This chapter proposes some exercises and projects to manipulate and query XML documents in a practical context. The software used in these exercises is eXist, an open-source native XML database that provides an easy-to-use and powerful environment for learning and applying XML languages. We begin with a brief description on how to install eXist and execute some simple operations. eXist provides a graphical interface that is pretty easy to use, so we limit our explanations below to the vital information that can be useful to save some time to the absolute beginner.

PREREQUISITES

In the following, we assume that you plan to install eXist in your Windows or Linux environment. You need a Java Development Kit (JDK) for running the eXist java application (version 1.5 at least). If you do not have a JDK already installed, get it from the Sun site (try searching “download JDK 1.5” with Google to obtain an appropriate URL) and follow the instructions to set up your Java environment.

Be sure that you can execute Java applications. This requires the definition of a JAVA_HOME environment variable, pointing to the JDK directory. The PATH variable must also contain an entry to the directory that contain the Java executable, $JAVA_HOME/bin.

1. Under Windows: Load the configuration panel window; run the System application; choose Advanced and then Environment variables. Create a new variable JAVA_HOME with the appropriate location, and add the $JAVA_HOME/bin path to the PATH variable.

2. […]