XML data binding: Difference between revisions

Revision as of 20:19, 4 August 2004

Revision as of 20:29, 4 August 2004

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XML data binding refers to the process of representing the information in an [[XML]] document as an [[Object (computer science)|object]] in computer memory. This allows [[applicationApplication software|applications]] to access the data in the XML from the object rather than using the [[Document Object Model|DOM]] to retrieve the data from a direct representation of the XML itself.

An XML data binder accomplishes this by creating a mapping between elements of the [[XML schema]] of the document we wish to bind and [[members]] of an [[object schema]] to be represented in memory.

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When this process is applied to convert an XML document to an object, it is called [[marshalling]]. The reverse process, to serialize an object as XML, is called [[unmarshalling]].

Because XML is inherently sequential and objects are (usually) not, XML data binding mappings often fail to preserve all the information in an XML document. Specifically, information like [[comment|comments]], [[XML entity- references]], and [[sibling order]] will fail to be preserved in the object representation created by the binding application. This is not necessarily true; sufficiently complex data binders are capable of preserving 100% of the information in an XML document.

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