Customer Reviews

XSLT 2.0 Programmer's Reference (Programmer to Programmer)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

It is difficult to give a numeric rating to this book because it depends on what kind of reader you are:
- If you have done little or no XSLT, and you want a book to efficiently explain how to start doing XSLT this is a TERRIBLE choice.
- If you are a beginner who wants to know every tiny detail of XSLT and has plenty of time to learn it, then this is a good choice.
- If you've already read an XSLT book, you are already comfortable with XSLT, and now you want to learn all the extra details the other authors thought wasn't important enough to include, then this is a GREAT choice.

This book almost reads like a specifiation. Although to be fair, I've read some specifications, like the EJB specification, that are more focused than this book. Any good trainer or training author knows that you have to organize your material to first put the emphasis on the central introductory concepts. Once your audience understands the basics, then you can build upon that foundation to explain the advanced topics. Along the way, you should always put the main focus on the most important topics, and just briefly mention extraneous details. Unfortunatley, this book does not organize the material for learning and covers everything with approximately the same emphasis. As just one example of this, Chapter 1 spends eight LONG pages on the history of XSLT including details like when so-and-so joined the specification team or presented a paper at a conference. What Chapter 1 does not do is give you any idea of how to write an XSLT sheet. I plodded my way through the first two chapters wondering when we'd get past all the gory details to a description of how to write an introductory XSLT sheet. Finally, I had enough and looked through the book trying to find how far I should jump ahead to find the introductory section, and realized it didn't exist. All the basics are interspersed with endless details throughout the book.
To be fair, the book calls itself a "programmer's reference." So one could argue that it shouldn't be designed to learn XSLT. However, trying to use this book as a reference would be equally probelmatic because its too hard to find the important information among all the extraneous details.
So if you already know XSLT well and want to know all the extra details, I truly do highly recommend this book. But if you want to learn XSLT in a resonable amount of time, I strongly recommend against this book.

The author is one of the great xslt scholars, and this book is a brillant testimony to the breadth of his knowledge.

The author is a professional, Wrox is a professional publisher. Then how come the book is so utterly poorly organized? Any book bearing the subtitle "Programmer's Reference" should be organized in such a way that the programmer will rapidly find what she's looking for. Thats is certainly not the case here. An intelligent use of page headers and footers is the first thing a reference book should try to achieve. No such attempt here (try to imagine a dictionnary with no page headers...).

The same goes for the use of titles and subtitles, general chapter and page organisation, font choices etc. The whole thing is a typesetter's nightmare. I might be wrong, but one suspects the author was allowed to typeset the book himself...

Bottom line: it takes way too long to find what one's looking for. In a reference work such flaws are unacceptable.

I still enjoy the book's excellent coverage of the subject matter, but its use is bound with much bickering and swearing out lound.

Michael Kay is to XSLT what Hank Williams is to Country, what Doc Watson is to Traditional, and what Eric Clapton is to rock guitar.

The reviewer below states:

> Horrible, horrible usability.

Huh? I have used the original version of this book from when I was an XSLT newbie until it is literally falling apart, and have always found it to be extremely usable. XSLT can be difficult to master - things that seem "logical" are completely wrong, but it is also the best way to interact with XML. Forget about procedural or even OOP languages when you have XML data to deal with. XSL transforms are the way to go, and Michael explains how to do everything here - except XPATH, but I'll probably order the package with his XPATH book, too.

As with the previous editions, Michael Kay has written a book whose content is of the highest quality. Being the editor of the W3C XSLT and XPath recommendations and the developer of one of the only XSLT 2.0 implementations in town makes Kay the ultimate authority on XSLT. He also writes in a style that is accessible to developers of almost any level (although this is not ideal as a beginner's book).

My big beef with the book is likely not Kay's fault. Being an author myself, I know how stubborn and pig headed publishers can be about their "style guidelines". Well, Wrox, your guidelines stink because this book is virtually impossible to use as a reference. Your font usage makes information impossibly hard to find by flipping pages. Your use of page headings is lame and unhelpful to the developer needing to find info fast.

