3.5. XML Namespaces

The intent of XML namespaces is to eliminate naming conflicts in XML documents that contain element types and attributes from multiple XML languages. Namespaces can prove useful in situations in which documents combine components from several fields that have the same name but are used in a different context. For example, the bird classification document shown previously in Example 3-6 uses the element <name> to identify a particular species of heron:

<name language="latin">Ardea herodias</name>
<name language="english">Great Blue Heron</name>

The <name> element we saw in Example 3-8 identifies the contributing authors of an article:

<name>George W. Archibald</name>
<name>James C. Lewis</name>

Each of the name elements ...

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