Customer Reviews

XML by Example: Building E-Commerce Applications (Charles F. Goldfarb Series on Open Information Management)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

This book fails to deliver in almost every aspect. The front cover promises "Build XML e-commerce applications start to finish", this is entirely misleading. A more accurate title would be "XML syntax and some vague examples". Do not buy this book.

I was greatly disappointed with the contents of this book and above all after learning that the editor is the one who invented SGML(Mother of XML)...they should think a hundred times before writing this kinda books. Please stop circulating this book in the market. Why are you people giving wrong information to people???

Others have already said it better than I, so I'll keep this short:

* not enough information to be useful

* poor presentation of the details

* it only babbles on and on about how great XML is, without telling you anything about any pitfalls or, for example, the shortcomings of DTDs.

Charles Goldfarb should actually look at these books, before lending his name to them.

If you want the real deal, go with the Wrox Press book: Professional XML. Sure, it's big, weighs a ton, and you'll probably never need to look at more than a third of it, but I swear even just the first 4 chapters are worth the price of the entire book!

This is a worthless book. The title is completely misleading; very little useful information is presented in the book. Most of the examples on the CD have errors and do not work. Size of the book is only an indication of how many trees were killed. If this book is any indication of the quality of Goldfarb series, I am not buying any other books from the Goldfarb series; these guys are only out to make money for themselves. Shame on the author and Charles Goldfarb. This author should be banned from writing any more books.

You'll spend most of your time waiting for something to happen. There is essentially no connection between the CD-ROM and the text.

I have read books about HTML, JavaScript, C++ and honestly THIS BOOK IS THE WORST that I have ever read! I wanted to learn some XML from this book, it starts talking about its capabilities, use, implementation, functionality, examples, examples, blah, blah, blah... zzzzz.
If you want to learn how to use XML take my advice, do not consider this book. However, if you know XML this book has examples of how can XML be implemented, though I think it is not worth its price.

While XML By Example has a great introductory chapter for anyone new to XML, there is no substance to support this introduction. If you simply want an overview of what XML can do and some examples of systems that use XML, by all means purchase this book. If you want to learn XML, this book is a waste of time and money.

This book only skims around the various XML topics in a somewhat shallow manner. I was looking to understand how XML could be leveraged in real world business situations. This book did not help at all.

I bought this book with great hopes of learning how XML is used to do e-commerce. I was dissapointed in both it's content and it's lack of real world e-commerce discussion. Though this book does a good job in explaining XML, it does nothing to show how XML has any advantages over current e-commerce methods (eg EDI). If you have any experience with e-commerce in real world applications, you will quickly discover that this book actually shows that XML is to immature to be practicle in any e-commerce solution that is currently addressed by other means. The author appears to be nothing short of a cheerleader for XML and attempts to portray the topic as the greatest thing since sliced bread. After reading this book, I came away feeling like I had just been pitched a pyramid scam in a hotel ballroom. If I had any chance of getting my money back, I would. One a positive note, the book was a quick read. With extra large print and double spacing the physical size is misleading. I have serious doubts about the rest of the Goldfarb series on XML after reading this one. Unfortunately I bought a second Goldfarb book at the same time. Save your money...

This book failed to provide the examples that I expected from a book entitled "XML-by example."

Perhaps it provides adequate information for those interested only in learning esoteric terms and concepts, but it fails to provide the everyday developer with anything useful.

Unfortunately (for me, because i could have been reading something else), the examples do not come with any meat - they are small, "context-less", snippets of code without any illustration of what the code actually does. very confusing for someone who doesn't want or need to spend 10 hours reading a book from cover to cover.

practically useless.