Professional Visual Basic 6 XML [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

by James G. Britt (Author), Teun Duynstee (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Even though XML is still very much a standard in motion, it is nevertheless freely available for implementation today. Professional Visual Basic 6 XML explains the basics of XML and illustrates how to use the most popular development language, Visual Basic, to drive full-featured XML applications.

This book introduces XML concepts using step-by-step code examples. Don't skip past the first part, since its descriptions of XML basics build a foundation for the rest of the book. An up-to-date snapshot of where the various pieces of the XML puzzle stand in the standardization process, and where the technology is likely to head, greatly aids the reader in understanding the discussion about schemas. For example, it's probably not a good idea to learn the syntax of the XML Schema, because the standard is still rapidly evolving.

The discussion of the Document Object Model, the programming tool for manipulating XML data structures, is excellent, with code examples that turn XML concepts into reality with useful VB utilities for controlling XML trees. As the book progresses, the reader will be directed to build an XML editor and explore distributed objects, data transformation, and much more. All of the sample application code is available from the publisher's Web site. --Stephen W. Plain

Topics covered:

• XML
• DTDs
• MS Schemas and XML Schemas
• Document Object Model
• XML Queries
• XSLT
• XPath
• XPointer
• XLink
• Simple API for XML (SAX)
• SOAP
• XML data manipulation
• Distributed objects
• Data transformation
• Microsoft Word-to-XML conversion

Product Description
Professional Visual Basic 6 XML teaches XML theory and application for VB programmers with no previous XML experience. Following a complete introduction to XML concepts and syntax, you'll rapidly discover where and how you can take advantage of XML in your own applications, and how to create new and innovative applications that use XML to achieve powerful results.

The open, extensible and self-describing nature of XML makes it ideal for any situation where complex data is passed from one application or tier to another, or where data needs to be stored in a custom XML format. As a VB programmer you will quickly learn how to integrate XML with VB in a distributed object architecture. This includes storing and retrieving XML from a SQL Server database using a VB front-end, implementing XML linking using a VB component, and the integration of XML and VB applications in a SOAP/BizTalk/Oasis environment. You'll learn how to write your own XML editor in VB and how to transform XML documents to and from HTML and other text formats, including MS Word.

Professional Visual Basic 6 XML is ideal for any VB programmer who wants to learn how to take advantage of XML technology and the available (free-to-use) implementations.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 725 pages
• Publisher: Peer Information Inc.; 1st edition (March 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1861003323
• ISBN-13: 978-1861003324
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #800,842 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Content!, April 13, 2000

By	Thomas Higgins "thiggins1" (Mohegan Lake, NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

From beginning to end, this book extensively covers the XML interface to VB. This book incorporates the fundamental ideas behind XML and gives thorough examples of how and where Visual Basic comes into the picture. I've read some other books on the market that just briefly touch on topic's that this book ends up disecting and, in the process, actually EXPLAIN to you just what is taking place in the code. I recommend this book for a moderate to experienced programmer in VB - they'll teach you the XML you need to know in order to be truly knowledgable.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars This book has its moments, February 15, 2001

By	JRK "jkunzvt" (VERMONT) - See all my reviews

Let's face it, there aren't many Visual Basic/XML related books out there right now. My best suggestion is really think about why you want this book. I bought it because I'm primarily a Visual Basic programmer and I had been working with XML over the web, and I wanted to pick up this book and see what ideas these authors had for integrating XML in to their VB app projects. I wasn't working on a relevant project myself and that was part of the reason I lost interest in this book so fast.

This book definitely is not for beginners of Visual Basic and in fact, I would definitely suggest having some prior knowledge of XML even though the first two chapters provide a quick intro to XML. Perhaps this isn't a comment so much about the book as it is about using XML in VB, but having to learn and use the Microsoft XML DOM 3.0 library reference within Visual Basic meant there were tons of examples and lots and lots of code to type up. In fact, the authors actually create a VB program that parses XML code and it is somewhere along the lines of 10 pages of code!

This book has its moments, I liked the sample application chapter to see how it all tied together and if you love examples, you will see TONS of them throughout this book -- if you are familiar with Wrox, half the text in this book is in grey shading (meaning code example). But overall, as other reviewers have also pointed out, it covers a great deal of stuff without doing one particular thing exceptionally well (sample application withstanding). If your boss has definitely said "Mix XML into your VB app!", this book is probably your best choice. But if there was one thing I learned from this book, it's that I'd rather continue to use XML over the web than in my desktop or distributed VB applications right now.

23 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a super book., May 2, 2000

By	Sudhanshu Thakur "Durham Desi" (Durham, NC USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Of all the XML books I have, this one certainly takes the cake. The chapter on DOM is excellent. The SOAP chapters are a real gem. I had some problem with one the XSLT sample working, I contacted the author and got a response within few hours with the latest source code. The other Wrox book, Professional XML by Stephen Mohr et al is great too. These red books rock.