A joint meeting of XML UK and W3C Office for UK and Ireland

XML Access Languages - presentations from a one day conference

Tuesday 26th September 2006

Conference Chair: Michael Wilson, W3C Office for UK and Ireland

Summaries of Presentations and Speaker Biographies

Brian Matthews

Brian Matthews is a group manager in the CCLRC e-science centre who has brought expertise in software engineering and formal methods to XML languages. He wrote one of the first Java XML parsers while the language was passing through the W3C standardisation process, and has subsequently been involved in the development of both XML access and semantic web technologies as well as teaching them at Oxford Brookes University. The talk will present a general overview to the family of XML access languages including Xpath, Xpointer and Xlink which are used in the higher level languages. The talk will place these languages in the context of the broader W3C web architecture.

Liam Quin

Liam joined the W3C in 2000; he's been working with text-based markup and digital typography since 1981 and with SGML since 1987. He worked at SoftQuad Inc in Toronto, where he was involved in the development of SoftQuad's HoTMetaL, the first commercial HTML editor for the Web, and also with SoftQuad Panorama, a browser plugin to display SGML; this in turn demonstrated a need to standardise the use of SGML on the Web, and Liam was involved in the development of the XML specification. At the W3C today, Liam is XML Activity Lead and alternate contact for the XML Query and Binary Characterization Working Groups.

This short talk will position XML Query against other standards, showing how it fits in with XPath, XSLT, SQL, and with proprietary middlewear solutions. The talk presents a high-level view together with some examples, and is suitable both for IT professionals and for managers.

Michael Kay

Michael Kay has had a significant influence on the design of XSLT and Xquery while they have passed through the W3C standardisation process. Michael Kay is the developer of the Saxon XSLT and XQuery processor, the editor of the W3C XSLT 2.0 specification, the author of the best-selling book XSLT Programmer's Reference, and the founder of Saxonica Limited, which develops and markets the commercial version of the Saxon processor and provides XML-related consultancy services. He is based in Reading, England.

Jeni Tennison

Jeni Tennison is a consultant on XML technologies who is more frequently asked to talk or write on both the technologies and their applications than she has time to do. Jeni Tennison Consulting Ltd was set up to enable her to work on XML and XSLT projects as a freelance contractor.

Mark Birbeck

Mark Birbeck is the founding director of x-port.net Ltd., the company behind formsPlayer, an XForms processor that fully implements the W3C's XForms specification. He is also the founder of Sidewinder, a company building a next-generation semantic web browser that seamlessly combines XForms with other languages such as SVG, MathML and X3D.He has nearly 30 years experience in software development, and has contributed to books and written articles on XForms, RDF, and XML.He is an Invited Expert on both the XForms and HTML W3C Working Groups where he is particularly involved in the development of XHTML 2, a semantic-based version of XHTML. His most recent work for the W3C has involved proposing and developing RDF/A, a new and simpler way to mark up RDF in documents without having to use RDF/XML.His blog focuses on building a new generation of internet applications, and a number of entries relate to Ajax, XForms, and the use of declarative mark-up.

Andy Seaborne

Andy Seaborne is a research scientist at Hewlett Packard Research Laboratory in Bristol, UK. He has been a driving force behind the Jena toolkit for RDF since its inception and has significant influence on the development of Semantic Web technologies within W3C

Chris Wallace

Chris Wallace is a Senior Lecturer in Information Systems at the University of the West of England, Bristol where he is teaching courses ranging from aerospace systems engineering to information systems, web application development and databases. He is also the project manager on FOLD. Chris has had a varied background in commercial and scientific computing, consultancy and lecturing. A long interest in object-oriented languages, starting with Smalltalk has been somewhat surplanted of late by enthusiasm for rapid application development with XML and Xquery.

Abstract: This session will explore the lessons learnt in the development of a faculty information system (FOLD) using eXist, an open-source Native XML database, using XQuery and XSLT. This application provides an extensive knowledge base for staff, students and the public. The database integrates a range of data sources including complex documents and spreadsheets to support an intranet and public web site. FOLD is in productive use after a year of development and we are currently extending the functionality with emphasis on workflow and the feasibility of rolling this out across the University.

Michael Wilson

Michael Wilson is manager of the W3C Office in the UK and Ireland based at the CCLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. He has been involved with Web technologies since the laboratory hosted one of the first 50 Web sites in the world in 1992.

Venue

The venue was be the Pickavance lecture theatre at the CCLRC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory.