Xforms: XML Powered Web Forms

Those of us that have been programming for decades remember the times when a form for data entry was created by writing the code. It was a slow, tedious and error prone process. Our efficiency dramatically increased when development packages containing the GUI objects became available, in most cases you simply selected the object you wanted and pasted it to the form. Once that was done, you assigned the values of the parameters and if necessary attached the appropriate event handler. XForms is another way in which the GUI objects can be included on a form, specifically a web form. As the name implies, the syntax is that of XML, all of the parameters to be assigned are entries to be filled within the appropriate pre-defined tags. In this book each of the primary GUI objects of XForms are introduced, example code is given and then a small image of how the object will appear is included. If you have any experience with programming GUI objects and understand the fundamental syntax of XML then you will have no trouble understanding the presentation. The author also includes some of the more widely used values of the attributes. This book is an excellent primer to the topic of XForms, easily understandable to get you comfortable with them as fast as possible.

Easy reading and a good explanation of XForms concepts. The book is about 230 pages with a CD. The XForms concepts are very well compressed into these pages, making it easy reading, yet less intimidating. I was able to read most of the book in the car when we went on a trip to Maine.

T.V's clear and structured thinking is well captured both in this book and in the technology itself. The simple writing style with the grasp of the subject matter and the interactivity model makes complex thing seem simple and beautiful at the same time.Xforms is a ubiquitous technology. If more technologies were more like XFROMS, then specifications for accessibility, multimodal content, etc etc would all boil down to follow the speck, thank you.

XForms is just the right length and weight for reading in bed, or on a flight (two hours or more). So those are the places where I read Raman's book. I openly admit that I got more out of the book in flight than between sheets.Raman belongs to the school of tell them what you are going to tell them, tell them it, then tell them what you told them. His English is rather academic in style, but it is always clear.Raman has put considerable thought into the problems addressed by XForms.The book ought not be read as a description of XForms syntax, nor is it really a tutorial on how to use XForms. Rather, Raman's book is a treatise that sets out the desirable characteristics of electronic forms, especially those deployed over the Web. By explaining requirements, and illustrating, by means of those examples, how XForms meets his requirements, Raman has produced a compelling justification for the design of XForms. He has also gone a long way towards providing a clear set of criteria against which other forms technologies might be measured.XForms is divided into three parts. Very roughly, Part One describes the mess we are in today, and sets out the characteristics of a means to salvation, and just how these are embodied in XForms. The second is a blow by blow account of the act of salvation; while the third points to the state of grace we might achieve in the future, if we pursue the principles on which XForms is based.So, Raman sets off on the journey with a description, by means of a simple example, of the tools and approaches used in typical Web forms projects at the moment. He then spends some time reworking the example as an XForms implementation, and highlights the key advantages of using XForms. In doing so he introduces us to the major components of Xforms.The rest of Part One is an introduction to the array of other XML standards the potential XForms developer will face when using XForms. Raman lists six standards on which XForms has some dependency, including XML itself. This is a strength of XForms. Processors, can, at least partly, be amalgamations of existing implementations of standards, such as W3C XML Schema. Furthermore authors are likely to be using skills that are useful in other contexts. Part Two consists of a more detailed examination of XForms. Raman first takes us through the UI itself, moving from simple constructs to the more sophisticated. Each section describes the use of XForms components, with worked examples, and so helps to put into context the architectural principles sketched out in Part One.As an example, let's look at Section 3.4, Types of Selection Controls. Raman tells us that it is a common requirement that a user make a selection from a predefined list of values. He cites the various ways that this can be physically represented on different devices, but then makes the point that "XForms defines selection controls based on the functionality provided, rather than their appearance in a given environment. This design

In about 200 pages or so, T. Raman has been able to convey the power of XForms to its readers. XForms leverage the power of using XML in creating web forms. It enables the developers to design simple, yet powerful and feature rich, browser-based interfaces for creating XML documents. It ensures the validity of the XML documents without the use of JavaScript, VBScripts and the entire headache and cumbersome that comes along with scripting languages. The author in a few chapters, using useful examples and just plain old good writing style, depicts the power of XForms, and shows the reader how the development time of creating a feature-rich web site can be dramatically reduced using this new technology. Website developers, technology managers and software architects would be able to realize the benefit of using XForms, and determine by reading this book how XForms can save their website project time and money. This book is divided into three parts:· Introduction - Gives the reader the 20-mile high overview of XForms and the various XML standards that it uses such as XML Schema, DOM2, Namespaces, XML Events and XPath. · Components - Talks about the various components that make up the XForms architecture. · Emerging Areas - Talks about the connection between XForms and other emerging Web-Services technologies. If you were familiar with Struts, it would be very easy for you to learn XForms as it follows the same Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern. XForms consists of mainly three parts: The "data" part of XForms is for any and all nonrepresentational aspects of Web applications. It is used for user data input, and for validation of that input. The metadata is also presented at this layer, which is necessary to communicate the user input with the Web Server. The "UI" part of XForms defines a vocabulary that consists of abstract controls and aggregation constructs used to create feature-rich UI's. There is an abstraction layer built-in that allows the applications to be deployed on many different devices and platformsThe "submit" part of XForms allows the developer to specify how and what pieces of data need and can be passed to the Web Server. It also acts as the controller of the data in that it specifies the actions to be taken once a response have been received from the server.The author then goes into detail talking about the various components that make up XForms. The MVC design pattern is broken down even more and the details of each component (properties of XForms, the UI to back-end bindings, XForms events, etc) are further discussed and examples are given to convey each topic better. Chapter 4 puts the true power of XForms in perspective for the reader. It talks about a multi-stage UI Wizard and it shows thru an extensive example how it can be developed via XForms. The same application would take at least a couple of weeks to develop with Struts and JSP/Servlets. The author in a couple of pages, implements this examp