Module 1

Introduction to XML

Slide 1-1
 What is XML
XML stands for Extensible Markup Language and is a text-based markup
language derived from Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML).
This Module will teach you the basics of XML. Advanced XML, and XML tools.
Contains related topics with simple and useful examples.

Slide 1-2
 characteristics of XML

There are three important characteristics of XML that make it useful in a

variety of systems and solutions −
XML is extensible − XML allows you to create your own self-descriptive
tags, or language, that suits your application.
XML carries the data, does not present it − XML allows you to store the
data irrespective of how it will be presented.
XML is a public standard − XML was developed by an organization called
the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and is available as an open
standard.

Slide 1-3
 Advantages of XML

• XML is text (Unicode) based.

• Takes up less space.
• Can be transmitted efficiently.
• One XML document can be displayed differently in different
media.
• Html, video, CD, DVD,
• You only have to change the XML document in order to change
all the rest.
• XML documents can be modularized. Parts can be reused.

Slide 1-4
 XML Usage

A short list of XML usage says it all −

• XML can work behind the scene to simplify the creation of HTML
documents for large web sites.
• XML can be used to exchange the information between organizations
and systems.
• XML can be used for offloading and reloading of databases.
• XML can be used to store and arrange the data, which can customize
your data handling needs.
• XML can easily be merged with style sheets to create almost any
desired output.
• Virtually, any type of data can be expressed as an XML document.

Slide 1-5
 Example of an XML Document

<?xml version=“1.0”/>
<address>
<name>Alice Lee</name>
<email>[email protected]</email>
<phone>212-346-1234</phone>
<birthday>1985-03-22</birthday>
</address>

Slide 1-6
Building Blocks Of XML/XML Document Structure

The major portions of XML document includes:

• XML Declaration
• Document Type Declaration(DTD)
• Entity Reference
• Element data
• Attribute data
• Character data
• Comments

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Components of XML Document

Slide 1-8
 Tags and Elements
• An XML file is structured by several XML-elements, also called XML-nodes
or XML-tags.
The names of XML-elements are enclosed in triangular brackets
< > as shown below −
<element>
Syntax Rules for Tags and Elements
Element Syntax − Each XML-element needs to be closed either with start or
with end elements as shown below −
<element>....</element>or in simple-cases, just this way −
<element/>
Nesting of Elements − An XML-element can contain multiple XML-elements
as its children, but the children elements must not overlap. i.e., an end tag of
an element must have the same name as that of the most recent unmatched
start tag.

Slide 1-9
 Tags and Elements
The Following example shows incorrect nested tags −
<?xml version = "1.0"?>
<contact-info>
<company>Presidency </contact-info>
</company>
The Following example shows correct nested tags −
<?xml version = "1.0"?>
<contact-info>
<company>Presidency</company>
<contact-info>

Slide 1-10
XML Attributes
An attribute specifies a single property for the element, using a name/value pair. An
XML-element can have one or more attributes. For example −
<a href = "http://www.searchme.com/">click here !</a>
Here href is the attribute name and http:// www.searchme.com / is
attribute value.
Syntax Rules for XML Attributes
Attribute names in XML (unlike HTML) are case sensitive. That
is, HREF and href are considered two different XML attributes.
Same attribute cannot have two values in a syntax. The following
example shows incorrect syntax because the attribute b is specified
twice:
<a b = "x" c = "y" b = "z">....</a>

Slide 1-11
XML References
References usually allow you to add or include additional text or markup in an
XML document. References always begin with the symbol "&" which is a reserved
character and end with the symbol ";". XML has two types of references −
Entity References − An entity reference contains a name between the start and
the end delimiters. For example &amp; where amp is name. The name refers to a
predefined string of text and/or markup.
Character References − These contain references, such as &#65;, contains a
hash mark (“#”) followed by a number. The number always refers to the Unicode
code of a character. In this case, 65 refers to alphabet "A".

Slide 1-12
XML Text
The names of XML-elements and XML-attributes are case-sensitive, which means
the name of start and end elements need to be written in the same case. To avoid
character encoding problems, all XML files should be saved as Unicode UTF-8 or
UTF-16 files.
Whitespace characters like blanks, tabs and line-breaks between XML-elements
and between the XML-attributes will be ignored.
Some characters are reserved by the XML syntax itself. Hence, they cannot be
used directly. To use them, some replacement-entities are used, which are listed
below −
Not Allowed Character Replacement Entity Character Description
< &lt; less than
> &gt; greater than
& &amp; ampersand
' &apos; apostrophe
" &quot; quotation mark

Slide 1-13
XML Documents
An XML document is a basic unit of XML information composed of elements and
other markup in an orderly package. An XML document can contains wide variety
of data. For example, database of numbers, numbers representing molecular
structure or a mathematical equation.

