XML Programming with VB and ASP

Mark Wilson and Tracey Wilson

1999 | 320 pages
ISBN: 1884777872
$34.95 Softbound print book  

 

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DESCRIPTION

Here's a book that shows you when and how to use XML from both a programming and business perspective. Laden with source code, XML Programming with VB and ASP helps you build solutions that are flexible, future-proof, and self-describing. It will help you apply XML concepts between the client and the server and the server and data objects or data services.

Finally, you have everything a VB and ASP developer needs to keep up with the explosive growth of XML.

What's Inside:

Translation rights for XML Programming with VB and ASP have been granted for Brazil, China, Germany, India, Japan, and Korea. If you are interested in learning where to buy this book in a language other than English, please inquire at your local bookseller.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS...

Mark Wilson is the creator of the popular XML developer websites, VBXML.COM and theSpot4.com. He is currently working for a major software development company as a project manager and consultant. With his certification in Microsoft development products and experience in Visual Basic, he brings an easy blend of humour and experience to the book.

Tracey Wilson is a highly skilled XML developer whose experience in object oriented and framework projects using Visual Basic and SQL Server uniquely qualifies her to contribute to this book. Using her 3-tier architecture (with Microsoft Transaction Server) experience she has provided invaluable knowledge and source code to this book.

The authors reside in Canberra, Australia.

Introduction

XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is the best thing since sliced bread. What HTML (Hypertext Transport Protocol) did for the World Wide Web and for distributing data around the globe is what XML is doing for eCommerce and data exchange.

We are in the midst of a growing and unprecedented amount of business-to-consumer (known as B2C) and business-to-business (known as B2B) information exchange. Selling your wares via the web, intelligent agents haggling for the best price, transparent data exchange between businesses, XML makes all of this possible and affordable!

Where will it be used? The short answer is everywhere! XML will be used on the Internet in web pages. It will be used in the Microsoft BackOffice to structure your knowledge. It will be used across platforms, across applications, and across languages. It will be the centerpiece in all distributed solutions built in the future.

Not only software developers will use XML; it will be in almost all of the products we use in the future. Wherever there is data exchange or persistence, XML will be there. You may not even know when you are using it. For example, in Microsoft Word (in Office 2000) when you choose the Save as web page menu choice, you save your document in an HTML format with XML embedded in it.

Note: XML is everywhere: In Microsoft Word 2000, when you choose the Save as web page menu choice, you save your document as an XML-HTML hybrid.

XML is an infinitely extensible language with which you can create your own markup languages. This is why XML is also referred to as a metalanguage, or a language in which you can specify other languages. This book does not go into detail on how to create your own markup languages or into the syntax details of XML. (There are thousands of books and websites for that.) What we discuss is how to apply it to your development projects. We show you code examples of how you can use the power of XML in your development projects.

The focus of this book

As more developers become familiar with the promise of XML, the Internet requirements of businesses will move beyond the simple interactive HTML pages. Businesses will want to create more wealth from their information. It has been said many times that information wants to be free, and XML will achieve this.

In this book, XML Programming With VB And ASP, we will walk you through using XML in your Microsoft IE5 (Internet Explorer 5), Microsoft Visual Interdev, and Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 applications.

Development projects will enable direct data exchange between objects, between servers, and between remote companies across the Internet. The promise of EDI (Electronic Data Interchange) will become real, and it will be inexpensive to apply. The shift to transparent communication of almost all information will be sudden and widespread.

That is why we think this book is your key to a whole new future as a developer or IT worker. With XML and this book as your roadmap, you will discover how to build truly flexible and powerful solutions.

What will the readers of this book learn?

When you are finished reading XML Programming With VB And ASP, you will understand the basic concepts of XML and how best to use it in ASP and VB code.

The following list highlights the major topics that we will discuss.

Consulting

XML

IE5

VB

ASP

After reading this book, you are welcome to come to our home website at http://www.vbxml.com or http://www.thespot4.com to find more training links, articles, and information on discussion groups that you can join.

If you would like to meet the authors, please visit the Manning Publications website. The url http://www.manning.com/wilson has a link to the Author Online forum for this book, where you can make comments, ask technical questions, and receive help from the authors and from other users.

Target PC configuration for readers

Often a book with extensive examples of code and solutions (such as this one) can make your life as a reader quite tough by using obscure software components or having different versions of components. Many times a book will use expensive components that readers cannot afford to purchase.

We have intentionally developed these solutions on a PC that has standard, bundled, or free software components. For example, the Microsoft PWS (Personal Web Server) is easy to get a hold of and is free! Ditto for IE5 and the MDAC 2.1 (Microsoft Data Access Components), which has Y2K updates and contains ADO 2.1 (ActiveX data Object), which the code in this book uses.

For ADO 2.1 there is an upgrade if you have the older versions of ADO 1.5 or ADO 2.0. Windows 2000 provides ADO 2.5; however, this book does not cover 2.5 features (although some useful pointers to changes in how the technologies are used are provided). This code was developed and tested on a PC with the configuration listed here. To execute the examples provided in this book, you must have the same or newer components.

