• 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
    • About XML Document Structure
    • A Sample XML Document
    • Tree Representation of a Sample XML Document
    • Steps for Trying the Sample Queries
  • 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 GUI Reference

Home > Online Product Documentation > Table of Contents > Sample Data for Examples and Testing

Sample Data for Examples and Testing

The best way to learn how to query data is to practice using queries. To prepare you for testing queries, this section provides a review of the basic structure of an XML document. An understanding of this structure is crucial to defining queries that return the data you want. Following the review, this section includes the XML data on which the query examples operate. The last part of this section provides instructions for running queries on sample data.

The topics in this section include

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.

A Sample XML Document

The examples in this section are based on the following XML data. This data is in the bookstore.xml file, which is in the examples directory of your installation directory.

Tree Representation of a Sample XML Document

When you query a document, it can be helpful to think of a tree representation of your data. A tree that represents the bookstore.xml document appears in Figure 269 (and is continued in Figure 270). To use Stylus Studio to view a similar tree for any XML document, open the XML document in Stylus Studio and select the Tree tab.

Steps for Trying the Sample Queries

To try the queries in this section, or any other queries you want to run on the bookstore.xml document, follow these instructions:

Stylus Studio displays the results in the Query Output window.