XML (Document markup language)

This thesis describes the modeling of Martial Arts as a markup language. Up until now Martial Arts has already been documented in books, videos, tradition and other methods. Though to represent Martial Arts knowledge consistently and uniformly in a digital era, we introduce the Martial Arts Markup Language (MAML), which is based on XML. Because XML provides a standardized, serializable and portable format, MAML also enables sharing among students, teachers and their peers across different platforms, media and networks. MAML provides the ability, with appropriate XML tools, to document a Martial Arts style in a structured way. To achieve this, we first analyze the aspects that comprise Martial Arts; and how its states and processes relate to one another. We model in MAML describing the stances, transitions, punches, blocks, techniques, combinations, reactions and patterns used in Martial Arts. We discuss the implementation of MAML by observing and extracting the definable aspects in existing Martial Art Instructive Documents. The MAML Schema assures that the details of a Martial Arts Style’s elements are consistent. Current simulation efforts will be explained as well as areas for future development. We have described Martial Arts by observing what has already been done and creating a structured standard to document them. We hope to enable practitioners’ abilities to learn from and develop their arts by providing a resource in which they can interact with.

Data are the backbone to any organization. In some organizations there are applications that operate on a distributed platform. These applications might often communicate with applications on a different platform, that structures data in a different format. The manner in which data is transferred between such applications can become complex, because there will be many platform dependent applications that need to process the data transferred. Hence a mechanism for exchange of data in a simple, effective manner for such applications is a basic necessity. In this thesis, such a mechanism to deal with data exchange in a platform independent manner is discussed. The proposed model is XML-based, and data between the applications is exchanged in the form of XML documents. XML is text-based and can be processed by any application existing on any platform. The model has an interface that processes the XML documents transferred between the client applications and the underlying database systems. The model is implemented in a System administration application. The application is a Web application that transfers data in the XML format. This is processed by the interface and transferred to the database. Data from the database is retrieved and converted to XML documents by the interface and transferred to the client (Web) applications.

As Wireless appliances become more common place we are beginning to experience multiple problems. We are experiencing interoperability problems related to devices' capabilities in relation to applications, along with network/application services limitations for understanding the diversity among these devices. In this thesis the issues related to Location Discovery, Location Management and Device capabilities are discussed. Solutions based on current technologies, including Triangulation and GPS, are discussed for Location Management along with the concepts of Location Tracking and Location Modeling for increasing the effectiveness of Location Management technologies. Finally an XML based Language is presented which affords generality for User to Network and Network to User communication for the many wireless devices.

Information access systems have traditionally focused on retrieval of documents consisting of titles and abstracts. The underlying assumptions of such systems are not necessarily appropriate for full text, structured documents. Context and structure should play an important role in information access from full text document collections. When a system retrieves a document in response to a query, it is important to indicate not only how strong the match is (e.g., how many terms from the query are present in the document), but also how frequent each term is, how each term is distributed in the text and where the terms overlap within the document. This information is especially important in long texts, since it is less clear how the terms in the query contribute to the ranking of a long text than a short abstract. This thesis does research in the application of information visualization techniques to the problem of navigating and finding information in XML files which are becoming available in increasing quantities on the World Wide Web (WWW). It provides a methodology for presenting detailed information about a specific topic while also presenting a complete overview of all the information available. A prototype has been developed for visualization of search query results. Limitations of the prototype developed and future direction of work have also been discussed.

Data security has been identified as one of the most important concerns where sensitive messages are exchanged over the network. In web service architecture, multiple distributed applications communicate with each other over the network by sending XML messages. How can we protect these sensitive messages? Some web services standards have emerged to tackle this problem. The XML Encryption standard defines the process of encrypting and decrypting all of an XML message, part of an XML message, or even an external resource. Like XML Encryption, the XML Signature standard specifies how to digitally sign an entire XML message, part of an XML message, or an external object. WS-Security defines how to embed security tokens, XML encryption, and XML signature into XML documents. It does not define new security mechanisms, but leverages existing security technologies such as encryption and digital signature.