Term 2 Schedule

week no	Topics	Lecturer
13	26 Jan	Recap on XML, trees, Simple XML, intro to workshop, RSS, namespaces	CW
14	2 Feb	XPath, XML structures	CW
15	9 Feb	XML and Google Earth	CW
16	16 Feb	XML Schemas, schema creation and induction	CW
17	23 Feb	XQuery and XML databases	CW
18	2 March	XSLT , Schema driven input	CW
19	9 March	Triples, RDF	MB
20	16 March	Ontologies	MB
21	23 March	Preparation for Revision	CW/MB
25	20 April	Multimodal - Voice + XML, Visualisation	CW
26	27 April	XML in business	CW
27	4 May	Revision

Coursework 1 marked

Coursework 1 is ready for collection. At the back is a feedback sheet showing the breakdown of marks by section. Section 2 has been broken into three parts for the report, for the site and its functionality and for the way in which is was implemented in PHP, CSS and HTML. There are also comments on the coursework itself.

Marks range from 55 to 75 with an average of 65.

Generic feedback is here and will be handed out in the lecture.

Workshop 1 Term 2 - RSS and PHP

A voice message (2 min 16 secs)

In this workshop we will continue the work looking with PHP and the SimpleXML class by using this approach to transform data from an RSS feed (a weather feed from the BBC).

You will also compare three sources of data - from the Weather Channel,. Yahoo and the BBC to identify differences in both structure and content of these data sources, and explore the reasons for these differences.

You will also be introduced to the notion of namespaces and the basics of location data, in preparation for work with Google Earth in the next workshop

Lecture Week 14

In the lecture this Friday we will cover the following topics:

• A recap of trees, XML and the Simple XML interface in PHP
  
• an overview of the schedule for this term
• outline of the coursework for this term
• introduction to the workshop on RSS
  

Attendance was very poor for the last three lectures of last term. I appreciate that you all put a lot of work into the assignment. Those who missed will, we assume, have looked at (or even listened to) the missed lectures and the workshop sessions which are all available from this blog.

• Slides
• Workshop
  

Google Earth

A brief message from the module leader:


This term , we will be studying a number of XML 'vocabularies' or languages. One which has received a great deal of attention is kml - keyhole mark-up language. Keyhole Corp was acquired by Google in 2004 and their software is the basis of GoogleEarth (GE). kml is the XML language which defines user additions called 'overlays' to the base digital imagery. A kml file is created when you create placemarks and other features in GE and save them as a file. kml is the plain text format, and kmz is a zip compressed format. These files can then be shared by providing a link on a web site, or adding to a GE community site. Moreover kml files can now be accessed by GoogleMap.

Where location data for a subject of interest is available from another source, kml can be generated dynamically using a server-side script such as PHP or XQuery. This is the aspect which we will be exploring in tutorials.

Resources

• kml tutorial and reference
• GoogleEarth Community
• OgleEarth blog by Stefan Geens
• A GoogleTech Talk
• Using GoogleEarth - blog by John Gardiner, a GE developer (and keen mountain biker)
• KoKae - a GE tutorial from Richard Treves, a geographer at Southhampton University
• kml Schema
• 
  

Local examples

• A generated kml map of entertainment places in Bristol - view in Google Map