Rating: 
Summary: Clear, concise, cheap!
Review: Elizabeth Castro's Book is written in a very clear and precise style. She doesn't attempt to explain absolutely everything about XML - it shows you how to write and then put XML into web pages, which she covers very thoroughly; if you want any more detailed info such as ASP and XML, the DOM etc. go buy those thick tomes that deal with those topics specifically.This book was perfect for my needs. I have been reading snippets all over the web about XML for months now but nowhere had enough detail - this book takes you through how to set out your information and then put it up. Even though this is an area of "shifting sands" in terms of finalised standards she is bang up to date. There is no doubt that XML is going to be the NBT (Next Big Thing) - get in there at ground level and read this book. If you want an excellent introductory yet very practical primer this is ideal. Leon Cych
Rating: 
Summary: not worth your time
Review: Great overall resource for learning and understanding XML. This is a great place to start if you're not sure how to use XML in your development endeavours. The fact that its the only book i've needed (about xml) is a tribute to how well it's served us in our office. Great background of the subject, and a great overview of DTD's a majore part of XML's scope. This book will definitly get you up to speed on the world of XML.
Rating: 
Summary: Not as Good as Castro's HTML Book
Review: I had high hopes for this book, But I have come away disappointed. I used Castro's HTML book to learn that language, and I was favorably impressed. I found the examples in that book easy to walk through, and I felt they did a good job explaining basic concepts and procedures. I also liked the fact that Castro brought a designer's perspective to the subject. Unfortunately, I can't say the same for this book. I have spent the better part of a day on its chapter on XSLT, and I don't feel like I have gotten a handle on the subject. I feel about the same way about XML schemas. I think XML may simply be a subject that requires a programmer's, rather than a designer's perspective. The book could use a complete rewrite, particularly its walkthroughs, which I have had trouble following and making sense of. If you need to write style sheets, schemas, or anything else beyond the simplest XML, you are probably better served by another book.
Rating:
Summary: What?
Review: I have the HTML Visual QuickStart guide, which was extremely helpful, so I bought this one hoping for more of the same. Unfortunately, this was no help whatsoever. It NEVER explains why in the world I would need to learn XML. It looks like almost all of what it shows in the book can be done with straight HTML, java script, and/or css, so why should I learn another language on top of all that????? Anything more advanced is not covered in depth, or not covered at all. Very disappointing book, I've gone through the whole thing a few times and still can't find any reason why I would need to learn this.
And as for the "examples" shown in the book, they are pathetic. You never see the beginning or end result of what they are doing! And the code is never shown fully, just a few lines of what is being done at the time. At least once at the end would have been great, but no dice. XML is supposed to be the new standard? Well after reading this either XML is almost completely worthless, or this book just didn't teach anything. I'm still trying to figure out which.
Rating: 
Summary: not like her others
Review: I've read some of Elizabeth Castro's other books and been fairly satisfied. Her strength has generally been showing basic material and then showing how it would look. I realize that XML isn't quite HTML, but where there should have been examples there were often things like, I.E. and Mozilla don't support this yet, so I can't show you how it should look. Perhaps the book shouldn't have been written yet, and maybe a later edition would be better.
Rating:
Summary: OK reference, poor tutorial.
Review: My initial impression of the Visual QuickStart series was very positive, but I don't think this way any more, and especially so after reading this book. The format works OK for a reference book, but it fails as a tutorial. There is no overall big-picture and conceptual understanding of XML. The author gives lots of excerpts from a single extended example that illustrate specific syntax issues, but working with these small pieces is very hard to follow. Smaller complete examples would have been much more helpful. One very important topic - even for beginners - is completely missing. This is the DOM (short for Document Object Model) that lets the programmer use the different XML nodes in a programming language such as Visual Basic. We use XML at my workplace as a means of transmitting information from a SQL Database to code modules that can operate on the information, but there is nothing in this book that is helpful here. There is also no explanation of why the different aspects of XML are significant in the real world. After reading this book, I got the impression that the main function of XML is to format data stored in XML files for end user presentation in HTML. But XML is much more important than this. The book will be of some use - I will be referring to it for answers to specific questions. But if this was the only XML book I had read, I would not have any good grasp of the topic. For an excellent beginner's book on XML, read 'XML Step by Step' by Michael J. Young (now in a second edition). You can really learn something there.
Rating:
Summary: Basic XML
Review: The best way to teach a beginner (myself) how to write code is to consistently illustrate the code with examples that can be modified and used in various circumstances. As she has stated in the introduction of the book, this is not an advanced book on XLM for developers but a project manager's book to understand the language of the developers when they are talking and even understand the code being developed. This book follows the same type of verbiage and examples from her previous book, HTML 4, so the transition from very easy. This book delves into the basics of XLM, DTD, Schema, XLST, Cascading Style Sheets and some more topics for the reader to discover.
The price of the book is affordable for anyone trying to step into the new World of coding language.
Have fun coding.
Rating: 
Summary: A Roadmap to the Future of Web Pages
Review: The first reference book I reach for.
Like most Peachpit books, this XML guide is low on fluff and high on useful, easy to understand info. It gives me principles and examples in very helpful ways. Each example is worth my time, because Castro thinks them out carefully and makes them useful on more than one level.
XML continues to change, so I consider the publisher's website as part of the book. Their online updates are better than most.
Rating:
Summary: Good For Beginners
Review: This book is geared more towards the "For Dummies" crowd. It presents the basics and has an example for almost every concept it covers. It is also very cheap. This is a good book if you are new to XML or need to learn a few basic concepts to keep up in the work environment, lingo mostly. If you want to create and support XML production level code then this book isn't for you.
Rating:
Summary: Useful, but the first edition is very outdated
Review: This is a decent reference guide, but uncomfortably out of date. While the author keeps her site updated for latest changes, why buy a book when you need to read the most up to date info online anyway? The book is an excellent bargain, but a free online tutorial (on oreilly for example) is a much better deal. The best intro to XML book I've read is still Beginning XML (WROX--wait for the 3rd edition if you can, the 2nd edition is still more recent and more useful than the VQ guide).
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