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The most helpful favorable review
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207 of 216 people found the following review helpful:
Excellent straightforward way to learn XML from scratch
Having read quite a few XML books from Wrox (5-6), I think that this book will be able to touch the biggest audience. It contains a very good approach to learn about XML well-formed documents, CSS for XML, XSL(T), DTD, and it also have some nice Case-Studies that goes along. Hey, you even have an introduction to ASP and another one for HTML; for those of you new to...
Published on July 23, 2000 by Maxime Bombardier
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49 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
A Candy giving Headaches
No doubt this is a must for beginners in XML, and after a long time the GODs at Wrox decided to grace us poor programmers who are not gurus with a Beginning book. The way they had been churning out Professional series out of their factories I had already prepared my obituary for the Beginning series. About the book. One of the best on the block for XML. Language is...
Published on April 11, 2001 by oz
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207 of 216 people found the following review helpful:
Excellent straightforward way to learn XML from scratch, July 23, 2000
Having read quite a few XML books from Wrox (5-6), I think that this book will be able to touch the biggest audience. It contains a very good approach to learn about XML well-formed documents, CSS for XML, XSL(T), DTD, and it also have some nice Case-Studies that goes along. Hey, you even have an introduction to ASP and another one for HTML; for those of you new to the Internet.Most of the XML books (straight one, not XML for VB for example) contains the same TOC but this one has the best approach so far. If you are new to XML, take this one. If you know a bit of XML (and PROGRAMMED it), you can take the Professional XML which will go a little bit more in depth (not that much) If you know what you are doing with XML and wants to learn more about XSLT, get the XSLT Programmer's Reference(great book) from Wrox. If you want a very good Case-Study, take the Professional XML Design and Implementation (also good). Then you are off with ASP XML, VB XML, or Java XML. Happy XML hunting.
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92 of 95 people found the following review helpful:
A Great Beginning Book for the XML Novice, October 2, 2000
One thing to remember about this book before you buy: It is a "Beginning XML Book," NOT a "Beginner" book. You are going to need some knowledge of data management, file management, and web page development to understand the groundwork for XML development.However, if you do have basic ASP, SQL, and HTML skills like I do, then this book is a great start if you want to add XML to your skillset. As with all Wrox books published over the last two years, this book is well-structured, well-written, and well-indexed. It will teach you more than you need to know for XML basics, and you can use the book as a reference down the road. I waited for this book to come out all summer, and it was well worth the price and time I put into it. Good job, Wrox!
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49 of 54 people found the following review helpful:
A Candy giving Headaches, April 11, 2001
No doubt this is a must for beginners in XML, and after a long time the GODs at Wrox decided to grace us poor programmers who are not gurus with a Beginning book. The way they had been churning out Professional series out of their factories I had already prepared my obituary for the Beginning series.About the book. One of the best on the block for XML. Language is simple, easy to understand, and handles complex topics like XSLT very deftly. Downside. Very very wordy. This is the first time I see in a Beginning series the author spending so much ink and pages on simplest of topics. Strangely enough some complex topic are written off in half a page. Examples in XSLT dont work. Inspite of downloading the XT program which the author recommends, more than half of the examples of the book don't work, leaving you depressed and confused, you then tend to re-read the pages, trying to find if you missed anything... XML applications arent covered in a greater detail and neither are practical examples for XML use shown. In my opinion even with its faults this book is still, one of the better ones on the block, try skimming thro the earlier pages a bit faster if you don't want to be put to sleep. Don't waste too much time if the books XSLT examples don't work, just buy this books to get your basics covered and made strong. Lastly, as I have mentioned again and again, Wrox beginning series are no longer what they used to be, and if anyone at wrox is reading this, I pleade them to get back on their earlier motto of providing quality books like the beginning asp/asp databases/javascript series, or end up losing their fans like me.
