XML Linking Language 的探討與應用

Abstract

The very nature of the success of the Web lies in its capability for linking resources. However, the unidirectional, simple linking structures inherited from HTML today are not sophisticated enough for the growing needs of the XML world. The official W3C solution for linking in XML is called XLink. Several advanced linking capabilities are proposed in XLink, such as third-party links, multidirectional links, and linkbase. By taking advantage of the advanced linking mechanism provided by XLink, the deficiencies of HTML caused by its crude linking mechanism, such as the write permission problem and multiple link set problem, can be ameliorated. Though the linking capability of XLink is more powerful than that of HTML, XML linking applications are a rarity of rarities due to the lack of general tools designed specifically for XLink. In this thesis, we are putting forward a practical Browser cOmpatible XLink (BOX) application development framework which represents links via XLink and translates links into the hyperlinks of HTML. BOX eases the development of XLink applications. Fundamental XLink applications of both multiple link sets and multidirectional links are presented as well. Current web browsers are in their early stage in supporting XLink, i.e. web browsers at most support XLink's simple links. Consequently, the XLink applications followed the BOX framework can only contain simple links or extended links with specific attribute combinations(xlink:actuate=onLoad xlink:show=embed or xlink:actuate=onRequest xlink:show=replace) and translate them into HTML's links. To surmount the limit of browsers, we further propose a XLink Application Development (XLAD) framework which represents links via XLink and translates those links into designated format of various backend processors, such as translating XLink links into VNUML language for virtual network management. To verify the feasibility of our framework, several examples are demonstrated as well. As the computing environment moves toward integrating a collection of computing resource, more and more network services are provided by clusters. Linux Virtual Server (LVS), originally consists of real hosts, is currently the most popular Linux cluster management software. To enhance security of LVS and protect hosts from being invaded, virtual machines can be deployed between the servers and their hosts. By following the proposed XLAD framework, we successfully develop a flexible Linux Cluster Network Management System to effectively manage an LVS cluster. In this thesis, we present a vision of XLink on the World Wide Web, and we also successfully apply XLink to alleviate the management complexity of cluster environment. We realize the vision with application scenarios, analyze the concepts behind it, and discuss how the picture can be completed. Generally, we believe that linkbase files will become very popular tool for navigating the Web, and will be an important part of the Web infrastructure in the future.