XForms and useful implementations

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XForms and useful implementations
Ed Tittel

In response to a recent reader e-mail, I jumped onto the Web to assess the current state of XForms technology, particularly in terms of working implementations. Luckily for me, Micah Dubinko—author of the interesting O'Reilly book XForms Essentials (August 2003, ISBN: 0-596-00369-2)—also just published a story for XML.com entitled "Ten Favorite XForms Engines" that helped to make my job quick, easy, and pleasant.

For those unfamiliar with XForms, it's an XML application that is often described as a beefed-up and more capable replacement for the original set of forms-related elements in HTML (which includes the various elements that can occur within the <form> tag, such as <button>, <fieldset>, <input>, <isindex>, <label>, <legend>, <option>, <optgroup>, <select>, and <textarea>, along with lots of other, non-forms elements). A primary motivation behind XForms was not just to support more flexible data entry options, but also to enable various kinds of local data c

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hecks, data typing, and so forth. Essentially, XForms breaks traditional (X)HTML forms into three parts: an XForms model, instance data, and a user interface, to help meet the long-term XML goal of separating presentation from content, and to reduce requirements for repeated access to a server and to reduce needs for add-on scripting. (XForms 1.0 reached W3C Recommendation status a short while ago, on October 14, making it a full-fledged standard.)

Dubinko's survey turns up some extremely interesting examples of XForms technology at work:

Dubinko's article also mentions other XForms implementations from Oracle and Ripcord Technology but since he doesn't provide (and I can't find) links to demo versions for these items, I don't mention them here other than in passing. For the foregoing list, you can find working demos or examples that show you XForms at work. Enjoy!

About the Author

[IMAGE]Ed Tittel is a VP of Content Development & Delivery at CapStar LLC, an e-learning company based in Princeton, NJ. Ed runs a small team of content developers and project managers in Austin, TX, and writes regularly on XML and related vocabularies and applications. E-mail Ed at etittel@lanw.com.

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