4. So what`s wrong with document(......

167 of 182 | New XSLT-related blog - xsltblog.com - M. David Peterson, coordinator of the x2x2x.org community open-source project (known by the Saxon.NET, AspectXML, and xameleon projects) started a blog at xsltblog.com. The blog`s description is "An ongoing weblog of current topics from the XSLT development community & other XML/XSLT related news items. Hosted, maintained, & edited by M. David Peterson.". Subscribed. ...

168 of 182 | Minor EXSLT.NET update - Just for the record: I updated EXSLT.NET to support for omit-xml-declaration attribute on the exsl:document element. If somebody desperately needs it, it`s in the source repository already. ...

169 of 182 | TopXML is reblogging - TopXML launched XML News Reblogger service. It`s basically XML blogs and news aggregator, similar to the Planet XMLhack. They aggregate selected XML-related news feeds and blogs (127 currently, including mine :) twice a day and provide a way to read all that jazz on their web site. They don`t provide aggregated RSS feed currently, but as Sonu Kapoor (the guy who wrote the Reblogger) informed me, that`s definitely just a matter of time. ...

170 of 182 | Fifth anniversary of the XSLT and XPath - Here are some 5-years old news: http://www.w3.org/ -- 16 November 1999 -- The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) today releases two specifications, XSL Transformations (XSLT) and XML Path Language (XPath), as W3C Recommendations. These new specifications represent cross-industry and expert community agreement on technologies that will enable the transformation and styled presentation of XML documents. A W3C Recommendation indicates that a specification is stable, contributes to Web interoperability, and has been reviewed by the W3C membership, who favor its adoption by the industry. "Anyone using XML can now take advantage of XSLT, a powerful new tool for manipulating, converting or ......

171 of 182 | Norman Walsh on XML 2.0 - Amazing new essay by Norman Walsh on XML 2.0. Worth reading and contemplating. The crux is "simplification". XML is too complex, who knew it six years ago :) ...

172 of 182 | Altova: Free XSLT1.0/XSLT2.0 and XQuery1.0 Processors for Windows - Breaking news from Altova GmbH (maker of famous XML Spy IDE): Altova has compiled a collection of free tools and technical resources to help develop solutions for today`s business challenges. That includes: Altova XSLT 1.0 and 2.0 Engines, Altova XQuery Engine, XMLSpy® 2005 Home Edition, Authentic® 2005. All Windows-only apparently. XSLT and XQuery ones are the new and the most interesting. Altova XSLT 1.0 engine is well-known XSLT engine used when debugging XSLT within XML Spy, now they just release it as a free (but not open-source of course) standalone utility (Windows 2000/XP/2003 command line executable), "suitable for use in both client- and server-side application developme......

173 of 182 | Cw (Comega) language compiler pereview (again?) - From the Microsoft Research: Comega is an experimental language which extends C# with new constructs for relational and semi-structured data access and asynchronous concurrency. Cw is an extension of C# in two areas: - A control flow extension for asynchronous wide-area concurrency (formerly known as Polyphonic C#). - A data type extension for XML and table manipulation (formerly known as Xen and as X#). The preview download includes Cw command line compiler, Visual Studio .NET 2003 package which extends VS.NET ti support Cw (really nice integration) and lots of samples. Cw supports XML as native data type, so you can write something like // This class returns the sample bib.xml......

174 of 182 | Five XQuery/XPath/XSLT working drafts updated - W3C has published fresh working drafts for XQuery/XPath/XSLT. XQuery 1.0: An XML Query Language, XML Path Language (XPath) 2.0, XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Data Model, XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 Functions and Operators, XSLT 2.0 and XQuery 1.0 Serialization. These address comments received on previous drafts. XQuery 1.0. What`s new: This working draft includes a number of changes made in response to comments received during the Last Call period that ended on Feb. 15, 2004. The working group is continuing to process these comments, and additional changes are expected. This document reflects decisions taken up to and including the face-to-face meeting in Redmond, WA during the week of Au......

175 of 182 | Is System.Net.FileWebResponse class so limited WRT to content type? - I got a problem. It`s .NET problem. In XInclude.NET I`m fetching resources by URI using WebRequest/WebResponse classes. Everything seems to be working fine, the only problem is as follows: when the URI is file system URI, the content type property is always "application/octet-stream". Looks like it`s hardcoded in System.Net.FileWebResponse class (sic!). I mean - when I open Windows Explorer the file`s properties are: "Type of the file: XML File" and "Opens with: XMLSPY". So the Windows definitely knows it`s XML and in the registry I can see .xml file extension is associated with "text/xml" content type, so why FileWebResponse always says "application/octet-stream"? Am I doing somet......

