Rating: 
Summary: Get started fast with excellent code
Review: This is the best XML/Java book I've seen to date. Why? It's well written. For example, unlike most books written by more than one or two authors, this book does *not* repeat a lot of material that an author previously addressed. The code contained in the book and on CD is well formatted and doesn't contain a lot of needless fat surrounding the meat; it get's right to the concept they're trying to relate.
I especially liked the chapters written by the lead author (Maruyama) and especially his XML Security chapters. Worth the money - just for the code.
Additionally, the code is well written - example, the import statements list each class; they don't use ".*;"
Rating:
Summary: The best XML book I've found so far.
Review: This is the book to read to get you started doing productive work using XML. I've read a number of other XML books that do a good job explaining what XML is, but still leave you confused on how to use it. "XML and Java" will have you coding. The book focuses on using IBM's excellent ( and free ) set of XML tools, particularly XML for Java. This allows the authors to provide pratical examples of using XML and gives developers a framework to work off of. If you want to get past the hype and buzzwords and actually start cranking out some code, I highly recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: excellent book but covers only XML4J
Review: Very good designed book. Easy to understand but it covers only XML4J and only the older versions.
Rating:
Summary: Detailed examples
Review: Written by the people at the core of IBM's XML/JAVA toolset, this book shuns the hype surrounding XML and JAVA. This book provides a well organized set of detailed examples covering the core components and technologies required to make the XML/JAVA combination part of your success.
Rating:
Summary: A valuable addition to your XML and Java library
Review: XML and Java(TM): Developing Web Applications is for developers who already grasp the basics of XML and Java(TM) and wish to develop useful web applications using these technologies. This book includes applications that use Java(TM) Servlets, JavaBeans(TM), JDBC(TM) and Databases. It also covers character encoding, security and messaging. A valuable addition to your XML and Java library.
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Summary: A Clear Exposition on Building Applications on top of XML
Review: [This is a review of the second edition.]
It was with some trepidation that I opened this book. It has 9 authors. Sometimes this many can mean that the style varies widely between chapters, and that there may be little logical continuity. Glad am I to say that this book appears seamless. Thanks probably in part to good editorial management by the publisher.This is an advanced treatment of XML. It presupposes that you are already familiar with java and XML. The emphasis is on developing higher level applications that use XML as message medium. As a consequence of 8 of the authors being Japanese, they stress that for internationalisation, XML is a good choice for the medium. It was designed from the ground up to handle Unicode. This is needed to describe Chinese and Japanese, which, out of the major languages, are the hardest to deal with, because of the large number of symbols. You should design your applications to maximise outreach to as large a user base as possible. Native English speakers tend to live in a happy technological cocoon, because leading edge stuff mostly appears first in English speaking countries. It is easy when programming to inadvertantly build into your code restrictions to ascii or extended ascii. Then it becomes much harder larger to remove those. Whereas if you choose XML (andjava), you get internationalisation right out of the box. The discussion of DOM (Document Object Model) and SAX parsers is very nice. Especially in showing how to add SAX filters, and in quantitative estimates of runtime and memory usage of the two approaches. They make the point that XML processors are the result of intensive intellectual work, and that hence you should use these, instead of writing your own. More reliable, and you can concentrate on higher level issues. For more advanced XML uses, XML Schemas are described, largely supplanting DTDs, since they allow the easy handling of datatypes (like String and integer) and namespaces. They give succinct examples of how to connect XML messages to databases via Enterprise Java Beans. In doing so, Java Server Pages and servlets are explained. Very logical progression. Then the Web Services Description Language is introduced, along with showing how to use it with UDDI. Security via XML Digital Signatures and Certificate Authorities is then implemented. The logic flow is very clear. Plus the accompanying CD with the full example code is a great convenience for learning.
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