Customer Reviews

XML in a Nutshell : A Desktop Quick Reference (Nutshell Handbook)

5 star:		(19)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Blaise Pascal once wrote "I have made this letter longer than usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter". Writing a book on XML is quite an undertaking. Writing a quick reference that not only provides expert coverage on XML and its associated technologies but does so concisely, practically, and comprehensively is a super human feat! Amazingly, the authors of "XML In A Nutshell" have accomplished just that and it shows.

One of the authors, Elliotte Rusty Harold, is no stranger to the technology. He is an early adopter who has written two previous XML books (and several good Java books) and created a web site devoted to XML (Cafe con Leche).

This book is divided into 4 parts. The first covers the essentials of XML including XML syntax, DTD and namespaces. The second covers 'Narrative Centric Documents' involving XSLT, CSS, XLinks, XPointers and XPath. The third covers 'Data Centric XML, ' involving DOM and SAX. The final part is a quick reference to all the above. Each part contains tutorials that are concisely written and packed with practical examples. Beginners can use it to jump-start their learning experience and experts can use this as a indispensable ready reference.

XML Schema is mentioned but not covered in this book.

Hats off to O'Reilly Associates for producing a professionally attractive, well-designed and portable book. It is comfortable to read and to hold. Stranded on a island and allowed only one XML book, this is it!

As usual, this O'Reilly book makes a good reference into XML and is chock full of information. HOWEVER, as it seems to have been the case lately, this book was not very well edited, almost as if they pushed it through to get published.

Examples:

Page 35: ?, *, + are all listed as allowing zero or one element, where they are actually each unique.

Page 133: The authors show linking in an XSL Stylesheet in an XML Document and they list the type of linked in document as "text/xml" which will NOT produce the desired result. They type should actually be "text/xsl". (this can be a quite frustrating error to debug)

Similar examples are scattered throughout, plus their decision to not even discuss XML Schemas leaves me a bit puzzled, but I knew that when I bought the book so I can complain too much.

If you need a good reference to XML, and you can overlook small errors, then go ahead and purchase the book. If the errors bug you then I suggest you wait for the second edition.

Over the years, I have used several books in the nutshell series and I have always found them to be useful. However if you buy any nutshell book and more specifically the "XML in a nutshell" book with the intention of learning XML from scratch, then you will be disappointed. This book is meant to be a pocket reference for those who know XML and don't want a huge book on their desk.

This book scratches the surface of several XML topics like DTDs,XLink,XPointer,DOM,SAX,CSS etc, but doesn't explore any subject in detail. However one glaring omission is XML schema.

If you are a techie trying to learn XML or an experienced professional looking to enhance your understanding of XML and the related technologies, then Professional XML from Wrox press is a much better bet of your money.

Overall the most useful section of this book is the reference section at the end and is well worth the money if what you want is a good reference book.

XML
This book's an authoritative document: covering XML basics like DTD authoring and detailed discussion of attribute types - through to the more esoteric issues of character sets and the tricky XML namespace standards.
At every step, I found it easy to follow. It's not a book for the non-computer literate though; more aimed at people with an existing basis of technical knowledge. A techie web-designer would find it a good start. About a third of the book is filled with references. I don't know why, but my heart usually sinks when I see page-filling content like this - that said, ultimately it's the reference books like this that end up covered with scribbles and post-it notes, so while they might not make good reading, they're very useful.
It touchs on all the necessary bases - XSLT, XPath, XHTML, XLink, XPointers, CSS - I could go on. This book does. Heck of a basis for future reading: after two and a half years in XML, there's stuff in here that I haven't come across before!

The nutshell series really can't be beat. This book on XML is no exception. If you need to learn, from the ground up, any aspect of XML, this book will explain it to you in a clear, concise way.

From 'what is XML?' to doing transforms using XSLT, this book covers all of the bases you will need to know to get up and running in XML. Where most other XML books skim over topics such as namespaces and how to write XML in different character encodings, this nutshell book explains these topics just as thoroughly as the sections on DTD's, XSLT and XPATH. (I particularly found the XPATH reference section to be useful.)

This book is well worth the money for it's clarity and the fact that it doesn't shy away from the nitty-gritty details.

This book continues the Nutshell tradition of putting a lot of information into a well-written, well organized format. The first 330 pages give a useful summary of each of the core XML standards along with short but illustrative examples. The writer's did an excellent job of covering the technical details of each technology and explaining where that technology could be applied. The final 220 pages are a good reference of the different tags and attributes of each standard. The reference also includes one of the best breakdowns of Unicode character sets I have found in a printed book.

The Nutshell series of books from O'Reilly have a special section of my desk established for them; no other set of books condenses so much information for reference. This book is no exception to this fact.

Before I continue, please avoid buying an O'Reilly Nutshell book expecting it to teach you about the topic it is intended for. As far as I've worked with them, these books are not intended as a do-all be-all that other references want to be. The information introducing you to XML is sparse, so if you don't know anything about XML, get another book. I recommend XML: A Primer by Simon St. Laurent; it is an excellent learning tool, and though it doesn't go into all the detail the XML standard can go into (no book I've found can do such), it provides the user with understanding of XML.

XML in a Nutshell is what I use when I've forgotten how to use a certain aspect of XML detail. As a reference and a second book on XML, nothing comes close.

This books starts out with a quick explanation and walkthrough or XML 1.0 specification that is pretty good. It is lacking a XML Schema (XSD) section as well covers very briefly the XSLT (XML Stylesheets) anyone wishing to anything with sytlesheets after reading this book will be disappointed. XPath coverage is pretty good as well as SAX, & DTD. XLink, XPointer, are talking about but nothing in depth. All example code is in JAVA. Anyone wanting specialized knowledge of ASP.NET / .NET / MS SQL usage of XML should look elsewhere (this is somewhat understandable due to the publish date.)

The book is a dense tutorial on XML as well as a useful day-to-day reference, but this book is not an introductory tutorial because of its relatively fast pace. Topics include XML history Document Type Definitions (DTDs), Namespaces Internationalization XML-based data formats, XHTML, XSL, XPath, XLink, XPointer, and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) Document Object Model (DOM) Simple API for XML (SAX).

Given the complexity and incredible potential of this powerful markup language, it is a given that every serious developer using XML for data or text formatting and transformation will need a comprehensive, easy-to-access desktop reference in order to take full advantage of XML. After reading a good intro this excellent book should also find its place at any developers bookshelf.

FinancialNeeds.com

This is a good reference. Covers XML fundamentals well. Though it has some glaring mistakes like the meaning of ?,*,+ in a DTD, it does well on most of the other fronts.

Note that XML Schemas are not covered in this book, so you should be aware of that before buying this book. Most probably it should be there in the next version though.