XML Document Example

A simple document is shown in the following example −

<?xml version = "1.0"?> Document Prolog

<contact-info>
<name>Pavan Kalyan</name>
<company>Presidencyt</company> Document Elements
<phone>(011) 123-4567</phone>
</contact-info>

Slide 1-14
XML Declaration
Following syntax shows XML declaration −
<?xml version = "version_number" encoding = "encoding_declaration" standalone
= "standalone_status" ?>

Parameter Parameter_value Parameter_description

Version 1.0 Specifies the version of the XML
standard used.
Encoding UTF-8, UTF-16, ISO-10646-UCS-2, It defines the character encoding
ISO-10646-UCS-4, ISO-8859-1 to ISO- used in the document. UTF-8 is the
8859-9, ISO-2022-JP, Shift_JIS, EUC-JP default encoding used.
Standalone yes or no It informs the parser whether the document
relies on the information from an external
source, such as external document type
definition (DTD), for its content. The default
value is set to no. Setting it to yes tells the
processor there are no external declarations
required for parsing the document.

Slide 1-15
XML Declaration
Rules
An XML declaration should abide with the following rules −
•If the XML declaration is present in the XML, it must be placed as the first
line in the XML document.
•If the XML declaration is included, it must contain version number
attribute.
•The Parameter names and values are case-sensitive.
•The names are always in lower case.
•The order of placing the parameters is important. The correct order
is: version, encoding and standalone.
•Either single or double quotes may be used.
•The XML declaration has no closing tag i.e. </?xml>

Slide 1-16
XML Declaration Examples
Following are few examples of XML declarations −
XML declaration with no parameters −
<?xml ">
XML declaration with version definition −
<?xml version = "1.0">
XML declaration with all parameters defined −
<?xml version = "1.0" encoding = "UTF-8" standalone = "no" ?>
XML declaration with all parameters defined in single quotes −
<?xml version = '1.0' encoding = 'iso-8859-1' standalone = 'no' ?>

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XML - Comments
<!--Your comment-->
Example:
<?xml version = "1.0" encoding = "UTF-8" ?>
<!--Students grades are uploaded by months-->
<class_list> <student> <name>Tanmay</name>
<grade>A</grade>
</student>
</class_list>

Slide 1-18
Document Type Declaration(DTD)
• This optional declaration may appear only once in an XML
document
• DOCTYPE gives a name to the XML content and identifies the
internal content by specifying the root element
• A DOCTYPE can identify the constraints on the validity of the
document by making a reference to an external DTD or include
the DTD internally within the document (internal DTD)

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• The General Forms of the Document Type Declarations is listed below:
• <!DOCTYPE ROOT SYSTEM “file”>
• <!DOCTYPE ROOT [ ]>
• <!DOCTYPE ROOT SYSTEM “file” [ ]>
In the syntax:
• The keyword ROOT should be replaced with the actual root element
contained in the document
• The keyword “file” should be replaced with a path to a valid DTD
• example:
• <!DOCTYPE shirt SYSTEM “shirt.dtd”>
•
<!DOCTYPE book SYSTEM "DTDs/CWP.dtd">

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XML VALIDATION
• A "well formed" XML document is not the same as a
"valid" XML document.
• A "valid" XML document must be well formed. In addition,
it must conform to a document type definition.
• There are two different document type definitions that
can be used with XML:
• DTD - The original Document Type Definition
• XML Schema - An XML-based alternative to DTD
• A document type definition defines the rules and the legal
elements and attributes for an XML document.

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XML - Validation
Well-formed XML Document
Example
Following is an example of a well-formed XML document −
<?xml version = "1.0" encoding = "UTF-8" standalone = "yes" ?>
<!DOCTYPE address
[
<!ELEMENT address (name,company,phone)>
<!ELEMENT name (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT company (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT phone (#PCDATA)>
]>
<address>
<name>Tanmay Patil</name>
<company>Presidency</company>
<phone>(011) 123-4567</phone>
</address>

Slide 1-22
XML - Validation
Valid XML Document : through DTD
If an XML document is well-formed and has an associated Document Type
Declaration (DTD), then it is said to be a valid XML document.
•An XML DTD can be either specified inside the document, or it can be kept in a
separate document and then linked separately.
Syntax
Basic syntax of a DTD is as follows −
<!DOCTYPE element DTD identifier
[ declaration1
Declaration2
........
]>

Slide 1-23
XML - Validation
Valid XML Document : through DTD
Syntax
Basic syntax of a DTD is as follows −
<!DOCTYPE element DTD identifier
[ declaration1
Declaration2
........
]>
In the above syntax,
The DTD starts with <!DOCTYPE delimiter.
An element tells the parser to parse the document from the specified root
element.
DTD identifier is an identifier for the document type definition, which may be
the path to a file on the system or URL to a file on the internet. If the DTD is
pointing to external path, it is called External Subset.
The square brackets [ ] enclose an optional list of entity declarations
called Internal Subset.

