Look at the following XML document, "bookdetails.xml", that represent a few books:

In the above example the XLink namespace is declared at the top of the document (xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"). This means that the documents has access to the XLink attributes and features.

The xlink:type="simple" create a simple "HTML-like" link. You can also specify more complex links , but for now, we will only use simple links.

The xlink:href attribute specify the URL to link to, and the xlink:show attribute specifies where to open the link. xlink:show="new" means that the link (in this case, an image) should open in a new window.

In the example above we have only demonstrated simple link. XLink is getting more interesting when we want to access remote location as resources, instead of standalone pages. The <description> element in the example above set the value of the xlink:show attribute to "new". This means that the link should open in a new window only. We could have sets the value of the xlink:show attribute to "embed". This means that the resource should be processed inline within the page itself. When you consider that this could be another XML document and not just an image, you could, for example, build a hierarchy of XML document.

With XLink, you can also specify WHEN the resources should appear. This is can be done by the xlink:actuate attribute. xlink:actuate="onLoad" specifies that the resource should be loaded and shown when the document loads. However, xlink:actuate="onRequest" means that the resource is not read or shown before the link is clicked. This is very handy for low-bandwidth setting.