Customer Reviews

XML Unleashed

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Although the user level as mentioned on the back cover is Intermediate-Advanced, I would say that this book would also serve as a nice introduction to XML since the content is well-formed, precise and accurate and the author explores each subject not only from the standard's point of view but also gives helpful advices on the most widely used tools and practices on the market.

This title introduces the reader to a wide range of information about XML, such as the definition of the language, the many ways to manipulate data with it (databases, scripting, ASPs etc.) and the benefits/practices of XML on the web.

Part VII was a particularly pleasant surprise. It featured information about many diverse XML applications like MathML, P3P, VML, VoxML etc.

I feel that the choice I've made to order it before it was even published (in early December) was a good one.

The only drawback was that because it covered so many different topics it lacked in-depth analysis in some of them. Of course that's nothing that the W3C site can't fix...

I have bought several xml books and wanted to mention my opinions. The best book so far seems to be Professional XML by Wrox. For variety's sake, I also bought, XML Unleashed, a bulky book with not as much organization, but just a lot of code (unlike the professional xml book, which really explained almost everything well). XML unleashed is helpful, because its topics really don't overlap with professional xml. It discusses SMIL, parsing xml with java xml tools on the market, using asp with xml and different subsets of xml (vml, and a variety of other specialized languages specific to one discipline. Unleashed is good because it contains discussions (albeit rather brief) of several different languages. Professional XML sticks to explanations and analysis, a lot of microsoft stuff (but not asp,) and not too much stuff that linux lovers would want to reject the book. Finally I want to mention another book which I used as a first tutorial, Just XML by John Simpson. It's the best written of the three, although a little bizzare humor sometimes. It was written in late 1998 so some things may not be up-to-date (however simpson does a good job of emphasizing the things that weren't likely to change). This would be a good book for people starting, or if the book were bought at a discount. It would also be good when simpson publishes the second edition (later this year).

Because I own another well-written book in Sams' "Unleashed" series, I bought this one. What I was looking for was a good XML reference with concise sections on rules of grammer. Instead this is a hot and cold running dialog that has an irritating tendency to skip ahead of itself by telling the reader the only way to learn is to plunge in. After presenting an example details are omitted as the reader is told that such and such a feature won't explained until chapter 38 so please ignore.

As an example of how difficult this book is to use as an XML reference, I dug and finally found in one of chapter 2's paragraphs a discussion of the '?' and '+' cardinality operators. However, for some reason the third operator '*' had to wait for chapter 3. Their descriptions were incomplete if not down right wrong and the term "cardinality operator" appears nowhere in the entire book. For example the description for '*' says it is used "to indicate that the entire choice group is optional." This description most closely matches the '?' operator. With '*' the group is allowed to appear zero or more times. The In contrast in Wrox's "Professional XML" all three operators are included prominently in a box with a description of each.

The material in this book would have been much more useful if the author and editor would have taken adequate time to better organize it.

This book is not ideal to _start_ learning XML from scratch anget "quick and dirty" into writing your own; it is quitelike an encyclopedia, and keeps many key skills in their own chapters,even if they would be needed together.

If you have already gonethrough an indroduction...then there is no better public resource(online, offline, and even many instructors) for learning so muchabout XML technologies and in so much detail. Mr. Morrison thinksahead of the times by covering ideas that are sure to evolve into themainstream (such as out-of-line links and contextual search engines)while rarely failing to mention the status of the technology with theW3C, supporting software, and links where to learn or download more.He covers existing and create-your-own markup languages to a muchgreater degree than the "XML Bible" which was the other bookI considered buying.

The software on the CD-ROM is useful, but manyare demo downloads, and the CD-ROM could have had more examples and"Get started practices for each chapter.

At first look, this book REALLY amazed me. More than a thousand pages, covering about all topics with at least a minimum relation with XML. But then, when you read the book, trying to use it to understand and develop a XML based application, you discover shallow information, specially at the basics. In the first third of the book, all aspects of XML,XSL and DTD are covered, but the author seems to think its examples are too clear for a deeper explanation. Some of them really are, but there is still too much blanks left. In the second third, the DOM and SAX explanations seems to be the high point of this book. The last third, the book explores some of the existing XML vocabularies, which could be a little shorter givim some more space for the basics of the first third. This book is not a total loss. It should spend more time with the basics...

This comprehensive reference is targeted at sophisticated Web developers and details every possible use and aspect of XML, from creating Web documents and building advanced Web applications, to coverage of DTDs, XSL and X Pointers. XML Unleashed includes reference material on the SMIL language, and provides hundreds of real-world programming techniques and applications involving e-commerce, database access, Web management, real estate and health care. 992 pages, CD (1) Intermediate - Advanced

This book contains a little useful information, but it tried to be everything for everyone, and very few topics are well explained. It contains chapter for java, C++, MS parsers, but none of them are clear. It is not well organized enough to be read from beginngin to the end as a book, and as reference, it is not easy to find something useful and concisely presented. What makes me more dispointed and/or angry is that the CD with this book (or at least, the CD or the book I bought) is not complete. Source code in some chapters are missing!!

Please refer to <<Inside XML>> by Steven Holzner for better XML explanation, <<Applied XML solutions>> by Benoit Marchall (for java developers). <<XML by example>> of Benoit Marchall is also good for beginners.

I came into this book wanting to learn XML. I came out of it with a pretty good idea how to do it. Its not too difficult, but there are areas where I wish more was said. Other than that I am using XML every day, and this book helped me do it.

This is the only book on XML that I have read besides Black Book (which is a junk) and some material on internet. I liked this book for it's crisp and clear explanation of fundamental concepts. The book, as it says, is targetted towards the intermediate to advanced reader and it assumes some prior knowledge of XML. Based on such a reader, the book is an exact target and indeed does some good things to them. Atleast it did for me.

The only thing that I did not like in the book was that the book seems to be little bit out of pace in keeping touch with the advances in XML technology. It does cover the various (advanced) kind of technolgy where it (XML) can be used but for topics like Schema, CSS1/CSS2 or XSL it is not quite in touch. I think it was written in Sep'99 and quite often mentions "as of this writing...". Things have changed pretty much after that, related to XML and would have been better if included. But such things aren't very important from understanding XML, fundamentally. So I would indeed recommend the book but would not give 5 stars due to this hitch. Moreover I haven't read other books on XML and I guess, this book would suffice for some more time (atleast for me).

ps: I found the style of writing in this book very impressive which makes the subject quite interesting. The examples are selected equally well as well.

I came into this book wanting to learn XML. I came out of it with a pretty good idea how to do it. Its not too difficult, but there are areas where I wish more was said. Other than that I am using XML every day, and this book helped me do it.