.NET and XML [Paperback]

Niel M. Bornstein (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2003

If you're seeking ways to build network-based applications or XML-based web services, Microsoft provides most of the tools you'll need. XML is integrated into the .NET Framework and Visual Studio .NET, but if you want to get a grasp on how .NET and XML actually work together, that's a different story. With .NET & XML, you can get under the hood to see how the .NET Framework implements XML, giving you the skills to write understandable XML-based code that interoperates with code written with other tools, and even other languages.

.NET & XML starts by introducing XML and the .NET Framework, and then teaches you how to read and write XML before moving on to complex methods for manipulating, navigating, transforming, and constraining it. To demonstrate the power of XML in .NET, author Niel Bornstein builds a simple hardware store inventory system throughout the book. As you move from chapter to chapter, you'll absorb increasingly complex information until you have enough knowledge to successfully program your own XML-based applications. This tutorial also contains a quick reference to the API, plus appendices present additional .NET assemblies that you can use to work with XML, and how to work with the .NET XML configuration file format.

One study puts the potential market for new software based on XML at or near $100 billion over the next five years. The .NET Framework gives you a way to become a part of it. But to use XML and .NET effectively, you need to understand how these two technologies work together. This book gives you the insight to take full advantage of the power the two provide.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Niel M. Bornstein, with over ten years' experience in software development, has worked in diverse areas such as corporate information systems, client-server application development, and web-hosted applications. Clear and engaging, Niel is a frequent contributor to xml.com, an affiliate site of the O'Reilly Network.

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1st edition (July 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596003978
• ISBN-13: 978-0596003975
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,692,145 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Solid introduction with a light reference section, March 13, 2004

By 

Jack D. Herrington "engineer and author" (Silicon Valley, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: .NET and XML (Paperback)

This book has probably all you need to know about reading, writing, formatting and sending XML over the wire with C#. Standout chapters for me were chapters seven, on XSLT, and nine, on web services. That being said all of the non-reference chapters were evenly written, easy reads and neither rat hole nor pander to the reader. The code samples are numerous but they are hilighted with bold to emphasizes the portions that a critical to the narrative.

C# is the only imperative language covered in the book even though most .NET authors cover both C# and VB.NET. In the introduction the author calls C# the central language of .NET and says it's the best language for the job. I don't have big issues about that but other potential .NET readers may, especially considering the popularity of VB.NET. Personally I prefer when the author chooses one language and then leaves the other to the site or the CD. I think VB.NET example code fragments on the O'Reilly site probably would have been a safer bet.

It's this one language approach in the dual language .NET environment that kicks the rating from five down to four.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very well written and well thought out, February 7, 2004

By 

ueberhund "ueberhund" (Salt Lake City, UT United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: .NET and XML (Paperback)

Anyone who has spent even a little time with .NET knows that XML is at the core of many of the libraries. When performing a query with ADO.NET, it's as easy to return the results as a DataSet as it is to return it as XML. This book realizes the core use of XML to .NET and discusses many of the various options developers have in handling XML.

The book covers a few main points: how to read XML, how to write XML, how to transform XML (via XSLT), and various data manipulations. Each of these points, in turn, opens up various different issues which are discussed at length (like constraining XML via an XSD or how to read a non-XML document into XML). Much of the discussion contained some of the best instruction related to XML and .NET that I have seen. The final section of the book contains various reference chapters related to the XML namespaces (think of the reference section in the Nutshell series and you'll have a pretty good idea of what to expect).

All in all, this is a very well written and well thought out discussion on the uses of XML in .NET. Not only will this book further your understanding of how to use .NET and XML together, but it will also help you gain insight into perhaps new uses for XML in your applications. I would recommend looking through this book before you begin your next .NET application.

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Sometimes confusing and hard-to-read but a good book, January 27, 2004

By 

Darrell Nungester (Floyds Knobs, Indiana United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: .NET and XML (Paperback)

The advanced C# developer is the target audience for this book, although a Visual Basic.Net developer who is familar with C# will be able to follow the examples. All of the examples in this book are in C#. This book is sometimes very confusing especially starting in Chapter 5 - Manipulating XML with DOM. Some of the chapters must be read a couple of times in order to make sense and this book is somewhat difficult to read.

In Chapter 1 - Introduction to .Net and XML, Chapter 2 - Reading XML, Chapter 3 - Writing XML, and Chapter 4 - Reading and Writing Non-XML Formats establish a basic foundation. The more advanced subjects start in Chapter 5.

Here is a synopis of Chapters 5 through Chapter 11.

Chapter 5 - Manipulating XML with DOM
Chapter 6 - Navigating XML with XPath
Chapter 7 - Transforming XML with XPath
Chapter 8 - Constraining XML with Schemas
Chapter 9 - SOAP and XML Serialization
Chapter 10 - XML and Web Services
Chapter 11 - XML and Databases

The author provides a quick reference in chapters 13 through chapter 20 but needs an entire chapter (Chapter 12) to explain how to use the quick references.

Pros: The author covers just about every facet of XML in this book. The author provides 4 examples of using the memory stream for I-O. Other books that I have read just mention it briefly but did not provide examples. There are ample examples in this book.

Cons: This book is sometimes hard to read and can be confusing at times. You may have to read the chapters several times to make sense of the material. On page 12, the author states that "the simplest thing you can do with an existing XML document is to read it into memory". Shouldn't it be "read from memory" and "write to memory"? I may be wrong but this line confuses me everytime I read it. Like all O'Reilly books, the font used is very small and makes reading difficult.

Overall this is a good book for the intermediate to advanced C# developers who have a strong working knowledge of C# and .Net but for less experienced developers or Visual Basic developers with no knowledge of C#, this book may be confusing. This is definitely NOT a beginner book.