XQuery Kick Start

Appendix A. XML Fundamentals

by Vaidyanathan Nagarajan

IN THIS APPENDIX

• Processing Models for XML Data

• XML Documents

• XML Documents and DTDs

• Well-Formedness and Validity of XML Documents

• XML Syntax and Semantics

• Entity References

• Rules for Writing XML

• CDATA Section

This appendix covers XML fundamentals from a layman's perspective. It is written as a quick and easy reference for both programmers and managers: Programmers who are learning to code in XML can use this appendix as a base reference to get started with XML, and managers who want to know about XML can refer to this appendix to understand the basic XML technology.

Both HTML and XML use tags as part of the language semantics. The basic building blocks of an XML document are elements, attributes, and ...