• Chapter 1: Getting Started with Stylus Studio
• Chapter 2: Editing and Querying XML
• Chapter 3: Converting Non-XML Files to XML
• Chapter 4: Working with XSLT
• Chapter 5: Creating XSLT Using the XSLT Mapper
• Chapter 6: Debugging Stylesheets
• Chapter 7: Defining XML Schemas
• Chapter 8: Defining Document Type Definitions
• Chapter 9: Writing XPath Expressions
  • About the XPath Processor
  • Sample Data for Examples and Testing
  • Getting Started with Queries
  • Specifying the Nodes to Evaluate
  • Handling Strings and Text
  • Specifying Boolean Expressions and Functions
  • Specifying Number Operations and Functions
  • Comparing Values
  • Finding a Particular Node
  • Obtaining a Union
  • Obtaining Information About a Node or a Node Set
  • Using XPath Expressions in Stylesheets
  • Accessing Other Documents During Query Execution
  • XPath Quick Reference
• Chapter 10: Working with XQuery in Stylus Studio
• Chapter 11: Composing Web Service Calls
• Chapter 12: Accessing Relational Data as XML
• Chapter 13: Extending Stylus Studio
• Chapter 14: Stylus Studio Reference

Home > Online Product Documentation > Table of Contents > About XML Document Structure

About XML Document Structure

The XPath processor operates on a tree representation of XML data that looks like the following figure:

The root node has no actual text associated with it. You can think of the file name as the root node. A document can include zero or more comments and zero or more processing instructions.

A document element is required, and there can be only one. The document element contains all elements in the document. For example:

In the preceding figure, bookstore.xml is the name of a file that contains XML data. There is a comment near the beginning of the document that starts with "This file represents a ..." The document element is bookstore. The immediate children of bookstore include an attribute, a namespace declaration (not supported by Stylus Studio), three book elements (one is in the my namespace), and a magazine element. The book and magazine elements contain elements and attributes, which are shown in the figure that appears in Tree Representation of a Sample XML Document.