Customer Reviews

XML Programming (Core Reference)

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

 

 

XML Programming was nearly the best book on XML programming I have found. Here are the pluses.
1) It does a very good job of taking you through the basics fast and gets into specifics of coding quickly. It walks you through the process of building real applications using XML as their foundation.
2) The book covers more than the Microsoft angle. It does show some Linux and Java examples, although it definitely emphasizes the Microsoft solutions.

The reason I didn't rate this book higher was one thing that just kept annoying me throughout the book. It reads like they took an old book and threw in some material on newer XML specifications and Microsoft products, without updating the older material. Some examples of this are
1) They talk about the MSXML parser, but the last version they cover is 3.0 (even though 4 is included on the accompanying CD) and MSXML 4 has been out for quite some time, certainly longer than .NET. Yet there are entire chapters covering .NET and mentions of it throughout the book (mostly regarding Beta 2).
2) They show XML Notepad as an editor. Microsoft has discontinued the XML Notepad and the link in the book goes to a page that no longer exists.
3) Other links in the book do not exist and the tools have been renamed and thereby are harder to find on Microsoft's site.

The other primary minus for me was the author's assumption regarding your programming background. The authors use Visual Basic, ASP, Java, SQL and C++ without always explaining the code (Java and C++ are in the minority; VB, ASP and SQL are widespread). Most of the people reading this may not be familiar with all of these languages and thereby get a little lost in some of the examples.

So, if you're already comfortable with Microsoft programming and want to get up to speed quickly on XML, I would say this book is worth your while, but be ready for web links that don't work and check the products they refer to for newer versions.

If you're not comfortable with SQL and VB at a minimum, start there and then come back to this one or a similar title.

I don't know what the reviewer from San Jose was thinking, but I believe that Brad Leupen, et al have written a great book on XML programming for newcomers. I bought this book with almost no understanding of XML and so the "basic basics" of XML were great for me. I come from a database background and have very little experience with web programming. XML Programming has taken me from supernewbie to XML Programmer very quickly. The book was easy to read, clear and concise.I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn XML.

This book exhibits many of the characteristics of a rushed-to-press contentless tome.

Firstly, the book spends an inordinate amount of text covering the basic basics of XML. Why? Anyone who has purchased this book has already been sold on XML and doesn't need to hear, once again for the Nth time, arguments in favor of its use.

Secondly, once the pointless argument in favor of XML has been offered, the authors rehash standard coverage of DOM and SAX. I suppose any "definitive" book on XML programming should cover these technologies, but the depth of coverage in this book is hardly greater than what can be obtained on the web for free. The same goes for the pedestrian coverage of SOAP. Just visit the W3 site and you'll get equally useful documentation on these standards (which by the way will be kept more up to date than the print coverage).

The authors do offer some useful code examples of a working web service, which is where the true value-add of the book is, but the coverage is a tiny portion of the full text of the book.

Even if you are an XML newbie, there are better introductions, namely O'Reilly's "Learning XML", or Addison Wesley's "XML Primer". For coding web services, O'Reilly's "Programming Web Services with SOAP" or ".Net Framework Essentials" are far better and illustrate the quality control at these superior publishers.

The chapters in the book are well organized. Detailed explanation about XML, application development is given. The book in the later part covers the Interoperability and SOAP applications.

This book explains in detail about the XML basics and gives a clear idea about XML programming. The examples give good understanding of what is required. As one reads on at later parts, the code is a bit difficult to understand. The code is discussed in VB, ASP and in .NET framework. I suggest this book for one who is working with .NET framework and similar technologies. As the book is published by Microsoft Press, more emphasis is on Microsoft approach in programming.

I normally refrain from recommending Microsoft Press books because so many of them are printed versions of their online help or MSDN content. If you want to learn XML from the ground up, this book isn't for you. If you're familiar with the concepts of XML and have wanted more clarification on how to use XML as a tool within your applications, then you should look at this book.

It does offer decent explanations of XML and XML technology, and it does offer examples in VB, C++, and Java, but code itself isn't well documented.

There is mention of the .Net Framework and Visual Studio .Net, but the book was obviously written before either of them went "gold", so don't expect to see examples of XML Web Services using .Net.

All in all, its a good reference book and worth looking into getting (as long as you don't pay full retail price for it.)

The authors apparently made too many assumptions on the readers. They freely used buzzwords without giving any proper definition, and they used half a dozen different terms for the same concept, even on the same page. Take a look at this excerpt in Chap-1:

The are two categories of XML documents. A document is either "well-formed" or "valid". A document can be well-formed only if it obeys the syntax of XML. A document that includes sequences of markup characters that cannot be parsed or are invalid cannot be well-formed.

What the heck is the "syntax of XML" and "sequences of markup characters"? what does "cannot be parsed" means?

The authors seem to be in a big hurry to give any explanation.

The book is also full of geekspeak and long, ornate marketing stuff that bores intermediate and advanced readers, yet confuses beginners.

Wanna buy the book? forget it. Even if some friend gives it you, don't waste your time on it.

I wish somebody had advised me beforehand.

I gave it 1-star, only because amazon has no option for a minus 5 star.