Automated support for data exchange via XML

Abstract

XML has recently emerged as a standard for exchanging data between different software applications. We present an approach for automatic code generation to interpret information in an XML document. The approach is based on a user-defined mapping of the XML document's structure onto the application's API. This mapping is declarative in nature, and thus easy to specify, and is used by code generator that applies advanced code generation and manipulation techniques to generate the appropriate code. The approach relieves developers from the time-consuming and error-prone task of writing the interpreter themselves, and complements existing XML technologies such as XSLT.