There is a full introduction to XML data binding which has been done by Boris Kolpackov. He describes the difficulties experienced in both DOM and SAX when handling a large XML document since both of them are XML structure representations operating in attributes, text and generic elements. A bridging code is often written down by an application developer which allows for the functionality of identification and transformation of XML information to a more suitable representation forĀ the purpose of consumption by the application
Forms are for collecting data, so it's not surprising that the most important concept in XForms is "instance data", an internal representation of the data mapped to the familiar "form controls". Instance data is based on XML and defined in terms of XPath's internal tree representation and processing of XML.
It might seem strange at first to associate XPath and XForms. XPath is best known as the common layer between XSLT and XPointer, not as a foundation for web forms. As XForms evolved, however, it became apparent that forms needed greater structure
This specification defines the XML Pointer Language (XPointer), the language to be used as the basis for a fragment identifier for any URI reference that locates a resource whose Internet media type is one of text/xml, application/xml, text/xml-external-parsed-entity, or application/xml-external-parsed-entity [IETF RFC 2376]. This specification does not constrain the syntax or semantics of URI references to resources of other media types, although it provides extension facilities that may be used with other types.
XPointer supports addressing into
Abstract
This specification defines the XML Pointer Language (XPointer), the language to be used as the basis for a fragment identifier for any URI reference that locates a resource whose Internet media type is one of text/xml, application/xml, text/xml-external-parsed-entity, or application/xml-external-parsed-entity.
Status of this Document
This document has been superceded.
The design described in previous versions of this document has been factored into a basic framework (http://www.w3.org/TR/xptr-framework/) which defines XPointer schemes