Rating: 
Summary: bad book
Review: hard to read.
too much large.
imposible to finish the book, and to learn nothing with this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Too many cooks spoil the food !
Review: .
I gave it 3 stars because it floods you with lot of Information.
In reality this book can easily be reduced (from current 750+ pages) to 400 pages.While reading this book you will be frustrated atleast twice every chapter. In each chapter they have much more to talk about the non-issues than the issue at hand. The height is in Chapter 10 - SOAP. Only 2 topics XSLT and XSchema are covered well. Coverage of DTD is ok. The chapters on SAX, Namespaces, SOAP and DOM are a nightmare. The 2 case studies are practically useless. ...
Rating:
Summary: bad
Review: ADO, javascript and microsoft based.
XSLT is impossible to understand.
This subject of "beginning xml" should be written in 400 pages and not in 822.
What if you want continu to "expert xml"?
Shall you read 3000 pages in 3 books?yes you can buy all the wrox xml line!!
:-)
Rating: 
Summary: THE intro for (MS) Developers
Review: See my full comment on XML Bible Gold Edition. Basically, these two books are complementary - one for Coders and the other for Writers/Designers. This is the best intro for Developers I can find so far. It covers the basics, then immediately proceed to SOAP, RPC, Web Services, and all the buzz that's going on right now. The coverage seems perfectly balanced btw breadth and depth. Two annoyances came thru in my cursory read:
- Heavy Microsoft bias: explanations for setting up sample SOAP and other servers are targeted to Windows only, no Unix/Linux support. Many of the code samples are in ASP, although some others are in Java. Annoying but perhaps inevitable given MS' de facto leadership on the technology so far.
- No CD, although the examples are supposed to be available online.
Rating:
Summary: Good coverage of XML and related standards
Review: Definitely a good book for beginners; also a nice reference guide. Covers XML, Namespaces, DOM, SAX, XSLT, SOAP, Schemas, etc. Two case studies show building Web applications and Web services using XML.
Rating: 
Summary: Not Great
Review: I found this book confusing. I am pretty good with HTML and have some experience programming Visual Basic. I would not recommend this for beginners. It did a decent job of "how" but left me in the cold about "why". XML, XSL, XSLT, XPath, DOM, SAX, DTD, EDD, how do all these relate, or do they? The authors assumed Javascript expertise and did not communicate toward beginners, but experienced web programmers. Chris La Porte
Rating: 
Summary: Jeff Rafter is XML's Zeus
Review: Editor Jeff Rafter contributes more information to this field than any other person on Earth. I think they should have named this book "XML Perfected, By: Jeff Rafter and other anonymous people--that, while not as brilliant, are passable." Hand him a lollipop and call him Uncle Einstein.
Rating:
Summary: A book of frustrations
Review: If you are beginning XML this is not the book for you. The book contains a high number of errors in the examples. Keep away from this books second edition.
Rating:
Summary: Not for beginners.
Review: 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).
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Code Examples, Great Updated Version
Review: This new edition really improves on the previous one. Although I liked the previous edition, this one is even better, and contains corrections, adds chapters on new technologies not covered in the previous one, and continues to deliver on Wrox quality. For those who don't have the previous edition (first), this one covers everything you need to know about XML as of today.
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