XML Unleashed [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

by Michael Morrison (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"The first part of the title covers defining XML documents and XML data modelling, but it is the last three parts of the book that are the most interesting and are what make it useful for enterprise software developers."IT Training, August 2001

Product Description
XML Unleashed is a complete and comprehensive reference for sophisticated Web developers that covers every possible use of XML, from creating Web documents to building sophisticated Web applications. It covers all aspects of XML technology, from DTDs, XSL, and X Pointers to manipulating XML with Java and JavaScript. See hundreds of professional programming techniques as well as code for more than 15 real-world XML applications involving e-commerce, database access, Web management, real estate, and healthcare. This book also includes reference material on SMIL, the XML-based language for Web multimedia.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 992 pages
• Publisher: Sams (December 21, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0672315149
• ISBN-13: 978-0672315145
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,219,094 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

46 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most complete book in XML I've read (almost excellent), January 26, 2000

By	D. G. Synodinos (NMC@NTUA@Athens@Greece@Europe) - See all my reviews

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...

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars okay, good topic selections,"professional xml" is better, July 14, 2000

By	Robert Nagle "idiotprogrammer" (Houston, TX United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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).

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Thick book of information, disjointed and rambling., July 17, 2000

By	CWR (Bethesda, MD USA) - See all my reviews

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.