METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR PROCESSING MARKUP LANGUAGE DOCUMENTS

A method for facilitating the processing of markup language documents, e.g., XML documents, uses a code generator that creates programs configured to read dynamic XML documents at run time, avoiding many of the complexities arising from the use of conventional “XML Parse” statements. In one embodiment, this process involves (1) creating a template document using the markup language, wherein the template document includes a set of tags associated with the markup language documents; (2) parsing the template document to determine a data structure corresponding to the tags in the template document; and (3) generating an application program in the programming language (e.g., COBOL), wherein the application program includes a definition of the data structure, and is configured to read, during run-time, the markup language document and generate a corresponding set of data elements corresponding to the data structure.