Customer Reviews

Querying XML, : XQuery, XPath, and SQL/XML in context (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems)

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I have had this book for almost a month now. This book is painful to get through. I can usually get through a technical book within a week and try some examples. I started reading this book front to back and did not skip any sections.

I am not a NOOB when it comes to XML so I found this surprising. I am a certified XML developer (from before XQuery), an experienced programming engineer of 8 years, an MCAD.Net, and I have even written a paper on XQuery for a Master's Program and I simply have become unmotivated and am struggling to get through this book. As others have stated in reviews, this book takes a long time to get to the point. I like to get my money's worth when I buy a book though.

I kept asking myself chapter after chapter "when do we start programming some examples?" The first 10 chapters are filled with everything but XQuery. The author covers the background of XML and why we would use XQuery in detail. I see the argument for why this book may be beneficial to some but if you wish to get up and running on XQuery this is not the book for you.

I may update this as I finish off the book. I am getting more into actual XQuery syntax and grammar as of chapter 11. A flip through the TOC shows that the author covers some implementation info. My goal was to have a better understanding of how to actually implement XQuery and learn some of the more detailed points of it versus just FLWOR that the numerous online tutorials offer. I have purchased another book by O'Reilly instead.

Update: I received the O'Reilly book right after writing this review. I flipped through the TOC and first few pages of XQuery by O'Reilly for a comparison. Wow! These two books could not be any different. I am on chapter 5 of the O'Reilly XQuery book just in a few hours of off and on reading at work. It appears thus far to be the better choice. Luckily, work is paying for these books so I was only cheated out of time buying "Querying XML".

My only complaint with this book is that it emphasizes DTD over Schema a bit too much. For this and other reasons, I felt the treatment of XML seemed a little dated, and also a bit shallow.

The authors are XQuery standardization committee members with long tenures at Oracle, thus possessing an unique grounding in that 'other' query language, SQL. As a result, the book is balanced with respect to what SQL/XML and XQuery can respectively do. A number of examples are provided, to illustrate where XQuery is useful and where other query mechanisms might work.

Querying XML is the 800 page reference book I will now keep next to my keyboard for all things XQuery, XPath, and XML. The book has a nice and non-academic approach to learning XML and using the XML Query language (XQuery) to build application software. The book starts with data concepts and then gives in-depth explanations of the tools, APIs, and libraries available to work with the data. I wish the book covered XML-based application development frameworks and developer tools. Perhaps they steered clear of those topics to make this a book whose content will be valid and useful for years. -Frank

If you need to learn XQuery or XPath fast, this is not the book, or you need to skip the first 8 chapters. XQuery and XPath are hardly even mentioned until Chapter 9. The first 8 chapters discuss everything except what is in the title. XML is a pretty boring topic, and excess verbage doesn't help.