Slide 1-24
XML - Validation
Valid XML Document : through Schemas
XML - Schemas
XML Schema is commonly known as XML Schema Definition (XSD). It is used to
describe and validate the structure and the content of XML data. XML schema
defines the elements, attributes and data types. Schema element supports
Namespaces. It is similar to a database schema that describes the data in a
database.
Syntax
An element can be defined within an XSD as follows −
<xs:element name = "x" type = "y"/>
The following example shows how to use schema −
Simple Type
<xs:element name = "phone_number" type = "xs:int" />

Slide 1-25
XML - Validation
Valid XML Document : through Schemas
Complex Type

<xs:element name = "Address">

<xs:complexType>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name = "name" type = "xs:string" />
<xs:element name = "company" type = "xs:string" />
<xs:element name = "phone" type = "xs:int" />
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>

Slide 1-26
XML - Validation
Valid XML Document : through Schemas
The following example shows how to use schema −
<?xml version = "1.0" encoding = "UTF-8"?>
<xs:schema xmlns:xs = "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<xs:element name = "contact">
<xs:complexType>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name = "name" type = "xs:string" />
<xs:element name = "company" type = "xs:string" />
<xs:element name = "phone" type = "xs:int" />
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
</xs:schema>

Slide 1-27
XML NAMESPACES
• XML Namespaces provide a mechanism to avoid element name
conflicts and attribute name conflict
• The main purpose of namespace is to group elements and to
differentiate an element from others with a similar name
• Namespace is a mechanism by which element and attribute name can
be assigned to group. The Namespace is identified by URI(Uniform
Resource Identifiers).
• In an XML document, the URI is associated with a prefix, and this
prefix is used with each element to indicate to which namespace the
element belongs.

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• For example:
rdf:description
xsl:template

In these examples,
• the part before the colon is the prefix
• the part after the colon is the local part
• any prefixed element is a qualified name
• any un-prefixed element is an unqualified name

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For example: consider the following XML document that carries
information about HTML table example:
<table>
<tr>
<td>Apples</td>
<td>Bananas</td>
</tr>
</table>

• The following is an XML document that carries information about a table (a piece of furniture):
<table>
<name>African Coffee Table</name>
<width>80</width>
<length>120</length>
</table>

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Name conflicts in XML can easily be avoided using a name prefix.
The following XML carries information about an HTML table, and a piece of furniture:
<h:table>
<h:tr>
<h:td>Apples</h:td>
<h:td>Bananas</h:td>
</h:tr>
</h:table>

<f:table>
<f:name>African Coffee Table</f:name>
<f:width>80</f:width>
<f:length>120</f:length>
</f:table>
• In the example above, there will be no conflict because the two <table> elements have different
names.
Drawback:
• If prefix itself same for more than one xml document, then again name conflict occurs. To avoid this
we can use xml namespace along with prefix

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• The namespace can be defined by an xmlns attribute in the start
tag of an element.
The namespace declaration has the following syntax:
<element-name xmlns:prefix="URI">
Where
• The Namespace starts with the keyword xmlns.
• The word prefix is the Namespace prefix.
• The URI is the Namespace identifier.

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<root>
<h:table xmlns:h="http://www.w3.org/TR/html/">
<h:tr>
<h:td>Apples</h:td>
<h:td>Bananas</h:td>
</h:tr>
</h:table>
<f:table xmlns:f="http:/ www.pepperfry.com /furniture">
<f:name>African Coffee Table</f:name>
<f:width>80</f:width>
<f:length>120</f:length>
</f:table>
</root>

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• In the example above:
• The xmlns attribute in the first <table> element gives the h: prefix a
qualified namespace.
• The xmlns attribute in the second <table> element gives the f: prefix a
qualified namespace.
• When a namespace is defined for an element, all child elements with the
same prefix are associated with the same namespace.

