ANN: Parsing for XML Developers

["Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>]

Hi Folks,

Parsing is cool!

Parsing is about taking a flat (linear) structure, such as this flat list of Book data:

<Books>
    <Title>Parsing Techniques</Title>
    <Author>Dick Grune</Author>
    <Author> Ceriel J.H. Jacobs</Author>
    <Date>2007</Date>
    <ISBN>978-0-387-20248-8</ISBN>
    <Publisher>Springer</Publisher>
    <Title>Introduction to Graph Theory</Title>
    <Author>Richard J. Trudeau</Author>
    <Date>1993</Date>
    <ISBN>0-486-67870-9</ISBN>
    <Publisher>Dover Publications</Publisher>
    <Title>Introduction to Formal Languages</Title>
    <Author>Gyorgy E. Revesz</Author>
    <Date>2012</Date>
    <ISBN>0-486-66697-2</ISBN>
    <Publisher>Dover Publications</Publisher>
</Books>

And adding structure to it:

<Books>
    <Book>
        <Title>Parsing Techniques</Title>
        <Authors>
            <Author>Dick Grune</Author>
            <Author> Ceriel J.H. Jacobs</Author>
        </Authors>
        <Date>2007</Date>
        <ISBN>978-0-387-20248-8</ISBN>
        <Publisher>Springer</Publisher>
    </Book>
    <Book>
        <Title>Introduction to Graph Theory</Title>
        <Authors>
            <Author>Richard J. Trudeau</Author>
        </Authors>
        <Date>1993</Date>
        <ISBN>0-486-67870-9</ISBN>
        <Publisher>Dover Publications</Publisher>
    </Book>
    <Book>
        <Title>Introduction to Formal Languages</Title>
        <Authors>
            <Author>Gyorgy E. Revesz</Author>
        </Authors>
        <Date>2012</Date>
        <ISBN>0-486-66697-2</ISBN>
        <Publisher>Dover Publications</Publisher>
    </Book>
</Books>

I wrote a short tutorial on parsing. I use XML in the examples, although parsing can be used to structure many things besides XML.

Here is my tutorial:

http://www.xfront.com/parsing-techniques/bottom-up-parser/Parsing-for-XML-Developers.pptx

/Roger