Week 9 Reading Comments

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=2367464305070960355&postID=4341170650280538329&page=1

https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=633484337573796975&postID=2242785260858344513&page=1

Assignment 5 - Koha Virtual Shelf

http://pitt5.kohawc.liblime.com/cgi-bin/koha/bookshelves/shelves.pl?viewshelf=28


For some reason I have two blank entries. They stay even if I check them and click remove. I had deleted some from the bibliographic record after I added them to my shelf, maybe that's why.

Week 8 Muddiest Point

If there was no class do we need a muddiest point entry? Why didn't LIS 2600 have class because of break but LIS 2000 did?

Week 9 Readings - XML Schema Tutorial

This article was a bit easier for me. I have designed databases and I am very comfortable with data types, default values, acceptable ranges of values, formats, etc. For that reason, I can agree with the author's statement that XML schemas should supplant Document Type Definitions since schemas allow more definition. I am still unclear on the namespace concept though, so I am not sure why that is cited as a reason for schema over DTD.

I'll be interested to hear Dr. He talk about XML and making the concept more clear for me.

Week 9 Readings - Extending your Markup: a XML tutorial by Andre Bergholz

Well, this is the third tutorial on XML and I still don't think I could start using it! I'm not sure that XML makes it easier for humans to read--computers, yes I agree with that. But I think I would have to have a purpose for XML first, and then a "learn by doing" session second before I can firmly grasp it. I do understand what it is, but I'm still not clear on how to do it, or where I would personally use it.

Week 9 Readings - A Survey of XML Standards Part 1

This article was really beyond my level of expertise. When it touched on database schemas, which I work with, I was much clearer on the concepts. This is not to say that it's a bad article. On the contrary it is extremely well written and the layout is very easy to follow. I liked that Mr. Ogbuji explained what his definition of a standard is in the article. Though most of the technical parts were difficult for me because I have no base knowledge, I was impressed with the voluntary effort that exists in the computing community to develop systems and standards that make communication across the web better and more accessible by more people. I admire their dedication to maintaining a rigorous process to develop standards; though more than one group exists, they all recognize that not every concept is a good one and won't be accepted but they are at least given a hearing. Mr Ogbuji provided some great resources to learn more which I plan to check out--probably in a year because I will never be caught up from all the reading in the two courses I am taking. Mr. Ogbuji even covers the time concern though; he provided cautions for complex developments that don't have a large following yet and warnings about training sites that may provide older information. At any rate, I've bookmarked his site!

Week 9 Readings - An Introduction to the Extensible Markup Language (XML)

I have been interested in learning more about XML. Up to reading this article I knew that it is used in WWW pages, it is a very good development for web page authors and that Microsoft Office products can save a document in XML format--that's all. Though I work in computing I am not a web programmer and I haven't done a lot with creating my own web pages or web site. I would certainly like to so I have learned some html and I do understand more than the average WWW user does. So, I've used the WWW long enough to know that the wide range of hardware platforms, operating systems and web browsers have meant that web pages don't always look as they were designed to look in every situation due to different handling and different html versions used by the authors. What I learned from this article is that XML addresses this problem, allowing web page features to retain their attributes in a much broader range of situations, and updating those attributes is a lot easier since it only has to be done in one place.

After reading this article, I can't say that I could originate an XML document myself. Clearly some knowledge of creating web pages is prerequisite, but I did get a clear picture of what XML does to make web pages more widely usable.