Introduction to XMLMiddleware.net
Summary:
XML Middleware is a huge area which can most easily be split into 3 main areas:
1) Transmission
At the moment the only means of transmission contained in the code is via
JMS (Java Message Service)
Hopefully Web Services (such as SOAP) will be added soon.
I am mostly waiting for all the various standards to consolidate a bit before
delving too deeply into this but if some one wishes to....
2) Storage / Retrieval
The code presently uses XML-DBMS for storing & retreiving XML into and from SQL Databases
using JDBC.
The reason for this is two-fold. Firstly, SQL Databases are the main where data is stored today.
Secondly, I am again waiting for initiatives such as xapi to bear fruit.
3) Visual Representation
By this I mean a very broad range of ways & means of representing XML based information
to a user. This includes server based mechanisms such as the various web based mechansims e.g.
JSP'es and Servlets delivering the appropriate formated display to a client (such as HTML/XHTML and WAP) and
stretches to "traditional GUI'es" such as Swing based Applications.
The code contains a set of GUI class'es which are the first step in enabling an Object Browser to be built.
By an Object Browser I mean an Application which can treat XML as an Object representation and
can go and fetch the procedural code needed to effectively interact with the data. This could be as simple as an
XHTML renderer or a complete Swing based GUI.
The code contains the start of a plugin architecture as given by the first application which is an XML-DBMS Map Builder.
Writing plugins is fairly easy. The GUI code uses JDOM to make GUI/XML interaction as simple as possible.
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