Java and XML Data Binding (Paperback)

~ Brett McLaughlin (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

More Java developers today want to work with XML, the technology that enables data to be transported intact over the Internet, but they don't have time to become XML experts. If this describes you, then you'll appreciate data binding, the new way of converting XML documents into Java objects, so those documents can be worked on and manipulated like any other Java object, then converted back to XML This new title provides an in-depth technical look at XML Data Binding. The book offers complete documentation of all features in both the Sun Microsystems JAXB API and popular open source alternative implementations (Enhydra Zeus, Exolabs Castor and Quick). It also gets into significant detail about when data binding is appropriate to use, and provides numerous practical examples of using data binding in applications.

About the Author

McLaughlin has been working in computers since the Logo days. He currently specializes in building application infrastructure using Java and Java-related technologies.

Product Details

• Paperback: 214 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1st edition (May 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596002785
• ISBN-13: 978-0596002787
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 1.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,121,460 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Beware of booby-traps, August 20, 2002

By A Customer

Developing Java Web services including XML data binding is a new and exciting area. XML data binding is useful for XML request processing and for application configuration purposes. In both cases we need ewell-designed workable sample code to check each stage of system configuration, XML application development and deployment.

An excellent example of this approach can be found in "More servlets" by Marty Hall.

As for this book, I find it useful to grasp general concepts, but not as a detailed technical discussion it appears to be.
Sample code for chapter 3 is useful, but then we need a sample to actually compile and run some simple JAXB example. Unfortuantely, there is no way to accomplish this with the code that comes from the books's Web site.

Also, as early as in chapter 4, we have quite a big jump from basic discussion directly to using JAXB data binding in servlets - without any consideration of necessary intermediate steps: checking Tomcat configuration, running JAXB-free servlet examples, making servlet-free JAXB examples work, etc.

Needless to say, JAXB and other XML binding frameworks are useful for servlet development, but they are also useful
for JSP and other XML applications. From the other side, servlet parameters can be accessed using regular application server configuration features like it is done in Tomcat EXAMPLES app. All these considerations are completely missing from the book.

Besides poor sample code and appplication server discussion, another source of confusion is the absence of proper references to XSLT. In fact, the purpose of XML data binding is to enable Java program to work "like" an XSLT transformer, in principle, XML document processing can be done by XSLT. Again, reading the book there is no way to figure this out.

Excellent treatment of JAXB data binding is available online from IBM Web site, see Daniel Steinberg's tutorial. I'd also suggest Java Web Services Tutorial from Sun.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Outdated, incorrect information. Stay away!, November 24, 2003

By	Anthony J. Serpico (Sunrise, FL United States) - See all my reviews

This book was written before the version 1.0 release of the JAXB data binding API's. As a result much of the information in this book is incorrect and not current. If you follow the instruction in this book you will NOT sucessfully perform XML binding to java objects. For example, the book uses DTD's as the XML description model used by JAXB. This is wrong DTD's were dropped in favor of XML schemas. The instructions for using the JAXB jar files are wrong. The required jars have changed since this book was printed. The instructions for using the generated java data binding classes is wrong, the usage has changed since this book was written. The author tried to get to far ahead of the technology curve on JAXB and as a result authored this book too early in the JAXB life cycle. The book is of minimal value.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Waste of money, July 17, 2003

By	Francis (United States) - See all my reviews

This does not talk about JAXB at all. What it talks is about some non standardised APIs that existed before JAXB.
The brief mention of JAXB ( 4 pages ) is only philosphical. Even that is w.r.t. an obselete version with DTD support.
( Current JAXB only supports XML schema )