Customer Reviews

Mastering XML Premium Edition

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This book is thick, nearly 1300 pages. But do not let the size and title fool you, this book does exlain the chapter topic contents well, but I rated it three stars and here is why?
1. Chapters too short: The introduction to XML Schemas is only four pages and the Writing XML Schemas section is only about five pages, too short, that is one star minus.
2. SOAP/XML section too short, does not produce full fledged samples on how to use this HTTP/XML technology in its soon to be replacement of the DCOM wire protocol for COM and IIOP for CORBA.
3. Why does this book hold a thick chapter on XML Tools? Who cares? I would have like to have seen the length of the XML Tools chapter eliminated in favor of extending the chapter/section on XML Schemas, XMI- Extensible Metadata Interchange, and XSLT, and perhaps a chapter or two or three on beginning, intermediate, and advances XML Parser construction in both C++ and Java side by side, so as to appreciate the third party vendors, as well as beefing up your compiler/parser/generator programming skills in the XML world.
4. Mastering is not appropriate title, more like Superficial learning.
5. Content Ok, Font settings OK on the eye, but way to much third party XML support technologies that one may never use. This book should have focused on more XML syntax samples than what is already in the book, the XMI chapter should have been included, the XML Schemas should have its own lengthy but fulfilling chapter, XSLT vs CSS should have been investigated more, Object persistance support for C++ and Java class objects in the XML would have been smarter to include. SOAP protocol and its uses with existing component architectures, COM, CORBA, Java Beans, C++ ACE Network programming, but nooooooooooooo!

In Summary, this book is fill, and superficial. Indeed disappointing, I know of one book and another on the horizon due out in the upcoming months, both from Addison-Wesley, first is Modeling XML Applications in UML or something to this effect and the other upcoming title, is XML Nitty Gritty...

I was looking for an introductory book on XML and decided to pick up a copy of Mastering XML after reading the introduction and perusing the table of contents. The book covers a great deal of topics, but almost all of it is poorly explained and most of the examples are not very illustrative of the related material. The author tends to describe things in a round about way and has a habit of throwing in material that isn't covered until later in his explanations. I tried reading ahead in some cases, but those sections weren't covered any more clearly so it turned into a vicious cycle. I finally had to stop reading after 400 pages. I have a background in web development with HTML, JavaScript, Java servlets, and JSP, but I would not recommend this book as a first on XML. It might serve as a reference though.

...longer description: all explanations are very confused and confusing; nothing is clear. Buy another book (there are plenty of other books related to XML that are 2000% better for the same or lower price)

I have the first edition of this book and it's very good. When I saw the "Premium Edition", I just knew it had to be better. Boy, was I wrong. I see from the cover that they changed authors, so perhaps that's what went wrong, but the information in this edition contradicts information in the first edition and in many cases, even contradicts the specs on the W3C web site. I've put mine up for sale as used and I'm sticking with the first book.

I have read many a book on XML and nothing quite captures the essence of XML quite like this book. Packed full of real world case studies and tons of information on everything from Java to XPath. Quite a useful book if you are looking to get up to speed on almost anything XML you can imagine. The layout of the book is great and the text is easy to read. All in all you cant go wrong with this book if you need an XML companion and you develop software with XML

Sorry guy's, one of the poorest books ever read.

Just good for using it as Monitor base.

Atention: 0.99 is too much money for it !!!!!

This is the most comprehensive and up to date XML book I have seen yet. It offers a tremendous range of online resources and I find myself referencing it continually. The introductory chapters make XML accessible to programmers and non-programmers alike and it only gets better from there. If you can only buy one book on XML, this is definitely the one to get.

I often tried to understand what XML is through several published tutorials on the web. With my ASP knowledge I thought this topic would be easy to explain but I could not make sense of what they tried to tell me in these tutorials until I bought this book. It was then clear that XML is not as easy to explain in a couple of pages as HTML is. This book does a thorough job in teaching you step by step what XML is about and how you can put it to use in the real world.

Well, one of these people is a friend of mine, so i figured i'd pop in and give the book a good rating. I am going to get my own copy once I can fit it in my house.