Customer Reviews

Professional XML, 2nd Edition (Programmer to Programmer)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I've found this book very hard to understand as a first book on XML. If you know what XML is about but are looking for practical real-life exemples, look elsewhere. If you know XML and want to know everything about it's internal work and how to work with DTD, that would be your book.

I've also ordered the Professional XML IE5 Programmer's Reference at the same time and this book gave me an overview of what I can do with XML on the Internet and THEN I had an idea of what to do of the Professional XML book.

You have to ask you those questions : Do I need to know how to show XML with XSL, ASP, DHTML, HTML? If yes, look elsewhese first. Do I need an XML reference to know how to create XML files? If yes, look no further.

If you have started to play with XML but need to know where to go, this is the book for you. I rate this one as a "must have" book from Wrox just like the Professional ASP book... both are the top books on the market in their respective fields. I am using XML for content transformation and for Server to Server solutions so I was getting stuff done (in xml) but still had lots of questions. This book covers all the basic stuff and goes into some future technology as well but for the most part this book is for the working programmer who has to produce code quickly but couldn't figure everything out from site hopping.

It is easy to tell that this book was written by 12 different authors. The quality and writing style of each chapter varies widely. I thought the chapters on XPath, XSLT, DOM, SAX2, and SOAP were well written, but I was disappointed by some of the others.

The chapter on XML Schemas was the worst, in my opinion. This is a very important subject, but it is given the same amount of space as much less important topics. As a result, the author of this chapter tries to cover too much in too little space and ends up being quite confusing. Examples are thrown out followed by only partial explanations, and the author forgets to do some basic things like showing a sample XML document to match the sample XML Schemas in the examples. If you need to understand XML Schemas, skip this chapter and go directly to "Professional XML Schemas," which is very well written book on the subject.

This book is also too large and attempts to cover too many obscure topics. For example, it wastes a chapter on "XML Schema Alternatives" when it is clear that XML Schema is the approach that will be used by almost everyone going forward.

Finally, my standard complaint about all WROX books is that the font they use is too small! I feel like I'm reading a telephone book. Give the readers a break by taking out some of the less important chapters and increasing the font size.

I guess I expected that a platform independent standard such as XML would have been better expained using a platform independent language such as java. For the unix/java engineers out there....this book contains much useful information and don't get me wrong, I learned a lot. The question is, would I have learned as much or possibly more if I didn't have to put up with 90% of the code examples written in VBScript? Many examples require Internet Explorer. Content was up-to-date and informative but somewhat repetative (12 authors).

I have bought several xml books and this one has educated me, taught me and interested me the most. There's no doubt the Wrox technical books are a match to the Oreilley in terms of readability and thoroughness. This book is a little peculiar in that it is written by several people, each contributing a separate chapter. As an introduction, it probably wouldn't be too helpful (although that wouldn't be a problem for someone with a programming background). The strengths of the book (at least what I've read so far) is the discussion of sax v. dom, the section on business applications on edi (really interesting for me), and the great reference source in the back. Can you believe I have xeroxed the css list of command options in the back--amazingly useful? The variety of writers give a fresh perspective, which can be bad and good. With the exception of the first few chapters, which give a good overview, the rest of the chapters are a grabbag of subjects, including 4 case studies. These were very useful in learning xml. It also discussed WAP, which may or may not be useful, depending on how much enthusiasm there is for that standard. For variety's sake, I also bought, XML Unleashed, a bulky book with not as much organization, but just a lot of code (unlike the professional xml book, which really explained almost everything well). XML unleashed is helpful, because its topics really don't overlap with professional xml. It discusses SMIL, parsing xml with java xml tools on the market, using asp with xml and different subsets of xml (vml, and a variety of other specialized languages specific to one discipline. Unleashed is good because it contains discussions (albeit rather brief) of several different languages. Professional XML sticks to explanations and analysis, a lot of microsoft stuff (but not asp, and not too much stuff that linux lovers would want to reject the book. Finally I want to mention another book which I used as a first tutorial, Just XML by John Simpson. It's the best written of the three, although a little bizzare humor sometimes. It was written in late 1998 so some things may not be up-to-date (however simpson does a good job of emphasizing the things that weren't likely to change). This would be a good book for people starting, or if the book were available used. It would also be good when simpson publishes the second edition (later this year).

I could find all XML releated subjects in the topics of this book i.e. XML syntax, Document Type Definitions (DTD), data modeling, Document Object Model (DOM), Simple API for XML (SAX) 1.0, Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), , namespaces, schemas, linking, XML--database integration, server to server transfers, eBusiness applications, and SOAP.

It is very usuful for beginners and some advanced programmers in XML. Thanks to authors for this collabrative study.

Volkan Evrin

The book is pretty good but don't think you'll get too much Java with XML. This book focuses more on MS technologies, the examples uses JScript and ASP so if you're a Java man it's not very worthwhile.

I found this book very boring and tedious reading. The style of the book seems to vary as much as the number of authors. The concepts don't smoothly flow together. The book is a hodgepodge of technical information presented in patches by a huge bunch of authors. Obviously this book was an attempt to bring to market a book on XML as quickly as possible. The book doesn't provide enough examples or applications although it does present many examples on syntax. This may be a good reference book, but to really learn how to use XML I'm searching for another book.

Many of the comments appearing on this book apply to the first edition, not the second. It was just released in May 2001 and many of these comments pre-date that.

That being said, having owned the first edition I was a little hesitant to buy this as many second editions can be 80 to 90 percent rewrites of the first. I thought the first edition was a good book. This is a GREAT book!

More clearly written, examples are more clear and concise, good coverage on many different technologies, not just Microsoft's. Expanded coverage on XLink, XPointer, and formatting objects to name just a few.

Well done!

This is a good book for IBM XML 141 certification. I passed my certification largely due to this book. The book covers a lot of ground and is an absolute must for the certification.
Also it covers not only XML but also a lot of other related technologies like XPath, XQuery,XSLT, XLink, XPointer, Databases and XML, SOAP, UDDI and WSDL etc.
Overall I think it is worth every penny and is a book I want in my XML book shelf. However one minor drawback of the book is the large number of authors.