XML Schema (Paperback)

~ Eric van der Vlist (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"If you've ever wondered how complex types are defined or how you can use regular expressions inside Schema, this is the book for you." PC Plus, Christmas edition 2002 "I recommend this book as a very useful guide and reference." - Rob Hughes, Cvu, August 2003

Product Description

If you need to create or use formal descriptions of XML vocabularies, the W3C's XML Schema offers a powerful set of tools for defining acceptable document structures and content. An alternative to DTDs as the way to describe and validate data in an XML environment, XML Schema enables developers to create precise descriptions with a richer set of datatypes that are essential for today?s applications. While schemas are powerful, that power comes with substantial complexity. This concise book explains XML Schema foundations, a variety of different styles for writing schemas, simple and complex types, datatypes and facets, keys, extensibility, documentation, design choices, best practices, and limitations, with examples throughout. In addition, XML Schema provides a complete reference to all parts of both the XML Schema Structures and XML Schema Datatypes specifications, as well as a glossary. Appendices explore the relationships between XML Schema and other tools for describing document structures as well as work in progress at the W3C to more tightly integrate XML Schema with existing specifications.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.; 1st edition (June 15, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596002521
• ISBN-13: 978-0596002527
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #508,606 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

32 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars An Editing Nightmare, November 10, 2003

By A Customer

This book had potential to be a definitive guide to XML schema. This is not the kind of book you can pick up and read cover to cover (unless insomnia is a real condition for you, in which case this book may help). It is, by no means, a tutorial of XML schema - or even a reference. It's more of an exploratory academic walk of the W3C recommendation and all of its foibles and nuances. There is wealth of information in this book, if you can glean it out from inbetween the droning prose and historical diatribe.

O'Reilly should be shamefully embarassed for ever letting this book go to print in the condition it is. It is replete with errata, typos, and slopped together examples. This book is destined to frustrate those new to XML schema. An uncharacteristicly poor level of quality for O'Reilly.

49 of 52 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent for experienced developers, July 28, 2002

By	Mike Tarrani "www.tarrani.com" (Deltona, FL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

Having recently read "Definitive XML Schema" by Priscilla Walmsley I thought I'd learned all I needed to know about XML Schema. That book is more tutorial in tone and content, while this one quickly dispenses with the background material and gets into the technical details. In fact, by chapter 2 you're already developing a schema and the subsequent chapters drill deeper into the mechanics of XML Schema.

I like the way each facet, factor and detail of XML schema is covered, including clear descriptions of data types, a direct linkage to XML-based databases, and all of the building blocks along the way. More importantly, the author provides multiple approaches to developing schemas, and sufficiently covers the syntactical requirements and specifications to allow you to become proficient in creating them for real applications.

The book is fast-paced and you will need to be familiar with XML and its related vocabularies in order to follow this book. If you need a more introductory, tutorial-based book get "Definitive XML Schema" by Priscilla Walmsley. However, if you understand the fundamentals of relational databases, are currently developing DTDs and understand XML, this book is better suited to your experience level and is the one I recommend.

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Sloppy editing an embarrassment for O'Reilly, November 11, 2002

By	THOMAS M GREEN (Arlington, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This book appears to have been thrown together overnight, without the attention of a proofreader or content editor. While I can't say it's actually missing important content, it is certainly the sloppiest O'Reilly book I've ever read. The very first example (on p. 6) is a glaringly ill-formed XML document (the second line contains spurious junk text, as if from a word-processing error), and it just continues from there. The book contains numerous apparent "cut-and-paste" errors of this kind, as well as evidence that global search-and-replace operations were hastily performed on the entire text without subsequent proofreading. What's up, O'Reilly?