XML Book

Hi all,

Can anyone suggest which book is the best reference for XML from an embedded view point.

Thanks Eoin

Could you or someone suggest a way in which XML might be relevant to embedded systems at all?

- FChE

An RTOS spec (ARINC-653) used for many embedded avionics systems specifies the use of XML to define and verify the partition timing and generate the partition configuration tables. The spec includes the XML schema and example instances.

Relevance is still a valid argument though as the spec notes that a program will need to be written to convert the XML data to something usable by the compiler.

Beginning XML, 3rd Edition, ISBN 0-7645-7077-3,

-- Cecil

Setting / exporting Configuration options in an embedded device. If XML is used in stead of something else, then the possibility of using other software to manipulate or generate data in a compatible format is much easier. Now if I could only get an XML parser small enough to be usefull in something like an AVR. The "small" XML parsers I have seen might be small at a couple of 100K bytes when running on a PC with megabytes of memory, but on most embedded systems I use, I need something preferably less than 1K bytes.

Regards Anton Erasmus

Thanks ,

Wrox press books are usually pretty good. I sort of agree with the argument about why would anyone bother to use XML in embedded systems in particular. If you want to integrate your system in to a distibuted network XML is the way. My application is basically a data collection device which can talk to servers/clients over tcp/ip. It needs to be able to share data easily with custom and eventually, 3rd party applications. XML makes it easy for other systems to use the data / display it. Have a look at

We're going through the process at the moment to add SOAP and XML to our PowerNet stack. So far the XML support is less than 500 lines of code for parsing. Of course, we are much helped by having a Forth interpreter which makes it easy to manage name lists.

You can make *lots* of simplifying assumptions if your application is constrained rather than a general purpose solution. If all your transfers are machine generated, you don't really need validation, you just need to refuse or ignore the request for unknown input.

For configuration, you already know what can be confgured, so the list of tags you need to respond to is fairly small. Similarly, the data types are predefined.

Like others, we've found the Wrox book good, and we also like the O'Reilley "XML in a Nutshell" book.

Stephen