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XML PARSER
• XML parser is a software library or a package that provides
interface for client applications to work with XML documents.
• It checks for proper format of the XML document and may also
validate the XML documents.
• Modern day browsers have built-in XML parsers.
• Following diagram shows how XML parser interacts with XML
document −

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• XML Parsing means accessing and modifying the data in an XML
document.
• Java provides various ways to parse the data.
The two common ways to parse an XML document are given below:
• DOM Parser: Parsing the document by loading all the content of
the document and creating its hierarchical tree structure.
• SAX Parser: Parsing based on event-based triggers. It does not
require the complete loading of content.

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• DOM Parser:
• DOM (Document Object Model) provides an interface to update
the style, structure, and contents of an XML document.
• DOM should be used when you want to have knowledge about the
structure of the XML document, move parts of an XML document,
and want to use the information more than once.
• After parsing the XML document with the help of DOM parser, you
get a tree-like structure that contains all the elements of a
document.

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38
DOM Interfaces:
•Node: It is the base datatype of the document.
•Element: The objects in the document are Elements.
•Text: The content of an element.
•Attr: Represents the attribute of an element.
•Document: It refers to the entire XML document.

DOM Methods:
•Document.getDocumentElement() – It returns the root element of the document.
•Node.getFirstChild() − It returns the first child of a given Node.
•Node.getLastChild() − It returns the last child of a given Node.
•Node.getNextSibling() − It returns the next sibling of a given Node.
•Node.getPreviousSibling() − It returns the previous sibling of a given Node.
•Node.getAttrib

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• Steps to use DOM:
• Import the XML-related packages:
• import org.w3c.dom.*;
• import javax.xml.parsers.*;
• import java.io.*;
• Create a document builder:
• DocumentBuilderFactory factory =
• DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
• DocumentBuilder builder = factory.newDocumentBuilder();

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• Create a document from a file:
• StringBuilder xmlStringBuilder = new StringBuilder();
• xmlStringBuilder.append(“<?xml version=”1.0″?> <class> </class>”);
• ByteArrayInputStream input = new ByteArrayInputStream(
xmlStringBuilder.toString().getBytes(“UTF-8”));
• Document doc = builder.parse(input);
• Extract the root element:
• Element root = document.getDocumentElement();
• Examine the attributes:
• getAttribute(“attributeName”);
• getAttributes();
• Examine the sub elements:
• getElementsByTagName(“subelementName”);
• getChildNodes();

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DOM PARSER
Advantages:
It is good when random access to widely separated parts of a
document is required.
It supports both read and write operations.

Disadvantages:
It is memory inefficient.
It seems complicated although not really.

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SAX PARSER
• It does not first create any internal structure
• Client doesnot specify what methods to call
• Client just overrides the methods of the API and place his own
code inside there.
• When the parser encounters start-tag,end-tag etc. it thinks of
them as events.
• When such an event occurs,the handler automatically calls back to
a particular methos overridden by the client,and feeds as
arguments the method what it sees.
• SAX parser is event-based.
• Client application seems to be just receiving the data
inactively,from the data flow point of view.

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SAX Parser
Advantages:
• It is simple
• It is memory efficient
• It works well in stream application

Disadvantage:
• The data is broken into pieces and clients never have all the
information as a whole unless they create own data structure.

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XSLT – XSL Transform
• XSLT is a syntax for transforming XML data into
an alternate format.
• The XSLT syntax can appear in an XML-formatted
file (typically with a .xsl extension).
• The XSLT commands are designed to allow for
iterating through a list of XML elements, and
retrieving the text and/or attribute values of
specific XML elements.
The Basic Structure of XSLT
• The root element for an XSLT file is the <xsl:stylesheet> element.
(Note the xsl namespace.)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
… XSLT syntax goes here …
</xsl:stylesheet>
 A Quick Refresher on Namespaces
• XSLT uses the xsl namespace, which is specified via:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

Note that the xsl namespace prefix is used. It’s namespace

value must be the specific URL you see above…
XSLT Overview
• Example of XML document
<?xml version=”1.0”?>
<?xml-stylesheet type=”text/xml” href=”planets.xsl”?>
<PLANETS>

<PLANET>
<NAME>Mercury</NAME>
<MASS UNITS=”(Earth = 1)”>.0553</MASS>
<DAY UNITS=”days”>58.65</DAY>
<RADIUS UNITS=”miles”>1516</RADIUS>
<DENSITY UNITS=”(Earth = 1)”>.983</DENSITY>
<DISTANCE UNITS=”million miles”>43.4</DISTANCE><!--At perihelion--
>
</PLANET>
example con’t
<PLANET>
<NAME>Venus</NAME>
<MASS UNITS=”(Earth = 1)”>.815</MASS>
<DAY UNITS=”days”>116.75</DAY>
<RADIUS UNITS=”miles”>3716</RADIUS>
<DENSITY UNITS=”(Earth = 1)”>.943</DENSITY>
<DISTANCE UNITS=”million miles”>66.8</DISTANCE><!--At perihelion-->
</PLANET>

