Extreme XML Programming

I am a proponent of agile development methodologies such as Extreme Programming and Scrum. These methodologies are based on practices such as user stories, iteration (sprint) planning, pair programming, unit test first, refactoring, continuous integration, and acceptance test. Agile programming helps create better software that is also easier to maintain.

Test-Driven Development (TDD) is a well known practice in the Java EE world with unit testing frameworks such as JUnit, EasyMock, and JMock. With TDD, you always write the test code first before you write the functional code itself. This simple principle can also be used in developing applications with XML related languages such as XSLT 2.0, XSL FO, and XQuery. Both XSLT 2.0 and XQuery 1.0 are strongly typed languages with a rich built-in function library. They can also be used to create libraries of custom functions that perform very complex business logic. Adopting a TDD methodology can increase the quality of your XSLT 2.0 or XQuery code and make it easy for you to maintain the code as you refactor and implement new requirements.

The following are my favorite unit testing frameworks:

1. Tennison-test is an XSLT Unit Test framework that allows you to write your unit tests in XML, but also allows you to automate the execution of the test as part of a build and continuous integration process based on Ant.
   
2. XMLUnit 1.1 for Java allows you to make assertions about the differences between two XML documents, the result of an XSLT transformation, the evaluation of an XPath expression, and the validity of an XML document.
   
3. Apache FOP provides a LayoutEngineTestSuite which can be used to check against the "Area Tree XML" generated by FOP's XMLRenderer.
   
4. Schema-aware XSLT 2.0 and XQuery can help root out errors early. With XML Schema 1.1's assertions and conditional type assignments, this will get even more interesting.
   
5. ISO Schematron can be used to write XPath 2.0-based assertions about the output of your XSLT or XQuery program.
   
6. xchecker is an interesting testing framework based on XML Schema, XPath 2.0, XSLT 2.0, XQuery, and Relax NG.
   
7. xSpec is a Behavior Driven Development (BDD) framework by Jeni Tennison for XSLT testing.
   

XML IDEs today provide the ability to write XSLT and XQuery code in debug mode my setting breakpoints, stepping through code one line at the time, and inspecting the value of variables. It would be nice if they could also integrate an XSLT/XQuery unit test framework a la Eclipse IDE.

Aviation Data Management in the Web 2.0 Era

I will make a presentation at the XML 2007 Conference in Boston on December 5. The title of my presentation is: RESTful IDEAS. IDEAS stands for Integrated Documentation Environment for Aircraft Support. Based on AtomPub and OpenSearch, the IDEAS Framework enables federated searches of technical content and updates via web feeds. This presentation is essentially about how Web 2.0 innovations can be leveraged to create a cost-effective, efficient, and massively scalable environment for aggregating and publishing up-to-date technical documentation to end users in the aviation industry.

So what exactly is Web 2.0? Does it mean anything at all? For me Web 2.0 represents new web functionalities such as:

• Content aggregation and syndication using technologies like RSS and Atom
  
• Social networking (e.g. Linkedin and Facebook)
  
• User generated content with videos, pictures, blogs, wikis, and podcasts (e.g. YouTube and Flickr)
  
• Mashups or the ability to merge data from different sources (e.g. Google Maps and Yahoo Pipes)
  
• Rich Internet Applications (RIA) using user interface technologies such as Flex and AJAX
  
• Web Services and web-based APIs particularly those using RESTful protocols such as AtomPub
  

Those are the types of functionalities that today's web users expect from web applications, and the consumers of aviation technical documents are no exception.

Atom and AtomPub are already playing a fundamental role in the Web 2.0 world. The Google Data API which also includes Google Documents is based on AtomPub and OpenSearch. This week, a group of social networking sites including hi5, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Orkut, and XING released OpenSocial which is a common set of APIs for developing social applications across multiple websites. OpenSocial is also based on AtomPub.

So how can the aviation industry embrace and extend Web 2.0 innovations to solve the challenge of aggregating and presenting up-to-date technical data from multiple content sources? I will be sharing my thoughts.

See you in Boston!