Customer Reviews

Developing XML Solutions (DV-MPS General)

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

 

 

I have worked with HTML for many years, but I have never worked with XML. This book starts with a clear presentation of XML, covering all of the basics. XHTML is also discussed in detail. The book gives a good discussion of DTDs. The schema coverage was really great; it is based on the latest W3C standard. Microsoft's XML parser uses an older version of schemas, which is also explained in the book. The book covers a wide range of XML related topics, including XSL, namespaces, BizTalk, SOAP, etc. The best part of this book is a really wide range of real world examples. For example, there are examples for every Microsoft DOM object, for XSL, Microsoft DSO, SOAP, etc. The examples are geared toward Microsoft's products, but this book can be used by anyone who wants to learn about XML, even if your work is not focused on Microsoft products.

Unlike the other recent release from MSPress (XML and SOAP Programming for BizTalk Servers), this one actually has a lot of useful content. Unfortunately, so little of it is far enough advanced to give me a real reason to recommend it.

Don't get me wrong, the content will be very useful overall for anyone who has not developed full-blown applications using XML (judging from the hands up at the latest DevDays event, less than 1% of the Microsoft developers present have given XML more than a cursory glance).

For those who have developed XML solutions before, you will find the first few chapters a quick run through (at least until you get to schemas); there will be very little useful information unless you need a bit of trivia on XHTML.

Beyond those chapters, you will find some substance in the chapters on SOAP, BizTalk and schemas (as there is so little written material outside of Microsoft and the W3C on this one).

Until there are better books on the market, this one should give you a nice start on developing solutions. On the plus side, you do not have to learn Omnimark (see review on XML and SOAP Programming for BizTalk Servers).

Microsoft Press publish some excellent, this is an exception.

I do not believe that the author had tried to develop a serious XML solution before he wrote this book. The editors also did a poor job---allowing Jake to waffle and create multipage examples to make simple points.

It is too heavily biased toward microsoft for a cross platform technology.

The coverage is so superficial I found it hard to glean any useful info from it. I found myself continually turning to the specs for clarification!

I was looking for information about best practice and the trade-offs of modelling model data in different ways (eg designing for extensibility). They should have assumed that if you are developing a solution you have some clue about the technology, instead of providing a long winded rambling review (nearly 200 pages).

Thanks to bookpool.com I did not waste to much cash.

A better title would be: Introduction to Microsoft XML Devlopment Tools.

Better books are Professional XML and the XML Bible

Jake, please do a better job next time!

Hmmm, how can I sum this up? Oh, how about...Crapity, crap, crap, crap.

What a waste of time. I got the book last year, thumbed through it and thought it was a solid book on the surface. Now that I'm actually using XML on the job, I can see this book is useless. I have the electronic CD version installed yet I have a bunch of MSDN printouts that are my main source of USEFUL information. BizTalk - who cares? SOAP - MSDN again. This book had ONE entry for getElementsByTagName from the MSXML DOM functions. And that one entry was just as part of a long blind list of all the DOM methods. Want a solid generic XML book? - maybe Wrox or Oriley. Want MS specific MSXML real world information? - use MSDN. I agree with another reader - I don't believe this author wrote a single real app before he started to write this book. I think with more practice the author could make a better product, but the whole book team failed on this one. I think the editors came from the BizTalk marketing group.

If you are a developer and experienced in HTML and some programming languages and need to get ahead in XML quickly, this book is a waste of space, time and money.

I needed to develop a business-to-business integration module in C++ and Visual Basic, and needed to know the XML semantics as quickly as possible.

In addition to being the wrong book for my task, I also want to point out that the book itself is very poorly written. The way it proceeds seems quite random, and the details are never covered properly, as if the author has a lot of thoughts when writing, but fails to get them down on paper.

I'd go for another XML book.

This book has no direction at all. The author inserts bits and pieces of info that he has collected about varying topics. Buy this book if you want to learn nothing about alot of XML topics from a MS perspective.

I was wading my way through the book skimming the extremely long and irrelavent examples hoping the Windows DNA chapters at the end would make it all worth the pain. Nope - I don't think this guy has ever written an application that used Windows DNA architecture in his life.

The best thing about this book is that I didn't have to pay for it. Don't buy it, I am sure Wrox or someone else has a much better XML book.

Not only did this book fail to provide me with any succinct information with regard to the problems I'm attempting to solve, it was also a very dry and boring read. The author did not present concepts in the order in which one would regularly learn them. Given this, it is highly unlikely that the author has real world development experience.

In summary, painful book; purchase at risk to your own mental health. Oh yes, THANKS JAKE STURM.

Well written with good examples. Through enough but still missing here or there a few examples. For instance I would have loved to see some about schemas.

It is a good book to learn about XML unless if you plan to use this book as a reference as well. Then you probably want to use a different book.

If you need a good understanding of the DOM again consider reading msdn that should be enough. However if you into developing distributed apps in with Microsoft tools I would recommend spending the money.

The concepts are presented in a chaotic manner, without small and clear samples. The book could have some value only for html programmers that just want to broaden their knowledge a little bit. ...

I don't recommend this book. The concepts are not presented in in a concise, focused manner and in many cases the text lacks appropriate detail. If you can see past these shortcomings, this is the book for you.