176 of 182 | Implementing XML Base in .NET - XML Base is a tiny W3C Recommendation, just couple of pages. It facilitates defining base URIs for parts of XML documents via semantically predefined xml:base attribute (similar to that of HTML BASE element). It`s XML Core spec, standing in one line with "Namespaces in XML" and XML InfoSet. Published back in 2001. Small, simple, no strings attached or added mind-boggling complexity. Still unfortunately neither MSXML nor System.Xml of .NET support it (Dare Obasanjo wrote once on the reasons and plans to implement it). Instead, XmlResolver is the facility to manipulate with URIs. But while XmlResolvers are powerful technique for resolving URIs, they are procedural facility - one has......

177 of 182 | Indenting attributes with XmlTextWriter - XmlTextWriter in .NET 1.X only supports indentation of the following node types: DocumentType, Element, Comment, ProcessingInstruction, and CDATA. No attributes. So how to get attributes indented anyway? If you can - wait .NET 2.0 with cool XmlWriterSettings.NewLineOnAttributes, otherwise - here is a hack how to get attributes indented with XmlTextWriter in .NET 1.X. Well, XmlWriter isn`t particularly low-level writer, it`s abstract XML oriented API, so its implementation XmlTextWriter wouldn`t allow you to just override WriteStartAttribute() method and inject indentation characters before each attribute - it would be considered as an exceptional attempt to write an attrib......

178 of 182 | Samples are templates - DonXML writes on viral coding examples in presentations on using XML in .NET: Joe Fawcett (fellow XML MVP) came across a great example (from the Microsoft.Public.Xml newsgroup) of one of my biggest pet peeves, "We (the community) are doing a very poor job teaching the average developer how to use XML properly in .Net". I want to draw your attention to a line from the original post: "So, is it possible to directly modify the xml file instead of using the dataset." And the first response was: "you can do it using Data Island" Why does thing question bug me so much? Because we (the community) have done a very bad job using XML correctly in our articles and presentations. Yea......

179 of 182 | On pretty-printing XML documents using MSXML - Yeah, I know it`s an old problem and all are tired of this one, but it`s still newsgroups` hit. Sometimes XSLT is the off-shelf solution (not really perf-friendly though), but is just ignored in MSXML. In .NET one can leverage XmlTextWriter`s formatting capabilities, but what in MSXML? Well, as apparently many forgot MSXML implements SAX2 and includes MXXMLWriter class, which implements XML pretty-printing and is also SAX ContentHandler, so can handle SAXXMLReader`s events. That`s all needed to pretty-print XML document in a pretty streaming way: MXXMLWriter sample. var reader = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.SAXXMLReader.4.0"); var writer = new ActiveXOb......

180 of 182 | OPath language intro - "An Introduction to "WinFS" OPath" article by Thomas Rizzo and Sean Grimaldi has been published at MSDN. Summary: WinFS introduces a query language that supports searching the information stored in WinFS called WinFS OPath. WinFS OPath combines the best of the SQL language with the best of XML style languages and the best of CLR programming. Necessary update: In spite of what may be stated in this content, "WinFS" is not a feature that will come with the Longhorn operating system. However, "WinFS" will be available on the Windows platform at some future date, which is why this article continues to be provided for your information. ...

181 of 182 | Dare`s The XML Litmus Test - MSDN has published "The XML Litmus Test - Understanding When and Why to Use XML" article by Dare Obasanjo. Cool and useful stuff. But an example of inappropriate XML usage I believe is chosen quite poorly - in such kind of articles samples must be clear and clean, while sample of using XML as a syntax for programming languages is rather debatable and dubious. Sure, o:XML syntax is terrible, but there is another highly succesful for years now programming language, whose syntax is pure XML and which was created in just one year and which just rocks. After all choosing non-XML syntax for XML-processing language is not a trivial decision too and in a recent wave of the "Why *is* XQuer......

182 of 182 | Derek Denny-Brown is blogging - That`s sort of news that make my day - Derek Denny-Brown is finally blogging. Derek is working on XML/SGML last 9 years and currently is dev lead for both MSXML & System.Xml. Here is his atom feed if you can`t find it on that dark-colored page. Subscribed. [Via Dare] ...