Customer Reviews

Beginning XML Programming (Programmer to Programmer)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Having read quite a few XML books from Wrox (5-6), I think that this book will be able to touch the biggest audience. It contains a very good approach to learn about XML well-formed documents, CSS for XML, XSL(T), DTD, and it also have some nice Case-Studies that goes along. Hey, you even have an introduction to ASP and another one for HTML; for those of you new to the Internet.

Most of the XML books (straight one, not XML for VB for example) contains the same TOC but this one has the best approach so far.

If you are new to XML, take this one.

If you know a bit of XML (and PROGRAMMED it), you can take the Professional XML which will go a little bit more in depth (not that much)

If you know what you are doing with XML and wants to learn more about XSLT, get the XSLT Programmer's Reference(great book) from Wrox.

If you want a very good Case-Study, take the Professional XML Design and Implementation (also good).

Then you are off with ASP XML, VB XML, or Java XML.

Happy XML hunting.

One thing to remember about this book before you buy: It is a "Beginning XML Book," NOT a "Beginner" book. You are going to need some knowledge of data management, file management, and web page development to understand the groundwork for XML development.

However, if you do have basic ASP, SQL, and HTML skills like I do, then this book is a great start if you want to add XML to your skillset.

As with all Wrox books published over the last two years, this book is well-structured, well-written, and well-indexed. It will teach you more than you need to know for XML basics, and you can use the book as a reference down the road.

I waited for this book to come out all summer, and it was well worth the price and time I put into it. Good job, Wrox!

No doubt this is a must for beginners in XML, and after a long time the GODs at Wrox decided to grace us poor programmers who are not gurus with a Beginning book. The way they had been churning out Professional series out of their factories I had already prepared my obituary for the Beginning series.

About the book. One of the best on the block for XML. Language is simple, easy to understand, and handles complex topics like XSLT very deftly.

Downside. Very very wordy. This is the first time I see in a Beginning series the author spending so much ink and pages on simplest of topics. Strangely enough some complex topic are written off in half a page. Examples in XSLT dont work. Inspite of downloading the XT program which the author recommends, more than half of the examples of the book don't work, leaving you depressed and confused, you then tend to re-read the pages, trying to find if you missed anything... XML applications arent covered in a greater detail and neither are practical examples for XML use shown.

In my opinion even with its faults this book is still, one of the better ones on the block, try skimming thro the earlier pages a bit faster if you don't want to be put to sleep. Don't waste too much time if the books XSLT examples don't work, just buy this books to get your basics covered and made strong.

Lastly, as I have mentioned again and again, Wrox beginning series are no longer what they used to be, and if anyone at wrox is reading this, I pleade them to get back on their earlier motto of providing quality books like the beginning asp/asp databases/javascript series, or end up losing their fans like me.

I've seen 4 or 5 XML books and own two including this one. The other one I have is XML: A Primer 2nd Ed by Simon St. Laurent...I've seen other books as thick as or thicker than 'Beginning XML' and from a quick glance, I've found to contain little more than fluff.

'Beginning XML' does a good job of covering all the important topics related to XML like Namespaces, DTDs, Schemas, XPath, DOM, SAX, XSLT, CSS etc... much so that the title is not really accurate in this sense. The other introductory XML books out there do not even touch on these topics to any practical degree.

I would also not recommend a Microsoft Press XML book as, typical with anything from Microsoft, I suspect it will teach you XML in a style that forces you to be dependent on Microsoft tools. However, as MS is one of the most important purveyors of quality XML tools it would also be a mistake to ignore their offerings. 'Beginning XML' does a very good job of acquainting you with both the MS tools as well as some of the more important third party ones.

The author's style is very friendly and easy to read and succeeds in making very complex and often boring topics like XSLT almost tolerable and sometimes even entertaining. Even more importantly, he touches on all the important issues in depth so that after finishing this book you can consider yourself at least an intermediate level expert in the myriad XML-related technologies out there.

The only reason I'm not giving five stars is because there just might be something better out there. But then, I wouldn't hang around waiting for one, 'coz Beginning XML, unlike the other books out there, is going to educate you on the topic in a sufficiently comprehensive and useful way. XML and its related technologies is a huge and difficult field, and any book that looks like it makes for light reading will, in my opinion, fail to teach the subject properly.

Hi,

I have been looking at number of XML books and I recently found the "Beginning XML" from Wrox which was really by far the best I have seen.

The book is very clearly explained. One of the thing that I particularly like about it is that the table of content is well-designed. While this may sounds trivial, it is not the case for many other Intro XML books I have seen, who typically tend spend too much time on the genesis of XML and little if any to topics of interest to programmers (The XML DOM or SAX for example). For this reason, I think that this book is the right book to get started. Perhaps complemented sometimes along the line by a another book dealing more in-depth with the specificities of the programming environment you are dealing with (such as the Java xml, VB xml or asp xml books by the same publisher).

The one thing that I was lukewarm about were some of the case studies: while designing a threaded discussion board with XML is ingenious, it is also one of the most difficult and inefficient ways that I could think of doing it.

The book cover indicates that this books is aimed at more or less every user. In my opinion, the book is aimed at experience web developers (knowing at least HTML) who understand basic programming concepts and have some programming experience (with anything). It does not on the other hand require the user to be fluent at all in Java, VB, ASP or Javascript for instance (although readers who have such knowledge will appreaciate some of the examples).

This books is satisfactory..The first 10 chapters are good, the Schema Chapter 11 forgot how to tell the XML document which Schema do you want to use (This is a confusing figure it out chapter). The XML Databases chapter is poor, only showing examples with SQL Server (What about standard SQL databases, not the MS one).

The book is almost 900 pages but only 500 are material, the final 400 are case studies and appendixes.

However this is not a bad book, but is not the best way to start learning XML.

XML is not the replacement of HTML. If you want to write XML to convert it to HTML with XSL then you will take twice the time to create them, not an intelligent move. The true power comes when you want to interchage data between applications, not only web (you can use it with desktop applications with C++, Delphi, Java, VB, ASP or any other programming way) or to talk with a web server sending an XML request and receiving an XML response that you can parse with DOM or SAX.

Recommended but you will need other books to go on.

After a disappointing purchase of one XML book (XML By Example), I was on a search to find one that I considered relevant and informative. Let me tell you that this is the book. Explanations are clear and concise and are brought to real-world examples. The book is organized very well with all of the major topics being discussed (DOM, XSLT, etc.). David does an outstanding job at painting a picture of the wide array of uses that XML provides to web and application developers.

This is an excellent book for newbies to XML. I had to learn XML for a project FAST! Using this book I got up to speed with other developers on the team in no time. I used a coupon from UnderTag.com, so it was almost free for me too.

I have read many XML books in the last six books. Many are outdate by June of 2000. This book and the Professional ASP XML book are definitely the most update xml books I have read so far. This book is definitely very good for beginners unlike XML IE5 Reference by Wrox every chapters in this book is worth the money. In XML IE5 Reference, only chapter 5-8 are good chapters and chapter 1-4 are very confusing chapters. Most important, the examples on XSL in this book works on Microsoft Technologies such as IE5 and IIS4 & IIS5 unlike other XML books on XSL they don't work with IE5. Lastly, the only critical thing I have on all wrox books on the topic of XML is that the examples give the XML and XSL source but not the html output as a result of the combination of XML and XSL through either ASP or just XML referencing the XSL.

..however if you are interested in combining VB and SQL Server with XML then get the ASP XML Wrox book which gives better examples of the integration of XML with the current technologies.