Unit 7

This week I learned about XML, eXtensible Markup Language. In a lot of ways XML is similar to HTML (the markup language I learned a little about last week).  Although XML is more fluid and allows for more creativity when it comes to tags and document structure. I used three XML tutorials this week. I first listened to a succinct 10 minute video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clJcs2-UB40 given by Cape Clear's Chief Technology Officer, James Pasley. It was very informative but seemed to fast paced and jammed a lot of important information into a rather short video.Wasn't sure who Cape Clear was or what their reputation was like so I went to their website and got redirected to workday.com. It turns out that Cape Clear, the Irish Web Services-based middleware integration technology company had been acquired by Workday back in 2008. Not that you wanted to know all of that but there it is.

Then I listened to a "brief" hour and forty-four minute video lecture at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozKg08td5mE given by Professor Bruce Fulton. This lecture covered many topics including MARC, Dublin Core, XML, METS, MODS, Omeka, and so much more. It was quite a bit to take in at one sitting and I will most likely need to revisit it again at a later date to refresh my memory on all of those subjects.


The third tutorial I used was at http://www.w3schools.com/xml/default.asp and is offered by w3schools. This was a hands-on tutorial in the way that I was able to click links and see the result of well-formed, valid, and error-filled XML documents. I learned that XML elements must have a closing tag; tags are case sensitive; elements must be properly nested; attribute values must be quoted; and there must be a root element in every XML document. What I found humorous when I first started the tutorial is that for XML I needed a knowledge of HTML and JavaScript. I don't know much about JavaScript so I went to its tutorial and found out I needed a knowledge of HTML and CSS. I don't know much about CSS so I went to its tutorial and saw that it requires a knowledge of HTML/XHTML. Phew!!!

All kidding aside, I learned a great deal about XML and other subjects this week. Now comes the hard part of turning my knowledge into action and hoping for the best.