Transcript Case Study: Kinolina.com

KINOLINA.COM
XML Standards and Vocabulary Development
Eric Gould
December 2002
Case Study: Kinolina.com
BENEFITS / REQUIREMENTS
 CSS / XSL improves on UI design consistency
 DTD / XML Schema validation enforces page
structure conformity
 Content delivery handled with XML / XSL
transformations on the server via ASP increases
cross-platform consistency on client browsers
 KinoML articulates page structure for content and UI
design architecture
Case Study: Kinolina.com
My project is an XML-generated web site for content
delivery, and is a revision of an existing XML project –
kinolina.com.
Kinolina.com is a self-produced web site used as a
vehicle for publishing articles about film and film
events. It is also a project to work with XML
technologies, including XML Schema validation, DTD
validation, and XSL transformations.
Case Study: Kinolina.com
The current project is a version 2.0 update of the web
site that employs these XML technologies. As a case
study, the previous and initial version of the site
expressed an XML / XSL delivery of site content. It
fell short from a lack of document structure validation,
e.g. through the use of a DTD or XML Schema.
Case Study: Kinolina.com
Further, CSS and XSL stylesheets produced
inconsistent uses of style modeling for the content.
Version 2.0 improves upon this by repurposing XML
content with fewer XSL stylesheets and adheres to
greater UI design consistency. The integration of DTD
and XML Schema validation also enforces greater
conformity over the site’s document structure.
Case Study: Kinolina.com
KinoML – XML VOCABULARY
The XML vocabulary I have used in my project is called
“KinoML,” named after my web site. KinoML is merely
an articulation of the site’s document structure: the
presentation and layout of article content.
Kinolina.com is an anthology of published article
content for dissemination on the web. As such, the
site requires consistent formatting for the UI design.

Case Study: Kinolina.com
For the page structure and content display, KinoML
expresses XML elements like the article’s headline,
event name, event date, location and article content.
FlixML (www.flixml.org), a vocabulary used for film
reviews of B movies, provided a model for developing
my XML vocabulary. John E. Simpson, the author of
FlixML, developed the XML Vocabulary as a project
to create a standard for movie reviews. Whereas
Simpson’s FlixML DTD specifically organizes his XML
content around the elements of his review system,
KinoML is pared down to the elements of an article
structure for the kinolina web site.
Case Study: Kinolina.com
LESSONS LEARNED
 XML Schema is a good learning tool to
perform XML validation, the DTD model
works best for defining character entities as
well as validation
 Cross-platform development with server-side
XSL transformations is enhanced with ASP
scripting, but does not work very well with the
addition of DHTML script components used
on the Links pages of the site.
Case Study: Kinolina.com
FUTURE PLANS
 Creation of an XML / ASP-based search
engine to handle search requests of site
content from an XML instance file.
 Find ways to leverage cross-platform delivery
of site content to non-IE client browsers
 Fine-tune and enhance existing XSL file
modeling to improve on page design
conformance.