SIGAda 2001 workshop, "creating a symbiotic relationship between XML and Ada"

Abstract

The purpose of the workshop was to organize the Ada community to take advantage of the opportunity to create Ada applications that are operating systems independent because they are based on a web technology, XML, Extensible Markup Language. The commercial use of the Internet is the driving force behind XML. Four elements of XML, which together are sufficient to build a web application, and all employ the same syntax were described. These are XML; its schema; the Extensible Stylesheet Language, XSL; and the XML mechanism for forms, XForms. XML concerns the data objects that are included on the web page and their order of presentation. The schema contains the information on the types and objects for XML. Schemas are roughly equivalent to an Ada specification without the subprograms.Fortunately, the programing language that has the best fit with XML is Ada. XML has visibility and scoping rules, which are similar to Ada. XML has strong typing and has single inheritance similar to Ada. A mutually beneficial symbiosis requires the creation of applications in Ada that use and support XML, as well as, the use of XML to create Ada environments including XML based tools. These applications include: automated translation of Ada data types and objects in a specification to an XML schema; and conversely, automated translation of the data types and elements in an XML Schema to an Ada specification.