One of the problems with getting to grips with XML is that it does very
little or nearly everything depending on how you look at it. Very little
"it's just a data description languague" through to 'the core technology of
the future internet (mainly IMHO because everyone's jumped on the bandwagon
so there are LOTS of tools and peripheral standards - something which was
markedly lacking in previous data description languages [such as ASN.1]).
The sort of answer I would expect to give to your question (and I'm not
quite an XML devotee either though I've mad a fair amount of use of it)
would go like this.
The point of any multiple tier archtecture is to all changes at any point
(extending / reformatting the database, changing the layout) without
(necessarily) having to consider the effects on the other tiers. This is
especially true when dealing with multiple source and multiple consumers
(e.g. your database tables are used by many applications supported by
different programmers). In this case you may wish to make a change to the
data layouts - possibly a major one and be confident that it will not break
the other programmers code. If you have an intermediate layer (business
object / XML data representation) then you can do this relatively safely.
With a description language like XML you can add data without breaking the
'code' which accesses it (removing data may be another matter, of course).
The other point to XML technologies (IMHO) is that they allow declarative
rather than procedural programming.
In the case of your example, you would emit an XML document from your
database (which can be a single database operation) and then transform it
into the look and feel you want (an HTML page) with XSLT. With XSLT (once
you've learned it) you can make major changes to the presentation without
writing a line of code - something (generally) not true of JSP and it's
competitors.
you can of course embed form objects in the transformed XML so yes you can
do forms.
Is it worth it? If you have a simple application you have to get out the
door and you already know the technologies, don't bother.
If your application may grow more complex or you may have to share data with
other programs / pages, or if you just like learning new things, then givbe
it a go.
Iain
In fact you may not need jsp at all!
"Colum" <co********@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:S1******************@news.indigo.ie...
Hi,
I am a complete newcommer to XML.
I am planning to build a website with html, interacting with an Oracle db
through Jsp. I want to use Xml, mainly because Ive heard about the kind of
OO approach it takes, but I cant see how it would be beneficial. Could
someone tell me what it the point of seperating content from presentation,
surely content is stored in the database?? Also, are there such things as
forms in XML, or what is the solution for XML sites that wish to use
forms, do you write some of the site in XML and the forms part in HTML
Thanks
