Customer Reviews

Beginning C# XML: Essential XML Skills for C# Programmers

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is not an easy book to read. The first 3 chapters are very heavy going with little in the way of productive examples. I was looking for a book that gave me the basics of XML with C#. I was not looking for a book that spent the first 3 chapters covering the basics of XML on its own.

Having said that, I think the authors do a fairly good job of covering the material that they are attempting to do. This is definitely an introduction to XML, though, and there are a lot of unanswered detail questions that you will obviously need to research in other books.

There are several mistakes in the quoted code, and the fact that the WROX site is no longer available makes this a tough book to work through. Fortunately my C# is good enough to spot most of the syntactical errors, but I pity someone who is new to C# too.

In a nutshell, this book is okay, but you're going to need a lot more than this to really get to grips with the stuff.

I'm going to look at a couple of the O'Reilly books...

ALOT examples are missing in this book OR don't work, but this book is defineltly NOT good enough to get you started.

The merits of the book is a good intro to new technology when working with .net but what is the good if the code don't work
as in this book

there is missing code in chapter1 adding a recordset to xmlfile
chapter3 code in p118 and 119 don't work
Chapter 8 discusses xslt isn a very poor manner, in addition to all the missing xslt files and the non working application
in the download section.

At this point I cannot continue reviewing this book, there are
too many fundamental flaws in code and I don't know where to begin

As usual I have resorted to wrox support and again there is no comment to no surprise.

As a veteran of xml and xslt for the last 4 yrs, if you want
a book with alot of questions and NO answers this is the book for you.

until the code is this book is revised by the authors or WROX
this book is a death sentence to ALL who want to know about xml
and xslt in the .net world

The validity of the review is only good if the programmer
actually tries to run the code and not just say it that
it works.

Lets see if wiley can get these missing examples up and running for us

I bought this book as an introductory text to teach myself XML with C#. The book gives me that, but it could have been done far better. I am left with the overall impression that this was either a first time effort for the authors, or that the book was rushed to make a deadline and not enough editorial review and proof-reading took place (I suspect both).

Simple things like the illogical order in which topics are presented throughout each chapter, misleading diagrams, unclear or just plain bad use of grammar, inadequate use of examples in the early chapters, some VB code snippets (it's supposed to be a C# book) are all simple mistakes that could have been eliminated at editorial stage, and which, had this been done, would have made for a far better reader experience.

This book does it's job, but I am sure there are better texts out there.

Marry christmas for all of you, If you C# programmer and you don't know anything about XML then this is your first and almost what all you need about XML, The book is great as all wrox's C# books,Buy it if you want to know XML. And the best part here that the Wrox's support replay you when you have a problem with the book and for me that's the best.
When i need to ask about anything they replay me in 2 or 3 days only :-), THANKS WROX.

This is a code snippet from the book on page 25 (first code sample in the book):
DataTable objTable = new DataTable();
DataRow objNewRow;
objDataSet.WriteXML( "C:\\AddXML\\Contacts2.xml" );
DataSet objDataSet2 = new DataSet();
objDataSet2.ReadXML( "C:\\AddXML\\Contacts2.xml" );
dataGrid1.DataSource = objDataSet2.Tables[0].DefaultView;

Now, where exactly is the objNewRow used? Why declare it if you're not going to instantiate it or reference something with it?

And that London guy found no flaws in the code? This is the first code example in the book, and already I can't figure out what they're trying to do. Also, this preceded that last snippet:
string XmlFilename;
XmlFilename = "C:\\AddXML\\contacts.xml";

Okay... assuming that we're using Hungarian notation, which is what the author did in a rather odd way in the earlier example, why not just do this:
string _strXmlFilename = @"C:\AddXML\contacts.xml";

I used an underscore to denote that the variable is private. No matter.

People code some strange stuff, in some strange ways. But Wrox just gets me. It seems like they were producing just total crap in the past couple of years. I bought this book because it was only 10 bucks at Borders, and I guess it's worth the 10 bucks in that it gives me sheer delight to know that these guys made so much more money than I ever will, and I still code better than them.

-Ryan Cammer
ryancammer@yahoo.com

I really enjoyed this book and didn't find ANY problems with the code as the reviewer below stated - maybe he was doing something wrong.

Wrox support wasn't very good but i didn't need it much.

Some examples are complex, but then some of the topics are pretty complex and it does a good job of explaining them - will help if you have a larger pure XML reference book too!!