XML Interview Questions and Answers
Extensible Markup Language. A flexible way to create common information formats and share both the format and the data on the World Wide Web, intranets, and elsewhere. XML is a formal recommendation from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) similar to the language of today's Web pages, the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML).
XML Interviews are getting tough these days as the technology grows faster. To get through the XML interview one needs to update him/herself in a regular manner. Having said that, just before the interview, it is very important to have a quick glance of the reputed XML questions and answers to make yourself comfortable during the interview process. This is where DoAnswers.com helps you in renewing yourself on XML and various other technologies interview preparation.
41. What is XML?
XML is the Extensible Markup Language. It is designed to improve the functionality of the Web by providing more flexible and adaptable information identification. It is called extensible because it is not a fixed format like HTML (a single, predefined markup language). Instead, XML is actually a `metalanguage' --a language for describing other languages--which lets you design your own customized markup languages for limitless different types of documents. XML can do this because it's written in SGML, the international standard metalanguage for text markup systems (ISO 8879).
42. What is Xpath?
XPath is used to navigate through elements and attributes in an XML document.
43. What is XSL?
XSLT - a language for transforming XML documents
XSLT is used to transform an XML document into another XML document, or another type of document that is recognized by a browser, like HTML and XHTML. Normally XSLT does this by transforming each XML element into an (X)HTML element.
XPath - a language for navigating in XML documents
XSL-FO - a language for formatting XML documents
44. What package format do you use, and what do I find inside?
We use the well-known ZIP file format as a package format. In addition, we store an XML-based manifest file that describes the package content and may supply additional information about the included files (e.g. encryption method). Since we use ZIP, most archive programs can already handle our files. Inside the package, you generally find several streams that make up the full office document. These are: meta.xml information about the document (author, time of last save, ...) styles.xml styles that are used in the document content.xml main document content (text, tables, graphical elements) settings.xml document and view settings (such as magnification level and selected printer); these are usually application specific META-INF/manifest.xml provides additional information about the other files (such as MIME type or encryption method) Pictures/ directory containing images (in their native, binary formats) Dialogs/ directory containing dialogs used by document macros Basic/ directory containing StarBasic macros Obj.../ directories containing embedded objects, such as charts; each directory contains one such object, stored in its native format. For OpenOffice.org objects that is its XML representation, for other objects it's usually a binary format.
45. When constructing an XML DTD, how do you create an external entity reference in an attribute value?
Every interview session should have at least one trick question. Although possible when using SGML, XML DTDs don't support defining external entity references in attribute values. It's more important for the candidate to respond to this question in a logical way than than the candidate know the somewhat obscure answer.
46. Where should I use XML?
Its goal is to enable generic SGML to be served, received, and processed on the Web in the way that is now possible with HTML. XML has been designed for ease of implementation and for interoperability with both SGML and HTML.
Despite early attempts, browsers never allowed other SGML, only HTML (although there were plugins), and they allowed it (even encouraged it) to be corrupted or broken, which held development back for over a decade by making it impossible to program for it reliably. XML fixes that by making it compulsory to stick to the rules, and by making the rules much simpler than SGML.
But XML is not just for Web pages: in fact it's very rarely used for Web pages on its own because browsers still don't provide reliable support for formatting and transforming it. Common uses for XML include:
Information identification
because you can define your own markup, you can define meaningful names for all your information items. Information storage
because XML is portable and non-proprietary, it can be used to store textual information across any platform. Because it is backed by an international standard, it will remain accessible and processable as a data format. Information structure
XML can therefore be used to store and identify any kind of (hierarchical) information structure, especially for long, deep, or complex document sets or data sources, making it ideal for an information-management back-end to serving the Web. This is its most common Web application, with a transformation system to serve it as HTML until such time as browsers are able to handle XML consistently. Publishing
The original goal of XML as defined in the quotation at the start of this section. Combining the three previous topics (identity, storage, structure) means it is possible to get all the benefits of robust document management and control (with XML) and publish to the Web (as HTML) as well as to paper (as PDF) and to other formats (e.g. Braille, Audio, etc) from a single source document by using the appropriate style sheets. Messaging and data transfer
XML is also very heavily used for enclosing or encapsulating information in order to pass it between different computing systems which would otherwise be unable to communicate. By providing a lingua franca for data identity and structure, it provides a common envelope for inter-process communication (messaging). Web services
Building on all of these, as well as its use in browsers, machine-processable data can be exchanged between consenting systems, where before it was only comprehensible by humans (HTML). Weather services, e-commerce sites, blog newsfeeds, AJAX sites, and thousands of other data-exchange services use XML for data management and transmission, and the web browser for display and interaction.
47. Which OpenOffice.org application uses XML-based file formats?
All OpenOffice.org applications use XML-based file formats. All applications (except Math) use the same format as defined in our specification. The Math component uses our package structure and format (see below), but uses MathML inside the package.
48. Who is responsible for XML?
XML is a project of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), and the development of the specification is being supervised by their XML Working Group. A Special Interest Group of co-opted contributors and experts from various fields contributed comments and reviews by email.
49. Why are so many styles written out?
In general, styles that are used in the document or that have been modified by the user are written to disk. The former is necessary to render the document correctly. The latter is preserved because if a user edited those styles, he/she is likely to use them later on. Therefore, those styles should not be discarded, even though they do not contribute to the document in its current form and shape. If styles that meet neither of these criteria are written, then this is may be considered a bug. The Draw, Impress, and Calc applications currently show this behavior.
50. Why didn't you use XHTML, XSL-FO, SVG, etc. ?
Those formats are not used because they do not have a suitable level of presentation for office documents. When we found an established format (like the ones mentioned above) contains concepts that are used in OpenOffice.org as well, then we generally adopted their representation for those concepts in our XML format. We hope this will ease transformation between the formats.
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