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21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
Friendliy XML book that's also quite meaty, November 8, 2001
I've seen 4 or 5 XML books and own two including this one. The other one I have is XML: A Primer 2nd Ed by Simon St. Laurent...I've seen other books as thick as or thicker than 'Beginning XML' and from a quick glance, I've found to contain little more than fluff.'Beginning XML' does a good job of covering all the important topics related to XML like Namespaces, DTDs, Schemas, XPath, DOM, SAX, XSLT, CSS etc... much so that the title is not really accurate in this sense. The other introductory XML books out there do not even touch on these topics to any practical degree. I would also not recommend a Microsoft Press XML book as, typical with anything from Microsoft, I suspect it will teach you XML in a style that forces you to be dependent on Microsoft tools. However, as MS is one of the most important purveyors of quality XML tools it would also be a mistake to ignore their offerings. 'Beginning XML' does a very good job of acquainting you with both the MS tools as well as some of the more important third party ones. The author's style is very friendly and easy to read and succeeds in making very complex and often boring topics like XSLT almost tolerable and sometimes even entertaining. Even more importantly, he touches on all the important issues in depth so that after finishing this book you can consider yourself at least an intermediate level expert in the myriad XML-related technologies out there. The only reason I'm not giving five stars is because there just might be something better out there. But then, I wouldn't hang around waiting for one, 'coz Beginning XML, unlike the other books out there, is going to educate you on the topic in a sufficiently comprehensive and useful way. XML and its related technologies is a huge and difficult field, and any book that looks like it makes for light reading will, in my opinion, fail to teach the subject properly.
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28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
Choppy and poorly written, January 8, 2007
(I don't have time for a full review right now,so I will write a few comments and try to add to them.)
I knew very little about XML, so this sounded promising. As of Chapter 8, my general comments are:
1. The teaching structure is often murky. At many spots, the authors don't seem to grasp what a beginner needs to know first in order to go to the next step. This makes the material unnecessarily difficult and confusing.
2. Instead of one example page, for some reason the authors will sometimes create one XML page to illustrate a point, then create another completely different page to illustrate the next point, then go back to the first one for the next point, etc. It's inexplicable. The book would be much easier to follow, and probably easier to write, if they built one XML page from scratch and used/modified it throughout the book.
3. There are too many editorial screw-ups, such as "Figures" that are labeled incorrectly or don't exist -- that is, the text will say "see Figure 7 for the output" and Figure 7 will be the wrong one. I really have no patience with expensive books that don't bother to pay for one thorough copy-editing.
I am currently on Chapter 8 (XSLT), one of the worst-written ones. After a completely unnecessary discussion about "procedural" versus "declarative" programming (I imagine every reader is at least basically familiar with css, and if not, it is hardly difficult to understand "declarative" programming), the book just starts throwing XLST terms at you, with no foundation as to what they are doing or why. I finally gave up and pulled up the online W3C tutorial. This tutorial is free, covers most of the material, and is well-organized and easy to understand. Teaching in logical order isn't that hard.
There is a ton of good information in "Beginning XML", and the information on how to find, install, and use software such as Saxon and Schematron is invaluable. It is a shame that the authors didn't take the time to actually give the book to a few XML novices and then rewrite it as the introductory text it is supposed to be. The poorly organized writing at least doubles, and often triples, the time, energy, and painful confusion needed to learn the material.
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28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
Very Poor Indeed, March 18, 2003
Firstly, before you wish to study XML you're going to need to know a host of other languages. Below is a list of languages you'll need to have an understanding of if you want to use this book, as these languages are used in the chapters given:Chapter 8 DOM - Javascript
Chapter 9 SAX - Java or Visual Basic, you'll also need their respective expensive development studios.
Chapter 10 SOAP - ASP, VBScript, Javascript. Also note SOAP encoding rules aren't covered.
