XML How to Program (Paperback)

~ Harvey M. Deitel (Author), Paul J. Deitel (Author), Tem R. Nieto (Author), Ted Lin (Author), Praveen Sadhu (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Offers a careful explanation of XML-based systems development, for faculty, students, and professionals. Includes extensive pedagogic features, including Internet resources. The CD-ROM contains thousands of hyperlinks and other information. System requirements: Pentium 133 MHz+ processor, Windows 95+ or Linux 6.0+, CD-ROM drive and Internet access. Softcover.

From the Inside Flap

Preface

Live in fragments no longer. Only connect.
Edward Morgan Forster

Welcome to the exciting world of XML! This book is by an old guy and four young guys. The old guy (HMD; Massachusetts Institute of Technology 1967) has been programming and/or teaching programming for 40 years. The four young guys (PJD; MIT 1991, TRN; MIT 1992, TML; Carnegie Mellon 2001, PS; Northeastern 2000) have each been programming and/or teaching programming for many years. The old guy programs and teaches from experience; the young guys do so from an inexhaustible reserve of energy. The old guy wants clarity; the young guys want performance. The old guy seeks elegance and beauty; the young guys want results. We got together to produce a book we hope you will find informative, challenging and entertaining. Why We Wrote XML How to Program

Today, XML is arguably the hottest technology in the computer industry. Therefore, university professors are eager to incorporate XML into their undergraduate and graduate Internet, Web, e-business and e-commerce curricula. Professionals are eager to use XML in their industrial-strength information-technology applications. Students are highly motivated by the fact that they are learning a leading-edge technology (XML) that will be immediately useful to them as they leave the university environment and head into a world where the Internet and World Wide Web have a massive prominence.

After mastering the material in this book, students will be well prepared to take advantage of the Internet and the Web as they take upper-level courses and venture into the rapidly changing programming world.

XML How to Program is the latest book in the Deitel/Prentice Hall How to Program series. It is distinguished by its focus on XML-based application development using programming languages such as Java, VBScript and Perl.

We have syntax-colored the code throughout the book. The key focus of this book is applications development with XML. Our audiences care about XML processing on the client, XML processing on the server, using XML encoded data as a database, etc.

Many XML books are reference manuals with exhaustive listings of features. That is not our style. We concentrate on creating real, working applications. We provide the live-code™ examples on the CD accompanying this book (and on deitel) so that you can run the applications and see the results.

We are excited about the enormous range of possibilities XML has to offer. We performed extensive research for this book and located hundreds of Internet and Web resources (which we provide as live links on the CD-ROM that accompanies this book and on deitel) to help you learn about XML and its related technologies. These links include general information, tutorials and demonstrations. Please read the tour of the book in Chapter 1 to familiarize yourself with the XML technologies we present.

A cutting-edge technology, XML is constantly evolving. This creates tremendous challenges for us as authors, for our publisher—Prentice Hall, for instructors, and for students and professional people.

We have worked hard to create useful live-code™ examples to help you master XML quickly and effectively. All of the code examples are on the accompanying disk and are available for free download from our Web sites:

deitel prenhall/deitel Teaching Approach

XML How to Program contains a rich collection of examples and exercises drawn from many fields to provide the student with a chance to solve interesting real-world problems. The book concentrates on the principles of good software engineering and stresses clarity. We avoid arcane terminology and syntax specifications in favor of teaching by example. The book is written by educators who spend most of their time writing about and teaching edge-of-the-practice programming topics.

Live-Code™ Teaching Approach
The book is loaded with live-code™ examples. This is the focus of the way we teach and write about programming, and the focus of our multimedia Cyber Classrooms and Web-Based Training Courses as well. Each new concept is presented in the context of a complete, working program immediately followed by one or more windows showing the program's input/output dialog. We call this style of teaching and writing our live-code™ approach. We use programming languages to teach programming languages. Reading these programs is much like entering and running them on a computer.

XML How to Program shows how to create Web sites starting with HTML programming, then rapidly proceeding to programming in XML. HTML and XML are considered to be markup languages rather than programming languages, but many of our examples use XML in the context of Java, VBScript, Active Server Pages, Perl and JavaScript. For those readers who wish to review these programming technologies, we include full-chapter introductions to VBScript, Active Server Pages, Perl and Java. The Java treatment is especially substantial.

World Wide Web Access
All of the code for XML How to Program (and our other publications) is on the Internet free for download at the Deitel & Associates, Inc. Web site -- deitel

Please download all the code and run each program as you read the text. Make changes to the code examples and immediately see the effects of those changes. It is a great way to learn programming. Note: You must respect the fact that this is copyrighted material. Feel free to use it as you study, but you may not republish any portion of it in any form without explicit permission from Prentice Hall and the authors.

