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Effective XML: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your XML

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... Harold has put together an advanced overview of ALL
XML.

A significant part of the value of this book is in Harold's assessment of the various proposed extensions to XML, like the XML Schema language, or the abovementioned XLink and XQuery. XML is still growing rapidly, and there is a real need for various extensions. But there is also a consequent need for
independent comparative assessments of those extensions. For example, if you have a book devoted to XML Schema, it might not even tell you that there are other competing schema languages.

En passant, he gives an unusually clear explanation of the difference between a character set and a character encoding. The former is a mapping of some characters to numbers. The latter is an instantiation of those numbers as an actual numerical storage. Often in other books, you can see the two phrases used interchangeably and imprecisely. By contrast,
throughout this book Harold emphasises a precision of terminology. A priori, if you are into XML, then you need to be precise.

I have one minor quibble. He says that multiple XML documents "can be stored in a single file, though this is unusual in practice." He might have added that one of these instances is instructive. If you have a continuously running program that periodically writes to a log file in XML, then during the writing, for efficiency, you would append XML documents to the file. So notice that at all times, the entire file is not an XML document, because there are no enclosing tags.

Effective XML is a collection of about 50 tips for working with XML. Although XML seems is simple and easy to use, it's also easy to get wrong. I've often scratched your head and wondered why things like XML Schema, for example, just doesn't feel right. But it wasn't until I read Effective XML that I understood what was really awkward with it.

Because the book is so diverse (an amazing feat considering the small page count), it is hard to single out any specific part as being a reason to read the book. The book doesn't just talk about schemas, the infoset, etc..., it digs down and really explains what is good and bad about the technologies and what the best ways to apply them are. All I can say is that I use XML day in and day out and have learned everything I know by trial an error. I've made many mistakes along the way. I've tried my best to learn from them, but Effective XML was the book that made everything click for me. The best part is that the book went well beyond just helping me see my errors. I've already applied some of the ideas to new work I've done recently and have been able to head off some of the problems I would have encountered.


Effective XML is by far the best XML book I've ever read, and quite possibly the best tech book I've read all year. I might even have to add it to my favorite tech books list. If you work with XML to any significant degree, I can't recommend this book highly enough.

This is not a book explaining XML. This is not a book that goes into any depth on XML APIs. It is not a book explaining any one XML format like XSLT, RSS, or XSD.

Instead it is a book on how to work with XML. How to design an XML application to take full advantage of the facilties of XML: schemas, processing instructions, XSL transforms, namespaces. It is all structured to slowly introduce you into the complexities, and deserves to sit up on the bookshelf with Effective C++, Java and Enterprise Java.

If you already know the basics of XML, it is actually quite a good way to learn about some of the more esoteric concepts -from the pragmatic perspective. Too many XML books rant about how wonderful some feature like XML schema's extension stuff is, why XML is the most universal format ever, SOAP and WS-* the best protocol for distributed systems ever, and XQuery everything you need for an XML database.

This book bursts the bubble of hype with rational analysis of what makes sense, and what doesn't. Item 28: Use only what you need, is my favourite: A review of the main XML specs and analysis of what really matters, which comes down to #35, navigate with XPath.

If you are designing an XML schema/system/application, you need this book. If you have to put up with architects telling you about WS-MetadataExchange, WS-Transfer and RDF, you need a copy to roll up and hit them over the head. And, if like me, you are involved in standards bodies that produce XML related things, you need to buy a copy for all the other participants, so that what you produce will actually work.

Remember that XML is a language designed for use by people and machines. The machines have the upper hand. But with this book, and some thinking, you can design XML applications that people can use.

There are plenty of generic XML books out there, plus a bunch of titles that focus on specific XML applications or XML related topics (SOAP, XSLT, XML Schema etc); what Mr Harold delivered this time is something different, that really stands out from everything else available at the time of this writing. This book is about best practices, patterns and anti-patterns, and about how to use XML correctly and efficiently. As with other titles from the same author, this book is a pleasure to read, clean, informative and well structured. In my opinion a must have for the serious XML practitioner. Be advised this is not a book for beginners, the author takes for granted you already mastered the fundamentals of XML and many related technologies like DTD, Schema or Namespace. In order to really get the best out of it you better have some experience using XML under your belt.

Who nowadays does not know what is XML? There has been so much hype around it,
that some people think that XML is a programming language, a
database, or both at the same time :).

On the other hand, if you are a developer, chances are that you feel that
there is not much to it. After all, it may take just a few hours to get the
hang of creating and parsing an XML document. Maybe this is why most of
the voluminous books discuss numerous XML-related technologies, but not the XML usage itself.

Elliotte Rusty Harold in "Effective XML: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your
XML" takes a different approach: know your elements and tags :) -- they are
not the same thing! -- and weigh your choices in a context, because any
technology applied for the wrong reasons may fail to deliver on its
promises.

Following Scott Myers' groundbreaking "Effective C++", the author invites us
to re-evaluate seemingly trivial issues to discover that life is not as
simple as it seems in the world of XML. In each of the 50 items (chapters)
he gets into the inner workings of the language, its usage and related
standards, thus giving us specific advices on how to use XML correctly and
efficiently.

The 300-page book is divided into four parts: Syntax, Structure, Semantics,
and Implementation. Yet in the Introduction the author sets the tone by
discussing such fundamental issues as "Element versus Tag", "Children versus
Child Elements versus Content", "Text versus Character Data versus Markup",
etc. On these first pages the author started earning my trust and admiration
for his knowledge and ability to get right to the point in a clear and
simple language.

