The CARpub example for XML in ElePub

CARpub is the automotive database publishing software developed by the same team as ElePub but in a different technology. ElePub and CARpub communicate with one another relying fully on XML.

CARpub is basically a very complex database querying application, which operates on a huge automotive industry standard database, which links several hundred thousand automotive spare parts from more than 130 manufacturers to generic places of usage (application) and to several ten thousand car types, to which they can be applied.

CARpub generates complex XML structures containing the content and an identification of the layout, which ElePub should use to visualize this data.

ElePub reads complex XML structures to format them to pages
ElePub reads in the XML structures generated by CARpub, formats each entity using one of the mother layouts and places the resulting container frames on pages, i.e. creates formatted pages from the XML data merged with the repository layout structures. Either the same or a differently formatted result can also be used to generate HTML for use on the Internet.

ElePub adds concrete format to the XML data generated by CARpub and places the result on pages for further output and/or processing.

Here you see an entire catalog page consisting of many small container frames, one of which is enlarged on the top right. The contents come from an XML structure, which is partially shown in the right part of the drawing.