Objectives
Each chapter begins with a statement of Objectives. This tells students what to expect and gives them an opportunity, after reading the chapter, to determine if they have met these objectives. It is a confidence builder and a source of positive reinforcement.

Quotations
The learning objectives are followed by quotations. Some are humorous, some are philosophical, and some offer interesting insights. Our students enjoy relating the quotations to the chapter material. Many of the quotations are worth a "second look" after you read each chapter.

Outline
The chapter Outline helps students approach the material in top-down fashion. This, too, helps students anticipate what is to come and set a comfortable and effective learning pace.

Example XML documents (with Program Outputs)
We present features in the context of complete, working XML documents. This is the focus of our teaching and our writing. We call it our live-code™ approach. Each Web document is followed by the outputs produced when the document is rendered in a Web browser (We use both Microsoft's Internet Explorer 5 and Netscape 6) and its scripts are executed. This enables students to confirm that the Web pages are rendered as expected. Reading the book carefully is much like entering the code and rendering these documents on a computer. The documents range from just a few lines of code to substantial examples with several hundred lines of code. Students should download all the code for the book from our Web site, and run each program while studying that program in the text.

Illustrations/Figures
An abundance of charts, line drawings and program outputs is included.

Programming Tips
We have included programming tips to help students focus on important aspects of program development. We highlight these tips in the form of Good Programming Practices, Common Programming Errors, Testing and Debugging Tips, Performance Tips, Portability Tips, Software Engineering Observations and Look-and-Feel Observations. These tips and practices represent the best we have gleaned from a total of almost eight decades of programming and teaching experience. One of our students—a mathematics major—told us that she feels this approach is like the highlighting of axioms, theorems and corollaries in mathematics books; it provides a foundation on which to build good software.

Good Programming Practices
Good Programming Practices are highlighted in the text. They call the students attention to techniques that help produce better programs. When we teach introductory courses to nonprogrammers, we state that the "buzzword" of each course is "clarity, " and we tell the students that we will highlight (in these Good Programming Practices) techniques for writing programs that are clearer, more understandable and more maintainable. Common Programming Error
Students learning a language—especially in their first programming course—tend to make certain kinds of errors frequently. Focusing on these Common Programming Errors helps students avoid making the same errors. It also helps reduce long lines outside instructors' offices during office hours! Performance Tips
In our experience, teaching students to write clear and understandable programs is by far the most important goal for a first programming course. But students want to write the programs that run the fastest, use the least memory, require the smallest number of keystrokes, or dazzle in other nifty ways. Students really care about performance. They want to know what they can do to "turbo charge" their programs. So we have include Performance Tips to highlight opportunities for improving program performance. Portability Tips
Software development is a complex and expensive activity. Organizations that develop software must often produce versions customized to a variety of computers and operating systems. So there is a strong emphasis today on portability, i.e., on producing software that will run on a variety of computer systems with few, if any, changes. Achieving portability requires careful and cautious design. There are many pitfalls. We include Portability Tips to help students write portable code. Software Engineering Observations
The Software Engineering Observations highlight techniques, architectural issues and design issues, etc. that affect the architecture and construction of software systems, especially large-scale systems. Much of what the student learns here will be useful in upper-level courses and in industry as the student begins to work with large, complex real-world systems. Testing and Debugging Tips
This "tip type" may be misnamed. When we first decided to incorporate Testing and Debugging Tips, we thought these tips would be suggestions for testing programs to expose bugs and suggestions for removing those bugs. In fact, most of these tips tend to be observations about programming capabilities and features that prevent bugs from getting into programs in the first place. Look-and-Feel Observations
We provide Look-and-Feel Observations to highlight graphical user interface (GUI) conventions. These observations help students design their own graphical user interfaces to conform with industry norms.

Summary
Each chapter ends with additional pedagogical devices. We present a thorough, bullet-list-style Summary of the chapter. This helps the students review and reinforce key concepts.

Terminology
We include in a Terminology section an alphabetized list of the important terms defined in the chapter—again, further reinforcement.

Self-Review Exercises and Answers
Extensive self-review exercises and answers are included for self-study. This gives the student a chance to build confidence with the material and prepare for the regular exercises. Students should attempt all the self-review exercises and check their answers.

Exercises (Solutions in Instructor's Manual)
Each chapter concludes with a set of exercises including simple recall of important terminology and concepts; writing individual statements; writing small portions of XML documents and program; and writing complete XML documents. Instructors can use these exercises to form homework assignments, short quizzes and major examinations. The solutions for most of the exercises are included in the Instructor's Manual and the Instructor's CD available only to instructors through their Prentice-Hall representatives. NOTE: Please do not write to us requesting the instructor's manual. Distribution of this publication is strictly limited to college professors teaching from the book. Instructors may obtain the solutions manual only from their regular Prentice Hall representatives. We regret that we cannot provide the solutions to professionals. Solutions to approximately half of the exercises are included on the XML Multimedia Cyber Classroom CD (available in bookstores and computer stores; please see the last few pages of this book or visit our Web site at deitel for ordering instructions). If you purchased this book as part of The Complete XML Training Course, you should have also received the XML Multimedia Cyber Classroom CD. If you purchased only the book, you can purchase the Cyber Classroom CD separately—please see the ordering instructions at the end of the book.