IE5 web browser

ADO 2.1 data access components

Microsoft PWS 1.0a

PWS has the ASP.EXE extensions installed

PWS has the Microsoft FrontPage extensions installed

Source code downloads

All source code for the examples posted in XML Programming with VB and ASP is available to purchasers of the book from the Manning website. The url http://www.manning.com/wilson includes a link to the source code files. The code is also available at www.vbxml.com.

Conventions used in this book

The following typographical conventions are used throughout the book:

Code examples and fragments are set in a fixed-width font. Courier is used for VB code. Letter Gothic is used for XML code.

Comments in code are set off with an apostrophe at the beginning of each comment line. The comment line or lines precede the line or lines of code being referenced.

Code annotations accompany certain segments of code. Footnotes are tagged with.

Code line continuations are indented.

Acknowledgements
I had often heard that writing a book was hard and stressful, but I never believed it. With a somewhat naive and casual enthusiasm, I took on this project of writing a book on XML programming with VB and ASP. Now, I know the truth.

To Trace, my gorgeous wife, thank you for your patience and for your incredible contribution to this book. To our family, extended family, and friends all around the world, this is for you!

I would like to thank all of the proofreaders and the members of the VBXML discussion group. Your contributions have been crucial to the success of this book.

We express our appreciation to the following reviewers, who provided invaluable insight into what the readers want and for the time and effort they took to read our manuscript in the various stages of development: Armand Datema, Bill Eddins, Brian Breneman, Carlos Palmisciano, Charles Hoffman, Chris Million, Earl Cox, Govind Kanshi, Howard Bolling, Jian Wang, Nikita Ogievetsky, Robert Green, Simon North, and Steve Ball.

I would also like to thank God for giving me this opportunity.

-- Mark Wilson

Writing this book has been a wonderful experience, especially knowing that this work will help so many people with this wonderful, growing technology.

My most endearing acknowledgment is to Mark.

To all our family, you give us so much love; thank you for always being so caring. Even though we are all spread out across the world, our hearts are not far. To our friends, old and new, thank you for meaning so much to Mark and me.

Special thanks also go to the patient crew from Manning Publications (Marjan Bace, Ted Kennedy, Mary Piergies, Ed Toupin, Leslie Haimes, Chris Hillman, Lee Fitzpatrick, Peter Schoenberg, Bob Kern, Jeannine Kolbush, Lynanne Fowle, and the rest of the TIPS crew, and many more people), who have assisted us through this gestation period.

I want to thank my kind Father.

-- Trace Wilson

About the Cover
The cover illustration of this book is from the 1805 edition of Sylvain Maréchal's four-volume compendium of regional dress customs. This book was first published in Paris in 1788, one year before the French Revolution. Its title alone require no fewer than 30 words.

Costumes Civils actuels de tous les peuples connus dessin's d'après nature graves et colorié, accompagnes d'une notice historique sur leurs coutumes, moeurs, religions, etc., etc., rediges par M. Sylvain Maréchal.

The four volumes include an annotation on the illustrations: 'grave e manièe noire par Mixelle d'après Desrais et colorié'. Clearly, the engraver and illustrator deserved no more than to be listed by their last names, after all they were mere technicians. The workers who colored each illustration by hand remain nameless.

The colorful variety of this collection reminds us vividly of how culturally apart the world's towns and regions were just 200 years ago. Dress codes have changed everywhere and the diversity by region, so rich at the time, has faded away. It is now hard to tell the inhabitant of one continent from another. Perhaps we have traded cultural diversity for a more varied personal life, certainly a more varied and exciting technological environment. At a time when it is hard to tell one computer book from another, Manning celebrates the inventiveness and initiative of the computer business with book covers based on the rich diversity of regional life of two centuries ago, brought back to life by Maréchal's pictures. Just think, Maréchal's was a world so different from ours people would take the time to read a book title 30 words long.

WHAT REVIEWERS ARE SAYING

"...a well-written book for experienced VB programmers and ASP developers to introduce them to XML programming. I recommend this book if you're looking at learning XML programming and give it 5 stars out of 5."
     --Mitch Tulloch, Swynk.com

"This book is refreshingly compact, it's less than 300 pages and packed - not so much with screenshots which pad so many of today's books - but rather with code snippets, URL and sample XML documents that will help you understand the technology that the book explains. And how well it explains it!

If you don't know your DTD from your XSLT then this is the book for you. It describes the basic principles of the XML meta language and how it fits in with other web technologies like XSL, HTML, VRML. For a VB Programmer this book is in my opinion the best entry point into XML. And in a climate where XML is a buzzword and receiving so much attention, you'd do well to get hold of a copy and read it."
     --Graham Parker, posted on the VB User's Group website

"This book is a good example, of how books should be written. It sticks to the topic and assumes you have the background to understand what they are talking about. As for the XML content, this is a great book for your first look at XML, what to use it for and how to use it. There is plenty of code in the book, which you can download from their web site. Get this book now and get started with XML."
     --Bill Burris, posted on ATL and COM Notebook