The first part, Syntax, contains items covering issues related to the
microstructure of the language and the best practices in writing legible,
maintainable, and extensible XML documents. In it, over 19 pages are
dedicated to the implications of the XML declaration <?xml version=...> !
Doesn't it seem a lot for one XML statement that most people cut-and-paste
at the top of their XML documents without giving it much thought? Actually
not, if you follow the author's reasoning and examples.

The second part, Structure, discusses issues that arise when creating data
representation in XML, i.e. mapping real-world information into trees,
elements, and attributes of an XML document; it also talks about tools and
techniques for designing and documenting namespaces and schemas.

The third part, Semantics, explains the best ways to convert structural
information represented in XML documents into the data with its semantics.
It teaches us how to choose the appropriate API and tools for different
types of processing to achieve the best effect. This chapter has a lot of
good advise to make the solutions simple, effective, and robust.

The final part, Implementation, advices on the systems' design and
integration issues related to the utilization of XML; the issues like data
integrity, verification, compression, authentication, caching, etc.

This book will be useful to a professional with any level of experience. It
may be used as a tutorial and read from the cover to cover, or one can enjoy
reading selected items, depending on the experience and taste. The book's
very detailed index makes it an excellent reference on the subject as well.

In the Prefix to the book the author writes, "Learning the fundamentals of XML might
take a programmer a week. Learning how to use XML effectively might
take a lifetime." I am not sure about the "lifetime" -- it is awfully
long time for using one technology -- but for the most confident of us this
still may not be enough :) . Your term may vary, but I suspect that you
could shave off it at least a few months by browsing through it once in a
while. Most importantly, this will make you a better professional and make
you proud of the results of your work. Wouldn't this worth your while?

Elliotte Rusty Harold states in the introduction of Effective XML that the book is neither an introductory book nor an XML tutorial. Rather, it is a distillation of the author's experience using and teaching XML and how to use it effectively. The book does a great job of explaining how to use XML and its related technologies.

The book is divided into four major sections: Syntax, Structure, Semantics, and Implementation. Each of the fifty Items packs a lot of information into a few pages. The Items span topics such as why you should Include an XML Declaration (Item 1), Make Structure Explicit through Markup (Item 11), Program to Standard APIs (Item 31), and Write in Unicode (Item 38). Even the Introduction is valuable because it sets the definitions for XML-related terms used in the rest of the book that the author has found to be used interchangeably or inconsistently.

Item 24, Choose the Right Schema Language for the Job, provides a typical example of the great information contained in Effective XML. This Item discusses the strengths and weaknesses of four schema languages: W3C XML Schema Language, DTDs, RELAX NG, and Schematron. The use of programming languages to handle situations that the schema languages can't handle is also discussed. The Item ends with a set of questions to think about when selecting the schema language to use.

I found the book very readable and like that the information is presented in digestible chunks. Effective XML isn't meant to hype XML but to identify what the actual capabilities of XML and its related technologies are and how best to use them. The book does an outstanding job at this task.

Full disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of the book for review.

This book was extremely pleasant to read. The format of the book (essentially 50 essays related to XML) gave the author the possibility just to talk about the topics he was really interested in, to talk about. There is no stuff in the book, which he also had to say just for the sake of being complete.

The claim for this book is, that you already have to know quite a bit, before reading it. Well you have to know something, but knowledge is really not the point here. It is more something like software maturity. So if you are fond of maturity: this is your book.

Thanks to the author for that great present to us.

This book is targeted towards developers with a good knowledge of XML. While the book is very instructional, it is not a tutorial. Rather, it is a collection of tips for building better XML applications. The subtitle is an apt description, "50 Specific Ways to Improve Your XML".

The book is divided into four topics with the 50 tips spread among them. Part 1 is based on Syntax, Part 2 is about Structure, Part 3 reflects Semantics, and Part 4 focuses on implementation. Each item (or tip) has a brief explanation followed by a more detailed explanation and examples of the problems and remedies. The book can be read in any order with one exception. The author includes a very nice bit in the Introduction. While in many books this is the part that most people skip or read later; do not succumb to that temptation. The author reviews many of the XML terms that are points of confusion in order to acclimate the reader into the way they will be used in the book.

One of the most refreshing parts of the book is way that the author is very upfront about delivering his opinion. For example, Item 3 "Stay with XML 1.0" states, "Everything that you need to know about XML 1.1 can be summed up in two rules.
1.Don't use it.
2.(For experts only) If you speak Mongolian, Yi, ... you can set the version attribute of the XML declaration to 1.1. Otherwise, refer to rule 1."
Afterwards, he delivers a lengthy and well-expressed defense of this position.

This book definitely deserves consideration for some shelf space if you work with XML, perhaps along side the "XML Bible" and "Processing XML with Java".

I bought this book quite a while ago and I absolutely the format. It's a great resource to just pick up and get great ideas, verify that you are on/off the right track and generally learn how to get to the next level with XML. Highly recommended

Imagine you are given the opportunity to ask one of the leading experts on XML 50 questions. And further imagine that this expert will answer those questions clearly and completely. You can stop imagining because Elliotte Rusty Harold has done exactly that in this book. Whether you are a relative newbie or an experienced XML developer, you will find useful information in this book. Should I use DOM or SAX? What's the right way to encode binary data? When should I use processing instructions? Should I use XML 1.1? Do I really need to parse my documents? This is just a random sample of the questions that Harold answers in this book. Every page contains valuable information. Harold is unusual in that even though he is an expert he still remembers what it is like to not know something. His explanations don't leave any blanks that you need to fill in. There are no jumps from point A to point Z without taking you through the points in between.

So who should buy this book? Anyone who has some knowledge of XML who is interested in working with XML the right way. Whether you are developing applications to process or create an XML document or whether you are simply designing an XML document you need to read this book. Once you understand the basics of XML, this book will take you to the next step of being able to work with XML effectively.