Index Entries
We have included an extensive Index at the back of the book. This helps the student find any term or concept by keyword. The Index is useful to people reading the book for the first time and is especially useful to practicing programmers who use the book as a reference. The terms in the Terminology sections generally appear in the Index (along with many more index items from each chapter). Students can use the Index in conjunction with the Terminology sections to be sure they have covered the key material of each chapter.

"Double Indexing" of Live-Code™ Examples and Exercises
XML How to Program has many live-code™ examples. We have "double indexed" each of the live-code™ examples. For every source-code program in the book, we took the figure caption and indexed it both alphabetically and as a subindex item under "Examples." This makes it easier to find examples using particular features.

Bibliography
An extensive bibliography of books, articles and online documentation is included to encourage further reading. Software Included with XML How to Program

The CD-ROM at the end of this book contains a variety of software, including Microsoft Internet Explorer 5, Apache Xalan (for Java), FOP and Xerces, W3C Amaya Web browser and Sun Microsystems' JAXP. The CD also contains the book's code examples and an HTML Web page with links to the Deitel & Associates, Inc. Web site, the Prentice Hall Web site and the many Web sites listed in the Web resources sections of the chapters. If you have access to the Internet, the Web page on the CD can be loaded into your World Wide Web browser to give you quick access to all the resources.

If you have any questions about using this software, please read the introductory documentation on the CD-ROM. Additional information is available at our Web site: deitel. We do not provide technical support for the software application programs. However, if you have any technical questions about the installation of the CD, please email media.support@pearsoned. They will respond promptly. XML Programming Multimedia Cyber Classroom and The
Complete XML Programming Training Course

We have prepared an optional interactive, CD-ROM-based, software version of XML How to Program called the XML Multimedia Cyber Classroom. It is loaded with features for learning and reference. The Cyber Classroom is wrapped with the textbook at a discount in The Complete XML Training Course. If you already have the book and would like to purchase the XML Multimedia Cyber Classroom separately, please call 1-800-811-0912 and ask for ISBN# 0-13-089555-5.

The CD has an introduction with the authors overviewing the Cyber Classroom's features. The live-code™ example Web documents in the textbook truly "come alive" in the Cyber Classroom. With many of the examples, you can simply click the lightning bolt icon and the document will be loaded into a Web browser and rendered. You will immediately see the program's outputs. If you want to modify a document and see the effects of your changes, simply click the floppy-disk icon that causes the source code to be "lifted off" the CD and "dropped into" one of your own directories so that you can edit the document and try out your new version. Click the speaker icon for an audio that talks about the document and walks you through the code.

The Cyber Classroom also provides navigational aids including extensive hyperlinking. The Cyber Classroom remembers in a "history list" recent sections you have visited and allows you to move forward or backward in that history list. The thousands of index entries are hyperlinked to their text occurrences. You can key in a term using the "find" feature and the Cyber Classroom will locate occurrences of that term throughout the text. The Table of Contents entries are "hot," so clicking a chapter name takes you to that chapter.

Students like the solved problems from the textbook that are included with the Cyber Classroom. Studying and running these extra programs is a nice way for students to enhance their learning experience.

Students and professional users of our Cyber Classrooms tell us they like the interactivity and that the Cyber Classroom is an effective reference because of the extensive hyperlinking and other navigational features. We recently had an e-mail from a person who said that he lives "in the boonies" and cannot take a live course at a university, so the Cyber Classroom was a good solution to his educational needs.

Professors tell us that their students enjoy using the Cyber Classroom, spend more time on the course and master more of the material than in textbook-only courses. Also, the Cyber Classroom helps shrink lines outside professors' offices during office hours. We have also published the C++ Multimedia Cyber Classroom (3/e), the Visual Basic 6 Multimedia Cyber Classroom, the Java 2 Multimedia Cyber Classroom 3/e, the Internet and World Wide Web Programming Multimedia Cyber Classroom, e-Business and e-Commerce Multimedia Cyber Classroom and the Perl Multimedia Cyber Classroom.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 934 pages
• Publisher: Prentice Hall (December 31, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0130284173
• ISBN-13: 978-0130284174
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #543,471 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, some clarity!, January 19, 2001

By A Customer

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.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best available XML book for integration, January 24, 2001

By	"egiangrosso" (Chicago) - See all my reviews

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.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars XML: How to Program is Great, May 13, 2001

By	David Gordon Harris (Laurel, MD United States) - See all my reviews

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.