Customer Reviews

Java and XML (O'Reilly Java Tools)

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(8)
1 star:		(10)

 

 

I've read several books on XML that have been mainly a regurgitation of the specifications without much attempt to help a developer understand how the technology can actually be used. This is the first book I have read on this subject that actually bridges this gap and gives useful, working examples of how XML can be used in your Java applications to solve real-world problems. Instead of giving a code snippet that shows only how to call the XML parsing/processing APIs, the book gives full examples on how to use XML in applications from servlets for presentation to B2B applications for data collaboration between companies.

The book was well written and easy to follow. The author doesn't waste time reiterating the same things over and over. Links for more information on each subject are given in the text.

If you are looking to implement an XML solution in Java, this book will be a great help along the way.

I tried to submit a review once already, but it got ignored... in any case, this is the most current book available on XML. Not only does it cover all the stuff I was looking for (including XML Schema), it covers the latest version of the specifications (many as late as April!). I found SAX 2.0 (the final release, even) and the latest XML Schema, both of which I am using at my company, and needed up-to-date support. The book is even more accurate than some of my favorite web page resources! It also covers JDOM, something the author wrote, which makes my life so much easier - I had to use DOM before, and JDOM is much simpler. It also compares JDOM and DOM in the code samples (side by side) so I got to see exactly where the differences were. Finally, a hidden gem - this book covered RSS! Something I hardly knew about, we are now doing our entire portal site in RSS thanks to "Java and XML". Pick it up - more in here than I even knew was useful, plus all the examples work (! ) and are not silly Hello World things.

Reading the reviews and ratings of this book here and at other sites, I was expecting a serious, in-depth look at using Java and XML together from a technical perspective. Unfortunately, the areas of detail in this book weren't applicable to my current project, and I ended up relying more on the Xerces documentation than on this book.

Apart from a good overview of the SAX parser in Xerces and how to code event handlers for it, there isn't much more than a brief introduction to many aspects of coding Java applications for XML, followed by a sequence of one-chapter overviews of various business applications. The book simply tries to cover too many topics in too short a space. Between XSL, SAX, DOM, JDOM, stylesheets, DTDs, B2B data interchange and all the other topics, the book should have been twice as long. This book could be useful in conjunction with a more detailed technical reference or programming guide (if such a book exists), since it does provide some good skeleton objects in its various scenarios. It should not be your only book (or your first book) on this subject.

I bought this book with a lot of expectations but to my disappointment found the book to contain shallow material on XML and examples (mostly trivial) that show how to use Beta APIs like JDOM. Most of the examples in the book are developed using JDOM and would somebody venture using beta api in production environment?

Right now this book may be useful for reading from cover to cover and possibly in two days! Don't expect the book to give you examples or any useful information that can help you write code for your product that is going to be deployed in your customer's site.

This is easily one of the top five computer books I've ever read. The writing is clear and concise and the book covers a LOT of ground without being overwhelming. The world of XML is known for generating an important new standard almost every week, and keeping up with it all (or even figuring out how much of it is worth keeping up with) is quite a chore. McLaughlin concentrates on SAX and DOM, two competing standard APIs for writing programs to use and manipulate XML data. The fact that these APIs are not language-specific means that this book is useful for anyone who programs for XML, not just Java folks. Personally, I do more or my XML-related work in Perl and found this book very useful anyway (no XML/Perl book exists so far). It's also worth noting that while the author insists that this is a book for "Java developers," I found all of the examples quite understandable even though I'm rather new to Java. To sum up, if you are a programmer of any sort and you either use XML now or are thinking about starting to use it, I think you can really benefit from this book.

If you are looking for a good introduction to using XML with Java then this is as good as any other but over half the book uses third-party libraries which exist outside the standards (JDK, SAX and DOM) and therefore if you are writing code for commercial purposes this is not much use.

What I wanted from the book was an explanation of issues such as using RMI and RPC to transfer XML data. What I got was whole chapters on using a library which might (but does not) achieve what I want. After an explanation of the SAX and DOM APIs the authors then introduce their alternative API which is then used through the book. At the same time the authors criticise Microsoft for not following the standards!!!

In addition a number of O'Reilly books I have purchased in the last year suffer from poor binding quality; my copy of this has started falling apart within a week of purchase.

If Java and XML is considered the perfect marriage, then this book is the practical guide to life after the honeymoon and beyond.

A well written book for any Java developer who wants to get a good working knowledge of using XML in Java projects, it contains good tutorials on the basics such as SAX, DOM, DTD, XSL etc and a good tutorial and intro to JDOM, a new alternative to SAX and DOM. In addition, there are good discussions with working examples of real world applications such as XML-RPC, B2B etc.

Covers some of the most recent developments in XML including SAX 2.0, DOM Level 2 and XML Schema.

Lots of practical examples and advices from someone who's been there and done that. Fun to read and candid in nature.

Having some experience with both Java and XML in the past, I read this book before starting out on a project using Java, XML and servlets together. I found it an excellent overview of the available technologies. SAX and DOM are covered fully and succinctly, getting you up to speed in no time at all. The book is structured to alternate between XML-oriented and Java-oriented chapters, building up your skills in a sensible, incremental way.

On the down side, the book had a few typos (very few given the extraordinary pressure to get this book on the shelves as quickly as possible). Also, the coverage of JAXP, say, was minimal, whereas JDOM received a lot of attention (not surprising, since Brett McLaughlin is one of the founders of the project). This will probably be a strength of the book in the future, since JDOM is a superior API and will probably be widely adopted; it's not any use to me now though, since according to jdom.org the API is still in beta (even though the book says 1.0 is available) and I can't very strongly argue for the use of an untested beta API in a production environment.

Wow. I've been reading about XML for six months now, and this is the first book that wasn't that far behind! I got the Wrox book, which was out of date from the first time I read it (which was only two weeks after it came out), and some others which were similar. This managed to cover SAX 2 and DOM 2, plus the latest XSL and XML Schema, all released around April. I don't know how O'Reilly does it, but they did it again here - and the JDOM coverage is really interesting, too. A must read for developers who want to be ahead of the curve, not behind it.

I learned a lot about XML and the DOM from reading this book. I think anyone looking to get a good start in XML and Java (not necessarily just XML) will benefit. I share another reviewer's frustration that half the book goes over JDOM, the author's own "standard" interface, and includes the actual standards later in the chapter. This is more frustrating when I'm paging through for a quick example, then realize I'm not looking at Xerces, but rather at JDOM, so I have to go digging for a typically less-explained section of sample code.

My binding broke in less than a week as well, but O'Reilly customer service was very helpful in this area. I think there must have just been a bad run of books, and won't hold this against them.

In all, the book is good enough to start with. As you look to do more, you'll need to look elsewhere.