March 4, 2004

On XML Catalogs

XML.com has published good article "Using XML Catalogs with JAXP". XML Catalogs are successors of SGML Catalogs and in simple words it's a system for defining resolving of resource identifiers (URIs or Public Identifiers) in XML. If you are .NET minded - it's about having XML document (called catalog), where ...

Very useful. I hooked on catalogs when working with big DTDs such as Docbook. Validate against huge DTD or schema loading it from the Web isn't good idea and catalogs here is a feature one cannot work without. It's a shame there is still no .NET implementation. Basically that's on my to-do list for almost a year, still close to bottom :( There was some showstopper related to PUBLIC identifier, but I don't remember exactly what the the problem was. It's still tempting to implement it. Probably that's going to be my next pet project after I finish EXSLT article I'm writing. Anybody interested to participate?