In the end I have to recommend this book to XSLT 1.0 developers that need to get up to speed fast on XSLT 2.0 but it is too bad most of the profits are going to Wrox and not Kay.

This is a difficult book to review. It contains invaluable information and, with a lot of work, I was able to learn what I needed to learn about XSLT. On the other hand, it could have been written so much better. You can't plan on using it as your only source of XSLT information. Supplement it with other books and online resources and you will do fine.

I actually read most of the first edition of this book and upgraded to this book to stay current. It has two critical flaws:

1) It lacks any "New in 2.0" labels. Given the scope and mass of the book, having to reread the whole thing to find the deltas between versions 1 and 2 is criminal.

2) Horrible, horrible usability.

If you didn't read the first edition, then the content is worth overcoming the hurdles. If you own the first edition, you're better off keeping it, and finding some other book to highlight what changed in version 2.0.

There is no better book on XSLT. No matter if you want to learn XSLT from scratch, or have a long-term reference for the XSLT syntax. This book is the bible for XSLT users. The original book covered the 1.0 standard. This book extends that to support both 1.0 and 2.0 in the same book.

There are two large pieces to the book. The first piece covers the basics of XSLT, with a tag-by-tag reference to the language, as well as XPath in the same manner. Both of these start with introductions that make it easy for novices to pick up the language. The second piece covers design patterns for templates then brings the whole work together into case study sections.

XSLT is an invaluable tool for anyone who works with XML. Once you understand it you will never want to be without it. This book is the best way to learn XSLT, and the best reference for those who already know XSLT. Period.

I was extremely disappointed after trying to read this and several other of these WROX series on XML, XSLT, XPATH, etc.. I had made the mistake of buying the whole series and trying to wade through these exceptionally poorly edited books. While I'm sure that these writers know their subject...they truely do NOT have a clue as to how to write cohesive, instructional material. If you want to find much better writing on this subject, look for some zoo animals on the cover instead of photos of the authors. I really felt cheated having bought the whole series of these WROX books. This is the first time that I have felt this enraged about poor writing...

I've read the reviews on here and the lower ratings really lost sight of what this book is about - its a programmers REFERENCE. Not a tutorial hand holding guide. It is meant to give details on why XSLT is what it is in detail. It is not meant to teach you through step by step examples.

That said, on this basis, the book gets four stars. To be given the opportunity to read through the words of a W3C member who was directly involved in the XSLT 2.0 specification is a gift. How many times do you get the chance to read technical works directly from the source in this amount of detail? Realize Mr. Kay also has done something few people have - created an XSLT processor. So you are getting more information than what you will probably ever need but all packed into one large reference. More so, its one individual, not a group of people where thoughts and theories are disconnected.

This book is not an easy read. If you are looking to get up and running creating stylesheets forget it and be left disappointed. At times it is dry and boring and has too much information to get lost in. Because it is a programmer's reference I really didn't want to know everything, just the 80% of things that really matter. And that's what a programmers reference should be - a well organized book that lets you find things quickly and has enough information in it to let you make decisions.

Unfortunately, there are few XSLT books that are worth reading. Yes, this book reads like a technical IMPLEMENTATION specifcation. Use this book when you want to know how things work and why it was designed that way.

In looking at the other reviews, I have to wonder if some of these people even read the book.

There IS a reference section. Chapter 5 goes through a ton of XSLT elements in alphabetical order and lists what it does and how to use it. It ALSO lists the changes that were made to the element since XSLT 1.0. Chapter 7 does the same thing with the functions.

However, I'm in agreement that this isn't the best book for learning the language. The learning curve is steep. Very steep. However, if you get through it, you'll be ready for almost anything thrown at you (but also get the XPath 2.0 book, to make sure you're an expert).

In short, it's not perfect, but it's a great reference, which is exactly what it sets out to be.