XML Bible (Paperback)

by Elliotte Rusty Harold (Author) "XML has been described as a meta-markup language-that is, a language for describing markup languages..." (more)
Key Phrases: Internet Explorer, Duke Orsino, Elliotte Rusty Harold (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
The emergence of XML is having an enormous impact on Web development, and scaling the learning curve of this new technology is a priority for many developers. The XML Bible offers a superb introduction to the subject and the groundwork to understand XML's future developments.

Author Elliotte Rusty Harold uses a patient, step-by-step discussion that clearly points out the potential of XML without boring his readership with tons of SGML spec-speak. Harold opens quickly with a "Hello World" example to get the reader coding early, and follows that with a simple but powerful example of XML's data management benefits--presenting baseball statistics. Once you've coded your first XML documents, you'll be hooked on the technology and motivated to learn about the more sophisticated topics.

Style sheet languages are covered comprehensively to illustrate the presentation possibilities and pitfalls. An unusually long list of real-life XML applications also shows how XML is already being used, and there is in-depth coverage of the Resource Description Framework, Channel Definition Format, and Vector Markup Language. The book wraps up with a section that helps you design your own XML application from scratch.

Titling a book a bible is a bold move, but this engaging and informative guide is entitled to make this claim. --Stephen W. Plain

Topics covered: XML background, example XML applications, type definitions (DTDs), style languages, Xlinks, Xpointers, Namespaces, application planning, and XML 1.0 specification.

Review
"The XML Bible provides complete coverage on all XML-related topics and will be an essential resource for any developer." —Sean Rhody, Technical Editor, XML Journal --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 1056 pages
• Publisher: Wiley; Bk&CD Rom edition (August 31, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764532367
• ISBN-13: 978-0764532368
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (67 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,341,516 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

134 of 141 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best XML book I've seen so far., February 1, 2000

By	Alex Strasheim (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This book is terrific, and if you want to learn about using XML in web sites I recommend that you buy it.

XML books are, on the whole, pretty lousy. Everyone keeps talking about how XML will transform the web, but most books are thin on specifics -- exactly how XML will be used, and exactly how to make things happen. I've seen other reviews here from people who feel that this book doesn't do a good enough job of explaining those things. But I think that compared to its competition, it does an excellent job.

XML is new, and it's not in widespread use. As I write this, the only popular browser with solid XML support is IE5, and I guess that most people don't want to write sites that only work with one browser. But if you go to the XML site at msdn.microsoft.com and look at the table of contents, you'll get an idea of what XML can do, and why you'll want to learn it.

The book is well written and its a pleasure to spend time with it. The author knows as much about writing as he does about computers, and he knows a lot about computers. The explanations of XML are clear and conversational in tone. The focus is on using XML in web sites, and the book gives a lot of needed attention to XSL, the style sheet language used to format XML docments for the web. I've read other XML books, and I bought this one primarily to learn more about XSL.

The title of the book might be somewhat misleading. It is not a comprehensive guide to XML, but rather a best of breed tutorial on a very important chunk of XML stuff you'll want to learn. One reviewer pointed out that it's a poor reference book, and that's true, in a sense. There is an XML reference in an appendix, but it's an ultra-geeky BNF reference that probably won't be very helpful to most readers, especially given the book's non-programmer target audience.

A more serious problem is the book's neglect of Microsoft's XML schema technology, which is far superior, in my view, to DTDs. The word "schema" doesn't even appear in the index. And finally, this is not the book you want to buy if you want to learn how to program a java XML parsing engine. This is not a book about programming.

So why do I give this book five stars? It's fun to read and it's great at explaining XML itself, as well as a number of vital, connected technologies: XSL, DTDs, CSS, CSL, XLinks, and XPointers. I was fuzzy on XSL, XLinks, and XPointers, and this book helped me a lot. Those are exactly the things you need to know to get a XML site up and running on the web.

XML is a big, important technology, and I don't think there's a single book that covers everything you'll want to know. This book, despite the "Bible" title, doesn't try to cover everything. But what it does cover, it covers very well.

56 of 58 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, Functional Introduction to XML, November 8, 1999

By A Customer

This book gives one of the better introductions to XML I've seen. Rather than limiting the scope to a simple overview of the concepts, Elliote Rusty Harold incorporates useful examples that allow the reader to begin experimenting with XML right away. The book is not going to get a beginner coding e-commerce solutions using XML. For that kind of work further reading is definately required. But this book does cover all the neccessary concepts to get started and does a better job than most explaining XSL - the key to actually using your XML documents. I'd highly reccommend this title as a starter to anyone's XML collection.

45 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not so much a Bible as a Book of Genesis, August 15, 2000

By	Terence P Hutt (Running Springs, CA United States) - See all my reviews

I'm going to start out by saying I'm glad I bought this book. It's a good introduction to XML. The early chapters on XML and DTDs are very good. They got me up to speed quickly so I could explain to my managers why our company should pursue XML and what the benefits will be.

The chapters on CSS-1 and CSS-2 were excellent and very useful even for writing regular HTML. Overall, the first 13 chapters were just what I needed.

Coverage of XSL was weaker and, in many respects, inadequate. The book never really discusses XPaths in enough detail. I thought the chapter on namespaces was too late in the book. The book is fleshed out with exceptionally long examples that added little value past the first few lines.

The chapter on reading a DTD (chapter 20) was a good idea, poorly executed. The complexity of the DTD selected by the author was totally inappropriate for the level of this book, even if the DTD was extremely well written.

The author never covers schema construction, and only briefly mentions them at all. Given their superiority over DTDs, this was a glaring error.

I was also disappointed by the lack of instruction on how to move XML across the Internet between applications. XML that never leaves the system it was constructed on is of little value.

Many of these problems are caused by the age of the book. It's over a year old now which, in XML terms, makes it yesterdays news. Now that this book has got me excited about XML, I'm off to find some more.