W3C Standards: XML Base

W3C StandardsXML Base

Anne Talarico

January 29, 2007

The W3C

• The Web has developed very quickly

• The Web needs guidelines to improve its stability.

• The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) provides these guidelines through their recommendations.

XML Base

• XML Base is one such standard.

• Part of the XML Activity

• Provides developers with a short cut.

• Allows developers to specify a base URI in order to easily resolve related URIs throughout the document.

• Written by Jonathan Marsh, an employee of Microsoft.

Structure of Recommendations

• Although the structure of each recommendation varies slightly from document to document, most include the following: Abstract statement Status of the recommendation Table of contents List of terminology.

Industry’s View of XML Base

• Firefox supports XML Base.

• Roy T. Fielding declared XML Base to be an abuse of the base URI function.

• Most developers tend to disagree with Fielding, and the general consensus is that XML Base is a useful recommendation.

Current Status of XML Base

• The XML Base recommendation is currently endorsed as a stable W3C recommendation.

• However, at any point the recommendation may be reviewed and further modified.