XML pipeline

An XML pipeline is a formalized, logical expression of the method by which an XML (Extensible Markup Language) document is handled. An XML pipeline is rendered as a series of operations over an XML infoset, which is a collection of information items about the document's characters, attributes and namespaces, collectively called elements.

XML documents enter a pipeline and are processed by the operations. The documents are then output for display, storage or further processing. An XML pipeline can specify operations such as:

• Making a verbatim copy of a file
• Renaming a file
• Altering specific elements in a file.
• Resequencing the order in which elements in a file appear.
• Inserting new elements in a file.
• Deleting specific elements from a file.
• Surrounding (or wrapping) specific elements with additional elements.
• Splitting a file into multiple files.
• Merging (or aggregating) two or more files into a single file.