- Arnaud Le Hors, W3C
- Robert S. Sutor, IBM Research (for DOM Level 1)
Several of the following term definitions have been borrowed or
modified from similar definitions in other W3C or standards documents.
See the links within the definitions for more information.
- 16-bit unit
- The base unit of a
DOMString. This indicates that
indexing on a
DOMString occurs in units of 16 bits.
This must not be misunderstood to mean that a
can store arbitrary 16-bit units. A
DOMString is a
character string encoded in UTF-16; this means that the restrictions
of UTF-16 as well as the other relevant restrictions on character strings
must be maintained. A single character, for example in the form of a
numeric character reference, may correspond to one or two 16-bit units.
- An ancestor node of any node A is any node
above A in a tree model, where "above" means "toward the root."
- An API is an Application Programming
Interface, a set of functions or methods used to access some
- anonymous type name
An anonymous type name is an
implementation-defined, globally unique qualified name
provided by the processor for every anonymous type declared in
- A child is an immediate descendant node of
- client application
- A [client] application is any software that uses the
Document Object Model programming interfaces provided by the
hosting implementation to accomplish useful work. Some
examples of client applications are scripts within an HTML
or XML document.
- COM is Microsoft's Component Object Model [COM], a technology for building applications from binary
- A convenience method is an operation on an
object that could be accomplished by a program consisting of
more basic operations on the object. Convenience methods are
usually provided to make the API easier and simpler to use or to
allow specific programs to create more optimized implementations
for common operations. A similar definition holds for a
- data model
- A data model is a collection of descriptions of data
structures and their contained fields, together with the operations
or functions that manipulate them.
- A descendant node of any node A is any node
below A in a tree model, where "below" means "away from the
- document element
There is only one document element in a
element node is a child of the
Document node. See
Documents in XML [XML 1.0].
- document order
- There is an ordering, document order, defined on all
the nodes in the document corresponding to the order in which the first
character of the XML representation of each node occurs in the XML
representation of the document after expansion of general entities. Thus,
the document element node
will be the first node. Element nodes occur before their children. Thus,
document order orders element nodes in order of the occurrence of their
start-tag in the XML (after expansion of entities). The attribute nodes
of an element occur after the element and before its children. The
relative order of attribute nodes is implementation-dependent.
- The programming language defined by the ECMA-262 standard
[ECMAScript]. As stated in the standard, the
"property" is used in the same sense as the IDL term
- Each document contains one or more elements, the
boundaries of which are either delimited by start-tags and
end-tags, or, for empty elements by an empty-element tag.
Each element has a type, identified by name, and may have a
set of attributes. Each attribute has a name and a value.
Structures in XML [XML 1.0].
- information item
- An information item is an abstract representation of some
component of an XML document. See the [XML Information set]
- logically-adjacent text nodes
Logically-adjacent text nodes are
CDATASection nodes that may be visited sequentially in
document order without
entering, exiting, or passing over
- hosting implementation
- A [hosting] implementation is a software module that
provides an implementation of the DOM interfaces so that a
client application can use them. Some examples of hosting
implementations are browsers, editors and document
- The HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is a
simple markup language used to create hypertext documents
that are portable from one platform to another. HTML
documents are SGML documents with generic semantics that are
appropriate for representing information from a wide range
of applications. [HTML 4.01]
- In object-oriented programming, the ability to create new
classes (or interfaces) that contain all the methods and properties
of another class (or interface), plus additional methods and
properties. If class (or interface) D inherits from class (or
interface) B, then D is said to be derived from B. B is
said to be a base class (or interface) for D. Some
programming languages allow for multiple inheritance, that is,
inheritance from more than one class or interface.
- An interface is a declaration of a set of
methods with no information given about their implementation.
In object systems that support interfaces and inheritance,
interfaces can usually inherit from one another.
- language binding
- A programming language binding for an IDL
specification is an implementation of the interfaces in the
specification for the given language. For example, a Java
language binding for the Document Object Model IDL
specification would implement the concrete Java classes that
provide the functionality exposed by the
- local name
- A local name is the local part of a qualified
This is called the local
part in Namespaces in XML [XML Namespaces].
- A method is an operation or function that is
associated with an object and is allowed to manipulate the
- A model is the actual data representation
for the information at hand. Examples are the structural
model and the style model representing the parse structure
and the style information associated with a document. The
model might be a tree, or a directed graph, or something
- namespace prefix
- A namespace prefix is a string that associates
an element or attribute name with a namespace URI in
XML. See namespace
prefix in Namespaces in XML [XML Namespaces].
- namespace URI
A namespace URI is a URI that identifies an XML
namespace. This is called the namespace name in
Namespaces in XML [XML Namespaces]. See also sections 1.3.2 "
URIs" and 1.3.3 "
Namespaces" regarding URIs and namespace URIs
handling and comparison in the DOM APIs.
- namespace well-formed
A node is a namespace well-formed XML node if it
is a well-formed node,
and follow the productions and namespace constraints. If
[XML 1.0] is used, the constraints are defined in
[XML Namespaces]. If [XML 1.1] is used,
the constraints are defined in [XML Namespaces 1.1].
- object model
- An object model
is a collection of
descriptions of classes or interfaces,
together with their member data, member functions,
and class-static operations.
- A parent is an immediate ancestor node of a
- partially valid
- A node in a DOM tree is partially valid if it is
well formed (this part is for
comments and processing instructions) and its immediate children are
those expected by the content model. The node may be missing trailing
required children yet still be considered partially
- qualified name
- A qualified name is the name of an element or
attribute defined as the concatenation of a local name
(as defined in this specification), optionally preceded by a
namespace prefix and colon character. See
Qualified Names in
Namespaces in XML [XML Namespaces].
- read only node
- A read only node is a node that is immutable. This
means its list of children, its content, and its attributes, when it
is an element, cannot be changed in any way. However, a read only node
can possibly be moved, when it is not itself contained in a read only
- root node
- The root node is a node that is not a child of any
other node. All other nodes are children or other descendants of the
A schema defines a set of structural and value
constraints applicable to XML documents. Schemas can be
expressed in schema languages, such as DTD, XML Schema, etc.
- Two nodes are siblings if they have the
same parent node.
- string comparison
- When string matching is required, it is to occur as
though the comparison was between 2 sequences of code points
- An information item such as an
XML Name which has been
- The description given to various information items (for example,
attribute values of various types, but not including the StringType
CDATA) after having been processed by the XML processor. The process
includes stripping leading and trailing white space, and replacing
multiple space characters by one. See the definition of
A node is a well-formed XML node if its
serialized form, without doing any transformation during its
serialization, matches its respective production in [XML 1.0] or [XML 1.1] (depending on the XML
version in use) with all well-formedness constraints related
to that production, and if the entities which are referenced
within the node are also well-formed. If namespaces for XML
are in use, the node must also be namespace
- Extensible Markup Language (XML) is an
extremely simple dialect of SGML which is completely
described in this document. The goal is to enable generic
SGML to be served, received, and processed on the Web in the
way that is now possible with HTML. XML has been designed
for ease of implementation and for interoperability with
both SGML and HTML. [XML 1.0]