Customer Reviews

Professional ASP XML

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

ASP XML is simply not well written. I shall compare it to an EXCELLENT wrox book 'Beginning JavaScript' to explain myself.

Beginning JavaScript has a superb index, in 5-10 seconds, I have a reference to information I need at any time. ASP XML has virtually no index - it has been useful exactly 0 times. This means you have to read all 800+ pages to get good information.

ASP XML has a decent object reference, but no cross-reference to code (you have to scan the whole book to find applications), BJS has excellent code samples in the Core object technology appendix.

ASP XML has out-of-date and inaccurate information on XSL (more accuratly, it is missing info on XSLT), BJS describes differences between JavaScript versions much better.

ASP XML's chapter categories are rather convoluted, BJS's categories are very straightforward and follow the proper pattern for any description of a programming environment.

ASP XML is still a beginner/intermediate book, so it should have: Introduction, DOM, XPath, XSLT, XML and CSS, String Functions, Database Functions, and then the advanced topics. The book skipped details on XPath (trust me) and details on string functions, making my knowledge inadequate to understand the rest of it. Translation, the book felt incomplete.

It may be that all of what I needed to understand XML really is in the book, but I can't find it because it is so disorganized.

I know the authors are brilliant (Having seen some of their programs) but if I can't understand them, it doesn't matter.

Donald Derrick

I thought I better add my voice to the others who have given their praises for this great work. I had actually been looking all over for a book with this exact subject and finally found it (thanks Wrox). Personally, I am so busy with work and family that I haven't had time to sit down and do a thorough reading, but every chapter I have gone through (most of them) have been great!!!

I have been working with ASP for a while, but the opportunity for a project (it seems like it is just for fun) has come up where my boss wanted me to create a survey building tool with ASP and XML - this has been my lifesaver as I have worked with XML, but not too much on the development side. So I was familiar, but didn't have any in-depth knowledge. (Note: Ironically, there was even a case study for an on-line survey (similar to what I have been asked to do).)

The reading is easy, but don't mistake that for this book being simplistic. It isn't! It is for "professionals" who are looking to enhance and polish their skills with other technologies. If you're a newby to web development, and want to learn ASP, check out SAMS "Teach Yourself Active Server Pages 3.0" by Scott Mitchell - he's the man from 4GuysFromRolla.com and does an excellent job. If you're new to XML - check out either Wrox's "Beginning XML" or Que's "XML By Example" You shouldn't go wrong with either of these.

Again, this book has been WORTH EVERY PENNY and I believe later will yeild an even higher return from my investment in it as I develop my skills with XML and ASP even more. Buy this book - you won't regret it.

If you are working on an ASP based project using XML this is possibly the best book currently available. One of things that makes it unqiue is that is shows specific examples of using objects and methods that incorporate the XML Document Object Model using server side scripting techniques (MSXML.DLL). Most XML books currently available provide information on client side data binding. Not very useful for enterprise development projects.

This book in addition to "ASP Databases" will solve all your questions dealing with ASP, ADO, and XML integration.

This book was a real dissapointment.

I LOVE wrox ASP 3.0 Ref and ADO 2.6 Ref. Maybe Wrox should have taken that approach with this book -- instead of trying to act like this book can in any way teach anything about XML.

The examples in this book are horrid, they aren't in depth enough, and more importantly, don't even correspond well with each other.

Too many of the chapters jump into the middle of a subject, then try to work back to the beginning and then forward to the end.

Trust me, I've read the first 5-7 chapters of this book and finally got so sick of all the ambiguity that I went out to the MS Site and learned more in 30 minutes there than I ever could have with this book.

Some of the case studies in the back are nice, and this book would have made a great reference (had they gone that route), but it is a horrible book to learn how to integrate XML with ASP.

Save your money.

I would be unfair to say that the 883 pages were a total waste, but it wasn't worth it for me.

The title of the Book is "ASP XML", and from this title I choose this book, because I wanted a book that would help me to use XML in ASP. That wasn't the case in some of the book examples.

The book content (without the case study) is only 15 chapter that spans 366 pages covering all different aspects of XML and XML integration of ASP. The information presented is very basic and lacks basic knowledge of XML, for example XSL was covered very poorly in the book ( MSDN was more helpful to me than the book). Chapter 11 through 14 were very useful though, especially chapter 14 that covers useful XML procedure libraries.

The case studies spans around 180 pages, there are 6 case studies. They were very confusing to me and none of them helped me solving any of the business requirements I was tackling.

The rest of the book contains appendices that are useful to have them all in the same book, but you can get them over the Internet for free.

Last word to say is that I was disappointed with this book.

I'm a big fan of the WROX publications (for ASP in particular), but this book was a disappointment. The writing was choppy - as you might expect from a book with 14 guys on the cover. The examples were cryptic and raise more questions than they answer.

The author(s) seem to me to be attempting to impress us (and each other) with their knowledge of the subject rather than really trying to write a digestible explanation of ways to utilize XML in an ASP environment.

Ok. This book is very solid. Takes you from little to no XML knowledge to writing some very solid pages. However, there's just one question:

Why JScript? Throughout the book, it uses JScript or JavaScript for the ASP code. What's wrong with VBScript? That's what I've always done in the past (and I suspect many people have also), so it seemed a bit odd that the book wanted to use JScript. (I can do JavaScript - that's not the issue. It was just something I found odd.)

Other than that one little complaint, a very solid book.

This has been the best book I've read this year! It was very hard to put down, and I found myself constantly looking at everything thinking, "Would XML help me here?" The chapters were laid out very well, and the examples were great. I was quiet surprised to see that most of these worked on about any browser. I highly recommend this one!

This book is great! The chapters are laid out properly and are easy to understand. It helped me learn a great deal about incorporating XML into our ASP based web. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to further expand their knowledge of XML. XML is the future, and this book will take you there!

This book is a handy printed version of all the info available on MSDN, but has very littly useful stuff that's original to the book. Almost nothing is explained well, and I haven't found the examples to reflect what I really needed.

If you want to use the MSXML DOM with ASP, I'm afraid you have to get this book, or refer constantly to msdn (though msdn might have better documentation by now anyway)