Overview of XML support
Use the XML support provided with this product to work with web applications that process data using standard XML technologies like Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT), XML Path Language (XPath), and XML Query Language (XQuery).
XML-structured data has become the predominant format for data interchange. XML data is navigated, queried, or transformed in almost every existing WebSphere application.
Since first being standardized, XML usage in application-development environments has grown significantly to include many scenarios. WAS is a leading platform for the latest application development standards, including XML.
IBM WAS provides application developers with support for the following World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) XML standards:
- Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) 2.0
- XML Path Language (XPath) 2.0
- XML Query Language (XQuery) 1.0
These W3C XML standards offer application developers numerous capabilities for building XML applications. Specific benefits delivered in the XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, and XQuery 1.0 standards include the following:
- Simpler XML application development and improved developer productivity
- Improved ability to query large amounts of data stored in XML outside of a database with XQuery 1.0
- Improved XML-application performance through new features introduced in the W3C specifications to address previous shortcomings
- Improved XML-application reliability with new support for XML schema-aware processing and validation
To use XPath 1.0 or XSLT 1.0 (not in backwards-compatibility mode), continue to use Java API for XML Processing (JAXP) in Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE) 6.0 and 7.0.
For more information about these W3C XML standards, go to W3C XQuery 1.0 and XSLT 2.0 Become Standards: Tools to Query, Transform, and Access XML and Relational Data.
The product provides the IBM XML Application Programming Interface in support of these standards. This application programming interface invokes a runtime engine that is capable of executing XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, and XQuery 1.0 as well as manipulating the returned XML data.
The product also includes the IBM Thin Client for XML with WAS. The thin client allows access to the same XML API and runtime functionality (XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, and XQuery 1.0) available in the full product. The thin client can be copied to multiple clients running Java SE in support of a WAS installation.
Subtopics