Chapter 11 Displaying XML - CSS
Chapter 12 XML & Databases - VBScript, ASP, ADO. You'll also require Microsoft Access. You'll also need many of the languages listed above in order to follow the two case studies, and with case study one it will help if you know a bit about Java Servlets. Even if you do have all this knowledge the book isn't very good anyway, as a matter of fact it's quite terrible. The chapter on XSLT is incomplete by far. XSL-FO isn't covered at all. XML Schemas are covered over two chapters but this is still far from complete. Web Services are mentioned but not covered. To be honest nothing is covered properly, you're given a taste and then told to buy another one of their books if you want to learn properly. Plugs for their other books occur over and over again, I lost count of the number of publications of theirs they wanted me to buy in order to teach me what this book was suppose to teach me. Note also that there aren't any questions at the end of each chapter, so you can't test what you have or haven't learnt, as the case may be. Basically they are talking at you and hoping you'll become an expert without getting you to attempt to apply what you are trying to learn. Also the books age is really starting to show. Bearing in mind this books size (about 800 pages) it really doesn't cover much. I also found the order of the chapters was ill thought out, there was no flow. The annoying thing is that the book is full of babble, if they cut the babble they could of covered each subject more thoroughly, but of course if they did that then you wouldn't need to buy the other books they keep plugging. I don't think Wrox Press appreciate anymore the time and effort it takes to master computing languages. This book will only serve to increase the time it takes to learn XML and its related technologies. I found Wrox support to be exceptionally unhelpful when I wrote to them with a few queries on areas that aren't explained at all, or are covered very poorly. I wrote several times and I was practically ignored, finally, when I complained quite heavily, they responded, but they still didn't answer some issues so I gave up on them. They claim in the book that they offer exceptional support, well that wasn't my experience. On one problem I encountered they responded by sending me to a web page with a sample chapter from their competitor's publication where my answer could be found. I couldn't believe it!!! Wrox support hindered my efforts in learning this technology further. Don't buy this book, its old, massively incomplete, and leaves you hanging time and time again. It's really just a plug for their other books on XML and its surrounding technologies, so it is deliberately vague.
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23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
Dull but effective, April 15, 2003
Overall, this book is worth the money...but it's a mixed blessing.Ye GODS is this book dull. XML is a dry, dull topic to begin with. Declarative programming is a dry, dull topic. (Or perhaps I've just reached my limit with new programming concepts, and they're not fun any more.) This book does little to liven up that native dryness. But I suppose I don't read programming books for excitement and adventure. Still...I've read nerd books that had less of the "propped-up eyelids" effect. There have even been moments when bold propositions on the revolutionary nature of OOP had me feeling the rush of wind in my (now non-existent) hair, the smell of salty sea air in my nostrils, and the the thrill of the chase in my veins. This book is more like an all-day visit with your prim Baptist grandmother. It might save your soul, but you won't be telling your friends about it later. Some of the material is covered very well. The opening chapters are clear and concise, and the material on XML namespaces was very helpful to me. Other material is not covered so well. Some of the examples in XSLT, especially XPath, are tossed out, and are hideously confusing. It is only two or three paragraphs later that the confusing aspects are cleared up (if at all). I find this maddening, because I tend to hover on the example, and the paragraph immediately following it, until I figure it out. (I hate leaving unresolved questions in my mind when I'm reading programming books. Too often, they stay unresolved, and then I find myself lost when I'm attempting to code.) When I would finally give up in despair, I'd find the answer a bit further down the page, and realize I'd been wasting my time. Overall, when I got through the XSLT chapter, I understood it, but it was much more frustrating than it needed to be. I sense the lack of a good editor (or maybe any editor) here. There were also a few strange examples written for, as the author himself admits, the "sheer perverseness" of it. DON'T DO THAT! If you want to have a sidebar where you show some unusual ways of doing things, fine. Keep them out of your primary examples. This is where a good editor steps in, clears his throat, and points a stern, accusing finger at the offending passage. A single word--"Out!"--suffices to bend the author to his will. But I have to admit that I have yet to see somebody write a good, overall introduction to XPath that doesn't completely confuse and discombobulate a newbie. So it isn't just this author who is at fault. The chapters on XML Schemas and DTDs are good. The chapters on the DOM and SAX interfaces are excellent. I nearly enjoyed reading them. A lot of the later stuff in the book doesn't really belong in a "Beginning XML" book, if you ask me. SOAP, XML and Databases, Linking and Querying XML...these seem like at least intermediate topics, if not advanced. In my opinion, the "Beginning" part of the book ended more or less at page 385, even though the book goes on to page 603 before you hit the appendices. (The appendices contain some helpful reference material.) I'm also not terribly happy with Wrox's "sell more books" technique of having "Beginning" and "Professional" books that have so much overlapping material. A lot of the stuff in their "Professional XML" book is not much more than a rehash of material presented here. It's dull enough the first time! The diagrams on the backs of their books imply that there's a progression from one book to the other. I didn't think that reading the "Professional" book was worth the effort after reading the "Beginning" book. I just picked out bits I was interested in. That meant at the bookstore, because I sure wasn't going to fork over the price for another big book I wouldn't read. One other thing--the book has far too many errors in it. Admittedly, Wrox is very good at having online errata for their books to provide corrections. But careful editing up front is always preferable. The whole nerd book industry has a really awful reputation for sloppy editing. It's time that changed. Nevertheless, there's no doubt that this book gives you a good grounding in a broad range of XML topics. Be prepared to be confused by the XLST and XPath material. (Consider looking at other sources for XPath in addition to this one.) Be prepared to visit Wrox's errata page for this book, and write in all the corrections in your copy. But this book does fairly well for a single-volume introduction to XML. If only it weren't so dull!
