Customer Reviews

XML How to Program

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

 

 

I have a pile of XML books on my desk. They all seem to assume too much or assume to little. Those written at my level appear to be written with the "stream of consciousness" approach to technical authoring. This book is a breath of fresh air. As a novice with only a basic understanding of XML, I jumped right into the chapter on schemas and felt I had a very strong grasp of it in just an evening. Every topic was explained with clarity, and, yet it did not seem too slow or dull. The code samples included line-by-line explanations. If I got it just by looking at the sample, I could move on. Otherwise, the explanations were there to illuminate the sample for me. The review and exercises at the end of each chapter follow the collegiate textbook formula. Why is it a formula? Because it works! What a sense of accomplishment to get to the end and be able to answer the questions and perform the suggested exercises.

Best available XML book for integration, isn't that what XML is about anyway? I have read countless other books on XML, including: LEARNING XML (Peachpit Press), LEARN XML IN 24 HRS (SAMS), XML w/ ASP & VB and this book is by far the best. DEITEL continues it's great reputation for consistently publishing exceptional learning tools. Not only is XML syntax explained but the CD comes with learning tools to integrate BIZTALK/SOAP, XBRL, WML, VoiceXML, JavaServer Pages, SAX, WAI, and more! Without this book you might as well be John Ritter stumbling over a couch, trying to learn XML. Just don't practice XML, use it in all the latest languages and technologies. The future is here and DIETEL continues to bring us to speed.

I was about to give up on finding a book on Java and XML. I had already purchased two in the past that lacked real-life programming examples and seemed to be a regurgitation of formal XML specification. But then I did a search on Amazon.com and found this book. Just by knowing the author, I knew it was going to be a great book. I've used Deitel's "C: How to Program" as a classroom textbook and "Internet and World Wide Web: How to Program" as a professional reference.

I can't say enough about the book. Numerous professional quality applications and examples; programming tips; concise, well-written prose; exercises at the end of each chapter. The authors are great teachers, not just great programmers dumping their vast technical knowledge into a book. The only thing I wished they'd done was to broaden the discussion on XML Entities. I found myself referring to another text to get a handle on their use (but, maybe that's just me!). However, I was able to apply other examples and bits of applications write out the book and retrofit into a Java/XML program I was developing at work.

I read some of the other reviewer's comments on the book and I agree with some and disagree with others. In comparison to other popular XML books it's not perfect but it's solid. If you are like me, a beginning XML programmer then you need to learn XML hands on and the book gives just that. Giving you examples and problems to apply what you just read is the best way to learn and thats what this book does. I read the "XML by Example" by Marchal and although that was a solid book also, it doesnt give you the material or examples for YOU to practice. Marchal doesnt offer the code samples for download either. One reviewer said that in order to complete this book's self review exercises you have to use outside sources. This is true but think about it...what better way to learn than by being challenged?

I also read some of Erik T. Wray's (O'reilly series) XML book. That book is the better of all 3 books in my opinion but again it doesnt offer you that hands on material that I need. Love or hate the Deitel's books, the bottom line is that until these other authors challenge the enthusiast on whatever topic they are writing about people will always turn to these books. Yes the line by line styles are annoying but you know exactly what functions, (tags in this case) the author is referencing. Theory is great but the only way you will truly know any language you learn is by doing it! Last but not least I DO NOT WORK FOR THE COMPANY!!!!!!

Most of the stuff you get from Deitel & Deitel is pretty good. I recommend their books as a whole. Some people mention their credentials (like having a degree, etc, etc) like this somehow demonstrates that their review is less biased or more credible somehow. Yes, I do have a degree in computer science and I've been programming for DECADES. Does this mean anything? Not really, but read on...

This book costs $72.00. There aren't a lot of pages in it, when you consider the price. However, the pages are very glossy and very bright. This is some very high-quality paper. Is that worth the extra cost? Maybe not.

This is clearly a book that's situated for a beginner. You don't really get into the good stuff until Chapter 5, presuming you're fairly comfortable with HTML. Some other reviewers clearly took this to heart and quit the book early. It's not THAT bad. Once you're out of the history and background and review, it gets cooking, and there are about 27 chapters.

