How do applications process documents that use XML namespaces?
Applications process documents that use XML namespaces in almost exactly the same way they process documents that don’t use XML namespaces. For example, if a namespace-unaware application adds a new sales order to a database when it encounters a SalesOrder element, the equivalent namespace-aware application does the same. The only difference is that the namespace-aware application: • Might need to check for xmlns attributes and parse qualified names. Whether it does this depends on whether such processing is already done by lower-level software, such as a namespace-aware DOM implementation. • Uses universal (two-part) names instead of local (one-part) names. For example, the namespace-aware application might add a new sales order in response to an {http://www.tu-darmstadt.de/ito/sales}SalesOrder element instead of a SalesOrder element.
Applications process documents that use XML namespaces in almost exactly the same way they process documents that don’t use XML namespaces. For example, if a namespace-unaware application adds a new sales order to a database when it encounters a SalesOrder element, the equivalent namespace-aware application does the same. The only difference is that the namespace-aware application: • Might need to check for xmlns attributes and parse qualified names. Whether it does this depends on whether such processing is already done by lower-level software, such as a namespace-aware DOM implementation. • Uses expanded (two-part) names instead of local (one-part) names. For example, the namespace-aware application might add a new sales order in response to an {http://www.tu-darmstadt.de/ito/sales}SalesOrder element instead of a SalesOrder element.
