The Book of Sax: The Simple API for XML [Paperback]

Michael A. Bodie (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1886411778 | ISBN-13: 978-1886411777 | Publication Date: June 15, 2002 | Edition: 1st

The Book of SAX includes everything XML and Java developers need to write SAX applications. Specific examples show how to use SAX to solve XML parsing problems that are impractical to address with tree-based technologies-including real-time parsing, very large documents, and high-performance applications. The authors guide readers through the development of picoSAX, a functioning SAX 2.0 XML parser.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...an excellent tutorial and reference guide for all Java SAX developers." -- PerfectXML

"...it's clear and reassuring that (the authors) are thoughtful programmers who are concerned with clarity, accuracey and efficiency." -- MANTEX

"Buy this book for the reference materials and you won't be sorry." -- ABOUT.com

"This book is recommended for noves and experience programmers who need a hard copy of the SAX 2.0 refernce." -- XML & WEB SERVICES MAGAZINE

About the Author

W. Scott Means has been a professional software developer since 1988 and was one of the original developers of OS/2 1.1 and Windows NT. He is currently CEO of Enterprise Web Machines. Michael A. Bodie has been a software developer for 15 years. He is currently Chief Architect for Enterprise Web Machines.

Product Details

• Paperback: 312 pages
• Publisher: No Starch Press; 1st edition (June 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1886411778
• ISBN-13: 978-1886411777
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,826,161 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Scott was born and raised in Salem, West Virginia, which uniquely prepared him for a career in information technology. Ok, so it "uniquely prepared" him by forcing him to beg, borrow, and steal computer time until he could convince his parents to buy him a TRS-80 Color Computer in 1984. Being an active software developer since 1982 means that Scott has seen the rise of the personal computer first-hand. Hired by Microsoft at age 16, Scott was one of the original developers of OS/2 and Windows NT.

Suffering from technology ADD, Scott has simultaneously been developing rich Web 2.0 applications based on Flex and RESTful web services while releasing iPhone apps. His pet project right now is an XML-based scripting language for quickly creating server-side mashups. He's also becoming more active in social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Good Intro into SAX, January 27, 2003

By 

C. M. Lowry (Columbia JUG, Columbia, SC USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Book of Sax: The Simple API for XML (Paperback)

This book takes a single aspect of xml technology, SAX, and gives it a rather comprehensive coverage. The first portion of the book is a tutorial on Java programming for SAX. It helps the reader to understand the conceptual differences between processing xml using SAX as opposed to the DOM. A small application is developed in an iterative fashion to illustrate the programming issues with SAX. Some guidelines are given along the way to direct the reader in developing robust code. The examples are based in SAX 2.0. A chapter is devoted converting SAX 1.0 applications to SAX 2.0

Chapters 10 and 11 are devoted to the SAX 2.0 and SAX 1.0 APIs respectively. In these references, a real convenience is that the class names are printed on the page edge to form a thumb index. Each class or interface has a brief description of its use, the Visual Basic Equivalent, the Constructors, and Methods with coding examples and descriptions.

Since xml is increasing in importance to Java programmers, this book can be a very useful tool. However, it would be helpful if the authors gave updated information on the book web site about using the examples with Xerces 2.0 and Java 1.4. Technology moves on.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quite Helpful, December 17, 2002

By 

Michael W. Graham (N Myrtle Beach, SC USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Book of Sax: The Simple API for XML (Paperback)

As a Java developer just getting my feet wet with SAX, I find The Book of SAX to be quite helpful and understandable. While I am not exactly a novice, I found this book to be very readable, instructive, and to comment on some other reviews I saw, original.

It is difficult to find any programming text that does not read like an translated VCR manual - however, in this case, SAX is presented fluidly and intelligently.

Additionally, the sample code was practical and well-written. I was able to use many examples almost verbatim in completing one of my own projects.

I highly recommend. And I just bought another copy for a friend.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A rebuttal from the author., September 25, 2002

By 

Scott Means (Columbia, SC, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Book of Sax: The Simple API for XML (Paperback)

As one of the authors of this book (and of two other books as well), until now I've never once replied to a customer review, no matter how badly I wanted to. But the negative review from "A Reader" in "an undisclosed location" contains such an inflammatory accusation that I felt that I had to reply. Not one sentence of the Book of SAX has been copied or plagarized from any source. We did _not_ include a "VERBATIM REPRINT OF THE SAX API DOCUMENTATION". If the author of this review had bothered to read the documentation, he would have seen that. And he would have also seen that we wrote original sample code to document every method and attribute of the org.xml.sax and org.xml.sax.helpers packages. If you find the tutorial "lackluster", that's fine. That's your opinion. But do not expect to make serious accusations against our integrity and belittle our efforts and get away with it.

BTW, I rated this book with 3 stars. Unfortunately I had to pick something, or I would have abstained.