Ostensible Markup Language (OML)

Abstract

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a highly buzzword-compliant standard. It is being adopted in a variety of areas and may even be appropriate for some of these. At heart, however, it is simply a text-based system for encoding hierarchical data structures.

We use an informal variant of XML, which we refer to as Ostensible Markup Language (OML). OML is syntactically consistent with XML, allowing us to use tools such as XML::Simple, but it tends not to have DTDs or other formalities.

-Vicki Brown, Rich Morin, May 2002

Papers

• Ostensible Markup Language (Introduction)
  • [Microsoft Word format]
• A Prime Example (Rich Morin)
  • [Microsoft Word format]
• Refactoring an Inefficient Dataflow Process (Vicki Brown)
  • [Microsoft Word format]

Simple Sample

• data

• config file

• simple parsing script

• slightly more complex parsing script

• XML::Simple - the Perl module used to parse the XML-format config files

Parser Project

• Dataflow diagram

• Configuration file tag description - description of all tags used in a configuration file

• How to prepare a config file

• write_config.pl - creates a framework for the config file

• Parser.pl - Parser script

• Parser.pm - Parser subroutines

Parser Project Data Files

• ASCII dataformat spec

• Sample XML Config file

• Sample input data file

• Sample Parser output file

• Sample Loader output file