Customer Reviews

XML Applications

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

 

 

A good introduction to the 'current' state of XML as of December 1998. Wrox press are about to publish an updated version of this book as 'Professional XML' in February 2000.

The book is a bit frustrating at times since has to deal with matters that have not been finalised, and has constant references to sites where updated details can be found. This is probably the biggest stumbling block for XML as a whole, irrespective of which XML book you buy.

The book is, at times, a bit dry, and could benefit with more code samples.

Overall a very good introduction to XML - but buy the updated version of the book!

I haven't even finished the first chapter and I know I've already bought the wrong book. As an advanced internet developer I can't possibly refer this book to anyone. When I bought this book I expected to learn what XML was all about from scratch. The book should have started off with some web pages and other applications that showed where we would end up once we have learnt XML, and the great possibilities that lie ahead. As it was, I had absolutely no idea where I was heading. Lots of quick talks about Entities, Enumerated Attributes and so on that amount to a hill of fluff. The book has no direction. I read many books every year but this one was the worse. If you want to really learn about XML, check out the book XML Bible sold by Amazon. I haven't read it but the reviewers who have give it much praise.

I liked the book and it's approach in introducing to XML Application Development. Unfortunately, Microsoft has withdrawn msxml.exe on which most of the content of the book is based. I am not sure if there is any plan, by the authors, to help the developers to get around this and yet, refer to the book for it's excellent approach to mastering XML Technology. I, particularly, liked the chapters on XSL, and practical applications (case studies), including CDF application. I, however, did not like the XML-Data chapter so much. This is mainly because it really does not provide the learning steps as much in detail as other chapters. I wish the author had followed the method used in authoring of CDF-chapter. The book does not provide step-by-step procedure (including that of tools required, setting of tools, personal web server etc.) for testing the source codes provided in the book. It is left to the imagination and the exhaustive work, expenses of time and communications for advice etc. of the learner of this new technology. It took me several hours before I could successfully test the case study source codes. Also, the author/publisher should provide after-sales support due to lack of the basic tool (msxml.exe) on which the entire book is based. Publisher should withdraw this book from the distribution/sale. It seems the author is planning to publish another book in lieu of this, later in Year 2000. Hope the publisher will be kind enough to give some discounts to the buyers of the current book.

I Read this book and found it frustrating Just to write a simple Hello World program, i had to read almost three chapters, they made XML a VERY hard language to learn,which is not.I took it as a challenge and atlast ran an XML file and had a pitcher of beer to get relieved ...from the stress i had undergone...so dont buy this book

First few chapters are good. Then this book takes a sudden twist; getting harder in the latter chapters...

Plenty of room for improvement

This is a typical wrox book: covers mostly microsoft material, good code examples. You can read about XML from resources on the web, but this book gives you an idea on how actual applications may be implemented, at a time where there is little published browser support. 4 stars for the material, 1 for the timing.

Have bouhgt many WROX books and found this to be by far the hardest read, made simple things difficult and ponderous (suffering from verbal diarrhoea), referring too much to later content. Go read something else even from the web it'll save you money and time.

There wasn't one example which shows how to demonstrate the XML architecture. The case study which was mentioned in this book was Microsoft based products.

XML Applications has everything that I want to learn about XML, XSL, DTDs, etc. But the presentation of material is very poorly organized. It reads like a book from 9 different authors that don't know each other. XML and its related technologies cleanly breaks down into 5 major topics, but this book scatters text about each of these 5 topics all over the book. Again, the content and detail is excellent, but the presentation is poor.

There wasn't one solid case-study or example application which demonstrated how to actually manipulate an XML Structure. Many of the screenshots are fakes. There are far too many forward references. This book was written using Cut & Paste. Almost exclusively Microsoft based -- do Micrsoft own this publishing company?