ISIS and XML an introduction by E. de Smet, Univ. of Antwerp

What is XML ? eXtensible Markup Language Language : a set of codes, HTML-like, i.e. in between brackets Markup : ‘in stream’ codes to identify structural (not lay-out) parts of a document eXtensible : codes are defined in a ‘DTD’ (Document Type Definition) and everybody can produce a DTD W³-consortium standard, now becoming the most important file-formatting language (e.g. MS Office 2003)

SGML, HTML and XML Standardized General Markup Language (80’s) : founding ‘father’, very generic but too complicated, still in use (electronic publishing); introduced concept of ‘DTD’ HTML (90’s) : HyperText Markup Language (WWW), in fact based on one SGML-DTD XML (00’s) : focussing on contents and structure, instead of layout

XML DTD defines which elements are possible in a document <!DOCTYPE books [ !DOCTYPE is the tag for starting a document type declaration, which specifies the type of document you are validating against. It contains either the validation data or a reference to the location of the file with these data. ‘books’ is the name you are giving this type of document [ announces the beginning of DTD data : all ‘elements’ need to be declared

XML DTD (cont’d) example of elements ‘grammar’ : doctype is the name of the element. (book|article|report) are the values it can contain. “book" is the default value. If you don't include this attribute in the XML tag, it will assume the value is “book". Attributes :

XML DTD (cont’d) example elements-definition : ? = not or once * = not, once or more than once + = once or more than once

XML DTD (cont’d) example of a record using this DTD : The CDS/ISIS for Windows Handbook Hopkinson Alan BLA London

ISIS and XML XML can describe any type of document ISIS deals with semi-structured data XML is perfect to describe semi-structured data (esp. * conforms with ISO-2709 fields characteristics) Remark : XML can also be used for full structured databases (E-business!) ISIS : confined to 3 levels, XML not ->importing in ISIS requires level reduction

ISIS and XML : importing XML2ISIS : a free, independent tool to import XML-formatted data into an ISIS-database (ISO-file) requires hierarchical ‘tree’ definition and defining which XML-tags go to which ISIS-fields (with reduction) demo of the interface of XML2ISIS

XML2ISIS interface

ISIS and XML : exporting built-in function from WinISIS 1.4 (build 19f): ‘utils’-menu option MFN-range or search result as source can deal with subfields and repeatable fields DTD as part or separate file, using tags or fieldnames field selection possible demo on ASFA-database…

ISIS2XML interface