Essential XML: Beyond MarkUp (Paperback)

~ (Author), Aaron Skonnard (Author), John Lam (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

XML is often treated as the next pop standard in markup, but seldom in depth as a set of software development specifications. Essential XML digs deep into XML, examining its capabilities as an underlying data-exchange format. This book is for serious software developers who are comfortable with technical terminology.

Right from the start, the book addresses XML as a data format and not a presentation mechanism. It is the belief of the authors that XML handcoding by humans will fade away as XML becomes increasingly a low-level standard for providing communication between applications. The entire book revolves around the XML Information Set (InfoSet), an XML specification that the authors feel is underexamined by most XML aficionados. The InfoSet defines XML documents in terms that are independent of syntax.

The opening section provides an overview to the InfoSet, albeit a very technical examination. There's little ramping up in this book--readers must be prepared to dig into the nitty-gritty right from the start. The text moves on to discuss programming XML via the DOM and SAX, as well as such key topics as transformations and navigation.

One of the book's strongest points is its examination of XML as a messaging technology for the software development market of the future. In a discussion of XML as an improvement over standard component models, the authors proclaim that, "as the software industry looks to XML as a solution to all problems short of world hunger, there is a tendency to reinvent the entire automobile and highway system in the process of reinventing the wheel."

Developers who are fluent in component programming and distributed object models will glean the most from this book. Casual XML implementers should look for a more introductory guide, but tool developers will find this title quite insightful in charting their XML course. --Stephen W. Plain

Topics covered:

• XML Information Set (InfoSet)
• Simple API for XML Version 2 (SAX2)
• Document Object Model Level 2 (DOML2)
• Apache Xerces
• Microsoft XML
• Xpath
• Xpointer
• Xinclude
• Xbase
• XML Schemas
• XSLT
• XML as a software-integration technology

Product Description

The Extensible Markup Language (XML) has been anointed as the universal duct tape for all software integration problems despite XML's relatively humble origins in the world of document management systems. Essential XML presents a software engineering-focused view of XML and investigates how XML can be used as a component integration technology much like COM or CORBA. Written for software developers and technical managers, this book demonstrates how XML can be used as the glue between independently developed software components (or in the marketecture terminology du jour, how XML can act as the backplane for B2B e-commerce applications). Authors Don Box, Aaron Skonnard, and John Lam cover the key issues, technologies, and techniques involved in using XML as the adhesive between disparate software components and environments. They explain the fundamental abstractions and concepts that permeate all XML technologies, primarily those documented in the XML Information Set (Infoset). XML-based approaches to metadata, declarative, and procedural programming through transformation and programmatic interfaces are covered. Don Box, co-author of the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) specification, provides readers with insight into this emerging XML messaging technology for bridging COM, CORBA, EJB, and the Web. Readers acquire a better understanding of XML's inner workings and come to see how its platform, language, and vendor independence--along with its accessibility--make it an extraordinarily effective solution for software interoperation.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional (July 23, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201709147
• ISBN-13: 978-0201709148
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (45 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,746,896 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

68 of 68 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book for the Mensa crowd, January 19, 2001

By A Customer

If you enjoy cuddling up with sentences such as:

"Element information items are fairly adaptable to representing arbitrary data structures, as one simply needs to build an isomorphism between the "native" data structure and a tree-oriented graph of elements and character data"

... then you'll enjoy this book immensely. Me - I'm too stupid and life's too short.

113 of 119 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Very Disappointing, August 28, 2000

By	J. Clark (Fairfax, VA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

When I first heard of this book I was quite excited to get my hands on it. Don Box has authored or co-authored two of the best COM books out there (Essential COM and Effective COM). Aaron Skonnard writes excellent articles about XML for MSDN Magazine. How could this book fail to please? Well it does and it does so on several levels.

This is a 370 page book. 100 pages are devoted to various appendices. This would be fine if the appendices were useful, instead you get 50 pages devoted to a print-out of the XML Infoset Working Draft from the W3C, which in the author's own words "is hopelessly out of date". The text itself is very much in a philosophical vein and provides very few insights into XML and its uses.

There are also many, many errors throughout the text. Errors are of course understandable, but there is such a profusion of errors in some sections so as to make them almost unreadable (especially Chapter 3). The authors claim in the intro that a web site has been created to support this book. Well if you venture to this site you find a page with the single sentence "Thanks for buying the book!". How extremely helpful!

Save your money and instead buy one of the Wrox books on XML.

46 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Even Don Box Doesn't Like This Book!, May 9, 2001

A Kid's Review

On the .NET mailing list Don Box wrote, "We both dislike the first chapter and need to rewrite chapters 4 and 6..." nuff said.