Everything about the book's presentation screams quality. Unfortunately, this is reflected in the price. This is the first XML book I've gotten, so I can't say how little or how much it covers, but I didn't feel "ripped off". The end of chapter sections are quite extensive; this would make the perfect textbook for an XML class that presumes no prior knowledge of HTML.

I like the way Deitel teaches. I always got much help from C, C++ and java from Deitels's How to Program series. But this one is not satifactoty. Even though this book's title is xml, contents about xml technoligies are not dealt with sufficiently. Some chapters contain the introduction to asp,cgi,perl and java. The introduction to those technologies are easy to get on internet and in other books. The authors should deal with core xml technologies.
The Deitel's series are of college-text- book-sytle.I guess xml is not for college course style. If you are new to xml from non programming experience or the other programming lanuguage. I recommend the XML in a nutshell by Rusy Harold.

I much enjoyed this book as the presentation of complex topics is made very clear. I feel that this book helped me to understand several topics that I never fully understood before (for instance XLink).

Generally the approach in this book is to give a clear and concise coverage of each important topics. This is the best approach to learn but reader should be aware that the coverage is not exhaustive enough for the book to serve as reference. In fact I would have prefered that the author added complete reference on several topics (XML DOM, XPath, XSLT, XSLFO) instead of the 'bonus programming chapter'.

The book is catered for programmers. As a result the table of content will satisfy programmers (unlike many beginning XML books it gives ample coverage of XML APIs) but examples are sometimes non-trivial and written in high-level programming languages. Although generally, it must be said that effort has been made to use various programming languages (i.e. Perl, Java, ASP, etc) so that everybody should find some useful examples.

I would have prefered additional coverage of XML services, SOAP, etc. Also, I found that several chapters (Programming java, programming Perl, etc.), while not useless, were clearly off topic and added to fill-in pages. Only other criticism is that the book is really quite expensive. However, it is one of the best book to LEARN xml (even though you may require additional reference to use it).

One last thing: do not buy the CD ROM training kit of the book. The CD ROM included is very disappointing.

Edit: I wrote this review a while back. Since then, I revisited the book and I must say that it does appear dated. In particular the coverage of schema (an important topic) fails to suitably cover the W3C Schema recommendation and focusses mostly on Microsoft's version of schema which are now hardly used. For this reason, I would recommend another book instead (for instance, Beginning XML from Wrox) until the publisher comes with an updated edition.

This book is a big waste of money. Besides being very expensive, most of the book covers other subjects other than XML, with little relevance to XML. Although there is some useful information on using XML with Java, there is way too much information on the Microsoft implementation of XML, (when the book actually gets around to mentioning XML) and the standardized W3 version of XML seems to be included as an afterthought. The reviewers who gave this book such a high rating probably didn't read the book very well, or are hired by the publisher. A much better book is the Liz Castro Quickstart guide to XML (for a fourth of the price of the Deitel!), although it is centered around the W3's standard for XML, and doesn't mention Microsoft's implementation. Castro text, however, is more suited to learning from the ground up. The Deitel text is a disaster and I wish that I had just kept my money.

I've been programming for a few years and have a computer science degree.
I'd heard all the hype around XML and XML related technologies, and while looking for a book on the subject, stumbled upon the XML Training course.
At the time there were no reviews for it so I took a chance.
It seemed to good to be true. All of the XML stuff was included, plus lots of stuff I don't need, like the first few chapters which cover HTML (this should have warned me) plus it includes a short primer on Java and some other stuff as well.

Well, to make a long story short, I stopped reading it in the middle.

It just seems to me that the authors just wanted to make a fast buck by getting out an XML book that tries to cover everything. The book isn't even all written by the authors !! In the acknowledgements, they list about 10 different people who contributed to various chapters!

The book reads like a dry reference manual (that's not even %100 complete) with a lot of examples thrown in.
The coverage is shallow and doesn't go into any reasoning or teach you how to USE XML technologies, it only teaches you how to WRITE for XML technologies.
The examples themselves are at the same level of "hello world" stuff.
I guess I'm "spoiled" from reading books like the O'Reilly series (most of them) or Thinking in Java.

I've read about 30 programming books over the past few years, and this one is the worst.
I'm sure you can learn more from better resources available freely on the web.

I bought this text thinking it would compliment the E-business and E-commerce How to Program text (it was recommended that way). However, it is really just a reconstituted version of the other text, which also falls short of its advertised use. Don't waste your money!