Effective XML

Item 1. Although XML declarations are optional, every XML document should have one. An XML...

Item 2. Despite the rapid growth of Unicode in the last few years, the sad...

Item 3. Everything you need to know about XML 1.1 can be summed up in...

Item 4. No reasonably sized keyboard could possibly include all the characters in Unicode. U.S....

Item 5. DTDs can be as obfuscated as C++ code written by a first-year undergrad....

Item 6. There are no standard naming conventions for XML. I've seen XML applications that...

Item 7. No one XML application can serve all uses. No one DTD can describe...

Item 8. Large, monolithic DTDs are as hard to read and understand as large, monolithic...

Item 9. All legal text characters that can appear anywhere in an XML document can...

Item 10. XML defines white space as the Unicode characters space (0x20), carriage return (0x0D),...

Item 11. All structure in an XML document should be indicated through XML tags, not...

Item 12. There's a recurring mild flame war on the xml-dev mailing list about when...

Item 13. XML was designed for narrative documents meant to be read by humans: books,...

Item 14. XML applications should be designed around elements and attributes. You can use a...

Item 15. Entity references, CDATA sections, character references, empty-element tags, and the like are just...

Item 16. Unparsed entities and notations are one of the weirder parts of the XML...

Item 17. Processing instructions are certainly useful, but they can be a source of interoperability...

Item 18. An XML document is not the same thing as an XML file. XML...

Item 19. It's questionable whether including binary data in XML documents is a good idea...

Item 20. Namespaces are the standard tool for mixing multiple vocabularies into a single document....

Item 21. Namespaces use URIs to distinguish elements and attributes. The prefix is syntax sugar,...

Item 22. The namespaces specification is very schizophrenic about using namespace prefixes in places that...

Item 23. Many XML applications are intended solely for machine processing. For instance, SOAP messages...

Item 24. About two years ago, the W3C XML Schema Working Group released the fruits...

Item 25. Schemas are an extremely useful means of checking preconditions on XML documents before...

Item 26. XML applications evolve over time just like traditional software applications. It's almost inevitable...

Item 27. One of the most fundamental principles of XML design is the separation of...

Item 28. The complete family of XML specifications has grown so large that it's approaching,...

Item 29. XML documents are just too rich in syntax sugar to be processed by...

Item 30. There are two things that experienced developers often see as lacking in XML:...

Item 31. Parsers, DOM implementations, XSLT engines, and other XML-related tools vary widely in speed,...

Item 32. For most applications, performing the XML processing with SAX will result in by...

Item 33. While SAX programs are almost always faster and more memory efficient than the...

Item 34. One of the innovations of XML was making validity optional. Many XML documents...

Item 35. Whether you're writing code with DOM, JDOM, dom4j, Sparta, or some other tree-based...

Item 36. XML is itself a fairly efficient serialization format. There's no need or reason...

Item 37. Rigorously testing preconditions is an important characteristic of robust, reliable software. Schemas make...

Item 38. You may work in English, but these days it's no great surprise if...

Item 39. There's an old programmer's adage that the only numbers in programs should be...

Item 40. Although XML is a nonproprietary, vendor-independent technology, it doesn't have to stay that...

Item 41. Over the years I've been teaching XML, I've noticed that one perennial question...

Item 42. All the warnings in the namespace specification that there is not necessarily anything...

Item 43. One of the original goals of XML was to create "SGML for the...

Item 44. Given the limitations of the installed base of browsers, I'm not sure I...

Item 45. XML processors, web browsers, and many other tools rely on MIME media types...

Item 46. Converting HTML to XHTML often exposes and corrects bugs in web pages that...

Item 47. Many XML processes use system IDs (in practice, URLs) to locate the standard...

Item 48. XML documents are used on Wall Street for financial transactions totaling hundreds of...

Item 49. As web services based on SOAP, REST, and XML-RPC explode in popularity, more...

Item 50. Verbosity is a common criticism of XML. However, in practice, most developers' intuitions...