Edits in Xylia: Preserving the Validity of XML Documents

Pouria Shaker,
Dr. Theodore S. Norvell,
Dr. Dennis K. Peters

Abstract

This paper presents an overview of the Xylia Toolkit's approach to preserving the validity of XML documents subjected to edit actions such as insertions, replacements, and deletions. The Xylia Toolkit is a library of classes that provides the Java programmer with the means necessary to construct a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) XML editor. In addition, a default XML editor (with essential features) created by the toolkit is included in the package, which can be used as framework for creating an XML editor tailored to the user’s need. An XML document is valid if it complies with its associated Document Type Definition (DTD). A DTD imposes structural constraints on a document by defining the set of element types for the document and the allowed parent child relations between them. Validating XML parsers can check a document against its DTD, but the main challenge is to maintain the validity of a document while edits such as insertions, replacements, and deletes are taking place. Xylia's strategy for preserving validity is to disallow operations that would invalidate the document rather than to attempt repairing the damage made.


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Last modified: Mon 2002.12.16 at 12:26 NST by Dennis Peters