Inside Technique : Building a Content Server with XML and ASP
By Scott Isaacs

In this article, we introduce you to a simple XML-based Content Server. Our Content Server is completely browser based supporting the adding, editing, and deleting of articles all from within your browser. You will see how to query and manipulate XML documents using the XML document object model to create a live and interactive system. We are building on the concepts introduced in our first two XML articles:

1. author your documents using XML and transforming them into HTML using XSL,
2. handle multiple browsers by creating different XSL transformations,
3. and process the XML and XSL on the server using ASP to support all browsers.

We recommend you read our first two articles before continuing. Start with our Building Documents with XML, XSL, and CSS to see how these web-standards complement each other, then continue with our Building Smart Pages with ASP, XML, and XSL to see how to present your content different ways to different browsers. Building on these concepts, we are able to create a document presentation system that is completely self-contained. Within your browser you can:

1. Add new stories
2. Edit existing stories
3. Delete stories
4. Change the presentation of the stories
5. Change the presentation of the index

Our solution is very simple and can serve as the foundation for a much more powerful system. We are going to walk you through the concepts and scripts used to build the system. Unfortunately, due to the nature of the content server, we are unable to provide a live demonstration. Instead, we made a downloadable demonstration available at the end of this article. The demonstration requires IIS with the Microsoft XML parser installed.

Next, we continue with an introduction to our Content Server.

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