<PLANET>
<NAME>Earth</NAME>
<MASS UNITS=”(Earth = 1)”>1</MASS>
<DAY UNITS=”days”>1</DAY>
<RADIUS UNITS=”miles”>2107</RADIUS>
<DENSITY UNITS=”(Earth = 1)”>1</DENSITY>
<DISTANCE UNITS=”million miles”>128.4</DISTANCE><!--At perihelion-->
</PLANET>

</PLANETS>
• Example of a style sheet planet.xsl
<?xml version=”1.0”?>
<xsl:stylesheet version=”1.0” xmlns:xsl=”http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform”>

<xsl:template match=”PLANETS”>
<HTML>
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</HTML>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match=”PLANET”>
<P>
<xsl:value-of select=”NAME”/>
</P>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>
XSLT Overview
• Result
<HTML>

<P>Mercury</P>

<P>Venus</P>

<P>Earth</P>

</HTML>
The Components of XSLT
• Recall that XSLT is expressed as an XML-formatted
document.
• There are a number of common XSLT elements that specify
how the XML data should be transformed:
• <xsl:template>
• <xsl:for-each>
• <xsl:value-of>
Examining <xsl:template>
• An XSLT document can contain an arbitrary number of
<xsl:template> elements.
• Each <xsl:template> element must include a match attribute,
whose value is an XPath expression that indicates what XML
nodes the <xsl:template> tag will work with.
 Examining <xsl:template>
• For example, if we wanted to list each file on the
filesystem, we’d need to first add an <xsl:template>
element that matches with the <file> elements.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:template match="/filesystem//file">
…
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
Example of <xsl:template>
• <xsl:template match="/filesystem//file">
Examining <xsl:value-of>
• The <xsl:value-of> element accesses the text or attribute value of
an element.
• The <xsl:value-of> element requires a select attribute, which
specifes the name of the element whose text node to retrieve, or
the attribute name.
 Example using <xsl:value-of>
The following XSLT document would output the names
of all of the folders in the file system.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:template match="/filesystem/drive//folder">
<xsl:value-of select="@name" />
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
 Examining <xsl:for-each>
• The <xsl:for-each> element iterates through all of the
children elements of a specified element. The
<xsl:for-each> element has a select attribute (like
<xsl:value-of>), which specifies which element’s
children to iterate through.
<xsl:template match="/filesystem/drive">
<xsl:value-of select="@letter" />
<xsl:for-each select="folder">
<xsl:value-of select="@name" />
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>
A Table of Planets
<xsl:template match="planets">
<html><body>
<h1>All Known Planets</h1>
<table width="100%" align="center" border="1">
<tr><th>name</th><th>mass</th><th>density</th>
<th>radius</th></tr>
<xsl:apply-templates/> <!-- rows of table -->
<tr>
<td>AVERAGES</td>
<td>
<xsl:value-of
select="sum(planet/density) div count(planet)"/>
</td>
<td></td>
<td></td>
</tr>
</table>
</body></html>
</xsl:template>
A row of the table

<xsl:template match="planet">
<tr>
<td><xsl:value-of select="name"/></td>
<td><xsl:value-of select="mass"/></td>
<td><xsl:value-of select="density"/></td>
<td><xsl:value-of select="radius"/></td>
</tr>
</xsl:template>
The display
XML Database

• XML database is a data persistence software system

used for storing the huge amount of information in XML
format. It provides a secure place to store XML
documents.
• You can query your stored data by using XQuery,
export and serialize into desired format. XML
databases are usually associated with document-
oriented databases.

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Types of XML databases
There are two types of XML databases.
1.XML-enabled database
2.Native XML database (NXD)

 XML-enable database works just like a relational database. It is like

an extension provided for the conversion of XML documents. In this
database, data is stored in table, in the form of rows and columns.

 Native XML database is used to store large amount of data. Instead

of table format, Native XML database is based on container format.
You can query data by XPath expressions.
 Native XML database is preferred over XML-enable database
because it is highly capable to store, maintain and query XML
documents.

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What is XQuery?

•XQuery is the language for querying XML data

•XQuery for XML is like SQL for databases
•XQuery is built on XPath expressions
•XQuery is supported by all major databases
•XQuery is a W3C Recommendation

XPath stands for XML Path Language

XPath uses "path like" syntax to identify and navigate nodes
in an XML document
XPath contains over 200 built-in functions
XPath is a major element in the XSLT standard
XPath is a W3C recommendation

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