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36 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
Not for beginners., January 6, 2002
For me (with 20 years of professional programming experience) a software book that calls itself 'Beginning XYZ' means that I should be able to read it from cover to cover and when I'm done, I should have enough of an understanding of XYZ to be able to actually use it in a productive manner. 'Beginning XML' completely fails by this definition.I am quite a fan of Wrox Press books and some of the 'Beginning' books will take you to the intermediate level by the time you are done. But Beginning XML is a mish-mash of confused ideas and faulty logic. One Amazon reviewer was completely on the mark in saying that it's sometimes hard to follow the reasoning in this book because a single sentence will start off one way and then contradict itself by the end of the sentence. The main frustration of this book is how often I could not understand the argument in a single paragraph or even a single sentence. This book also fails very badly on separating important stuff from stuff that doesn't matter. Because it's not well organized, I had to do the work of figuring out what is going on in each topic instead of having the book tell me. (If I wanted to learn XML from other people's code, I could have just gotten code and saved money by not buying the book.) Also, as an XML beginner, I don't need constant references to Web sites that give the W3 specifications on various XML technologies. There is much other detail of use only to advanced XML users. I gave the book two stars instead of one because it may be of some use to programmers with much more experience in XML, and because the authors did make some effort. (Some books are so full of text and coding errors, I feel that I've been taken advantage of. These are the 1 star books.) In short, not for beginners. If you want a great beginner's book, do yourself a favor and get 'XML Step By Step' by Michael J. Young (now in a second edition).
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25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4th edition is vastly updated - May 2007, September 20, 2004
Any review prior to May 2007 has to refer to one of the 3 older editions. The 4th edition adds a new chapter on Ajax, simplifies some of the examples to focus the learning more on the concept and less on the example data itself, and is rearranged for some better flow. There were also fewer working authors on this edition for better cohesion from chapter to chapter.
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26 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
Possibly the best Intro book to XML, January 21, 2001
Hi,I have been looking at number of XML books and I recently found the "Beginning XML" from Wrox which was really by far the best I have seen. The book is very clearly explained. One of the thing that I particularly like about it is that the table of content is well-designed. While this may sounds trivial, it is not the case for many other Intro XML books I have seen, who typically tend spend too much time on the genesis of XML and little if any to topics of interest to programmers (The XML DOM or SAX for example). For this reason, I think that this book is the right book to get started. Perhaps complemented sometimes along the line by a another book dealing more in-depth with the specificities of the programming environment you are dealing with (such as the Java xml, VB xml or asp xml books by the same publisher). The one thing that I was lukewarm about were some of the case studies: while designing a threaded discussion board with XML is ingenious, it is also one of the most difficult and inefficient ways that I could think of doing it. The book cover indicates that this books is aimed at more or less every user. In my opinion, the book is aimed at experience web developers (knowing at least HTML) who understand basic programming concepts and have some programming experience (with anything). It does not on the other hand require the user to be fluent at all in Java, VB, ASP or Javascript for instance (although readers who have such knowledge will appreaciate some of the examples).
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