Customer Reviews

XML and Java: Developing Web Applications

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

The title of the book clearly suggested that this is not a beginner's book for either XML or Java. Although it is more appropriately named XML and Java Servlet. Because this book uses Servlets as a framework for web applications (which is a *VERY* good idea). This book presents ideas to system architects about ways to put together enabled web applications whose nature implies extensibility. The most valuable thing in this book is: 1. Explain why do we want to use XML (Important!) 2. How to parse, generate, and manipulate XML with concise examples. 3. Ideas on types of applications we can do with XML and the Servlet framework. 4. How to build tools such as LMX and SQLX which is quite essential in three-tiered systems. 5. You can read it in 2 days provided you're pretty familiar with Servlets and web application.

Ok, I read the review and bought this book. Its woefully out of date and the examples need huge tweaking before they work.

If you are trying to learn XML find another book.

If you are planning to learn Java find another book.

If you are interested in servlets borrow this book and read chapter 7. Then give it back to the poor guy who bought it.

The coverage of XML itself is really poor. I was reading the XML specs and thought I'd get some help. Sorry no such luck. XML is show somewhat but no defns.

Want to use the DOM (Document Object Model). Sorry no such luck. Coverage it terrible. Want to use XSL? Sorry no coverage at all!

Want to use SAX? Get ready to try try try again!

ok. I'll give them some credit as english is clearly not there native language!

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Buy this book when:

(1) You want to learn how to integrate XML in your Internet/Intranet-based infrastructure. (The title mentions 'Web Applications'... do not expect the book to focus on 'Web Sites'. It's more about XML as a storage mechanism, the secure exchange of XML messages over HTTP,...) (2) You value the insight in how experienced developers model their application (using Design Patterns, reusability, etc) (3) A very readable book.

Do not buy this book when:

(1) You're looking for information the latest implementations of XML Parsers, XSL Transformers (the book was published before XSL became 'established'), XML database servers,etc. (2) You're looking for complete, useful applications you can re-use 'straight-out-of-the-box'. (3) You're looking for information on XML as a way to manage the content on your web side.

[This is a review of the second edition.]
It was with some trepidation that I opened this book. It has 9 authors. Sometimes this many can mean that the style varies widely between chapters, and that there may be little logical continuity. Glad am I to say that this book appears seamless. Thanks probably in part to good editorial management by the publisher.

This is an advanced treatment of XML. It presupposes that you are already familiar with java and XML. The emphasis is on developing higher level applications that use XML as message medium.

As a consequence of 8 of the authors being Japanese, they stress that for internationalisation, XML is a good choice for the medium. It was designed from the ground up to handle Unicode. This is needed to describe Chinese and Japanese, which, out of the major languages, are the hardest to deal with, because of the large number of symbols. You should design your applications to maximise outreach to as large a user base as possible. Native English speakers tend to live in a happy technological cocoon, because leading edge stuff mostly appears first in English speaking countries. It is easy when programming to inadvertantly build into your code restrictions to ascii or extended ascii. Then it becomes much harder larger to remove those. Whereas if you choose XML (andjava), you get internationalisation right out of the box.

The discussion of DOM (Document Object Model) and SAX parsers is very nice. Especially in showing how to add SAX filters, and in quantitative estimates of runtime and memory usage of the two approaches. They make the point that XML processors are the result of intensive intellectual work, and that hence you should use these, instead of writing your own. More reliable, and you can concentrate on higher level issues.

For more advanced XML uses, XML Schemas are described, largely supplanting DTDs, since they allow the easy handling of datatypes (like String and integer) and namespaces.

They give succinct examples of how to connect XML messages to databases via Enterprise Java Beans. In doing so, Java Server Pages and servlets are explained. Very logical progression. Then the Web Services Description Language is introduced, along with showing how to use it with UDDI. Security via XML Digital Signatures and Certificate Authorities is then implemented.

The logic flow is very clear. Plus the accompanying CD with the full example code is a great convenience for learning.

I looked forward to getting this book, especially given good reports of it on the IBM alphaWorks site.

However it is a towering disappointment. Its biggest problem is that it deals entirely with the v1 xml4j API. IBM are pushing xml4j v2 to the users, and the net result is that virtually NONE of the examples in the book actually work without rewriting the code to suit the very different way the new API works.

NO PROBLEM, if you already know how the APIs work, in which case you don't need this book anyway. I bought the book in order to find out how to write Java code to read and write XML. I will not achieve this aim by reading this book. It would not be so bad if the authors had at least provided either a web site with updated examples for the v2 API, or contact email addresses so that people like me can chase down exactly what changes need to be made in order to match up the examples to the API. They did neither.

Working with this book has been a truly frustrating business and I consider myself further behind in understanding than when I started.

By the way, even when I went back to v1.1.9 of the API (the version they use) and followed their examples, I cannot get a good proportion of them to work.

This is simply the best book for Java XML. Chapter 2 will guide you through the complacating start-up code and will help you up-and-running in no time. As soon as you finish chapter 2 , u can write a simple but good enough java code to process the xml tree. Chapter 3 is more advanced if you wanna build the xml tree.

I was doing some researches and found this book to be the most helpful book on the market (the other books such as Professional Java XML is the worst book , thus stay away from Professional Java XML because of the lengthy explanation but lacking examples)

There are many parsers for XML, this book focuses on the most popular parser developed by IBM and will prevail over the other parsers. Thus, if you wanna use IBM_developed parsers for your projects, this is the MUST.

This book provides fantastic information, it is well written and has an excellent structure. However, when I bought this book, I was looking for front-end manipulation of XML rather than back-end. This book is almost exclusively about getting XML from servers and then getting the XML transfered to HTML through an LMX processor (which I think is a terrible idea). I was looking for more information on stylesheets and presenting XML. This was a terrific book, and I learned a lot from it, but I just didn't learn the lessons that I was hoping to learn.

Now in its revised and expanded second edition, XML and Java: Developing Web Applications is a solid reference and superbly organized guidebook written specifically for computer and website programmers. Individual chapters cogently address the basics of XML, parsing and serializing XML documents, using SAX, security issues, data binding, Schema languages, and much more. Instances of sample code help flesh out the principles taught step-by-step in this most instructive text. An accompanying CD-ROM contains sample programs ready to run, along with trial versions of WebSphere and DB2. XML and Java: Developing Web Applications is a very highly recommended resource and reference for web programmers at all skill and experience levels.

I had written a review on the 1st edition of this book, regarding it as an outdated early effort. Having read through the second edition and seeing that Amazon placed my earlier review on the 2nd one, I had to pull it down in all fairness to this updated version. I have to say that this book is now THE reference on XML from a Java standpoint. It starts with the basics of XML parsing with DOM and SAX and gradually progresses towards more advanced topics such as XSLT transformations and integrating XML with servlets, JSPs, and Enterprise JavaBeans. It even covers the more recent web services UDDI and WSDL apis. The book is written in a down to earth style filled with code examples and based on one of the most widely used XML processors. This book can be of use both to beginners, as a step by step tutorial, and to more experienced developers as a quick reference. I definitely recommend it.

This book is not what it says it is. I have to know too much to get what I need. I'm glad I ordered St.Laurent and Cerami's book (Building XML Applications) at the same time. It's much better and it's saved me from too many more headaches.