In the Deploying Web services with WSDL series, Bilal will explore all major technical aspects of creating, deploying, and publishing Web services -- from Web Services Markup Language (WSDL), to Simple Object access Protocol (SOAP), and Universal Description Discovery and Integration (UDDI) registries. Part 1 focuses on WSDL authoring: More info

Fabio Arciniegas' article on using object oriented design patterns in processing XML documents. Discusses four patterns: Command, Flyweight, Wrapper, and Iterator. More info

You can validate an XML file with a document type definition (DTD). DTDs use a formal grammer to describe the structure and syntax of compliant XML documents; they specify content and values allowed for the XML document. More info

An article on XML.com describing three structural patterns for XML Schema: Composite, Abstract Model, and Peer Specialization. More info

A more interesting question is 'Is XML on the web trending up or trending down?' Clearly, it is trending down. For data transfer applications, XML is losing ground to JSON because JSON is simply a better data transfer format. And XHTML has failed to displace HTML in the marketplace. The benefit of clientside validation has proven to not be a benefit. I think you can argue, and in fact I did argue, that because of W3C's adventures with XML, the web itself may not have a future. The browser has a lot of problems, the worst of which are the security problems that came with Netscape Navigator 2. That was 12 years ago, and there has been no progress since that time in fixing the fundamental problems. There have been lots of patches on top of patches. Nothing more. More info

Recently, I have been running into some problems with XML Serialization in VB.Net. I suppose this would apply to C# as well, but I don't do that. Anyway, at work, we've been trying to get ourselves integrated with Amazon.com. We're going to be selling our wares there. It's very exciting but VERY frustrating too. Amazon requires merchants to send up XML documents (feeds) to describe things like products, prices, inventory levels, etc... More info

One of the primary tasks we, as Web developers, are faced with is querying data from some data store and allowing users to view and/or manipulate the information via a Web interface. More info

XSLT are files that provide a stylesheet for viewing XML files in a variety of formats. This article will give you a brief introduction of XSLT Files and their format. More info

I will drill in on a specific example so I can compare and contrast XSLT versus ASP.NET. The example is the MSDN TOC. MSDN found that XML was ideal for managing its large table of contents (TOC). The contents of this TOC come from hundreds of groups around the company. The XML format provided a way to glue together disparate back-end processes that would have been much harder to change. XML/XSL also made it possible to reach different browsers on different platforms. More info

Pat Eyler works about a block and a half from where I live in downtown SLC, UT, and yesterday we met up for lunch. Amongst our far reaching topics of conversation included the proper way to pronounce Rubinius. In case... More info