XML by Example (2nd Edition)

Rating:
Summary: <? XML Version Super deluxe!>
Review: Some books have a heavy tendency to become immersed in the exciting technologies that they are writing about, without leaving much scope for the human aspect of learning. XML by example is without a doubt one of the most useful and easy to understand books that I've read in ages. The e-commerce and web based email examples alone are worth the price of the book and it is totally comprehensive. What impressed me about this book most is that it covers more than just the essential aspects of the DOM and XSL, by providing an introduction to Java, Java Server Pages (Jsp's), Java web servers, translation and e-commerce applications (all the code you need is right here). Also the links to resources and applications / tools that are free or open source, which guarantees you'll be up and running with the most cutting edge technology in no time. In a word the most straight forward and to the point book that I have had the pleasure of digesting for a long time. Delicious!

Rating:
Summary: Well worth the money
Review: XML BY EXAMPLE is well worth the price. It gives a full example from a client browser to a server with a database. All the code is online so you can download it, and I have already talked with the author twice. He is nice and helpful. kc

Rating:
Summary: Not the Right Book
Review: I read the first 6 chapters of the book in 12 hours then I stopped and gave up from it, because I got lost and confused, and I feel like I need much more than that to know what's there in the XML world, well the book name is learn by example but actually it is not that, it is "get confused by examples", the examples are so easy to look at but after reading them and read the little tiny bit explanation about them if any, you don't know what is going on there and don't know what is the point, don't know why we want to do that, why we need that from the first place ??
I'm not a new programmer but I just started learning XML and I really don't need a book from the very beginning but still I grabbed this book because I thought It will get me somewhere by practicing with the examples,
there isn't enough examples showing clarity
After that I started reading XML Bible 2nd addition, it has a lot of information and it has a lot more details about each topic compared to this book but still difficult to read and has lots of Errata !!!.
I'm still looking for a book in XML that makes me really understand Schemas, namespaces, XSL, and XSLT, Xlink, relations between them and CSS,
I'm using xmlSpy, and there you will find everything there regarding XML and how to make XSL, XSD, Schemas and DTD then the XML files and XSL and XSLT which really need to understand how they all work together but you find nothing about them in XML by example book, I'm not saying the book should explain xmlSpy but you have to know all these technologies to work on XML project.
I couldn't give this book 2 stars because I can't recommend it to anyone. I can't understand why others can give it 5 stars, I don't believe they can do something with xml just by reading this book!!!
In the end if you think you want to start with this book then don't, read w3c.School and get all the definition for XML technologies then get a much more detailed book for it which I'm still looking for.

Rating:
Summary: XML by Example
Review: This book is certainly not for beginners. Lots of coding is sometimes very confusing. Some hands-on excercises would have made a great differences. Specially if this book is to be used for some sort of curricullum

Adam

Rating:
Summary: A quick and clear approach to XML and Internet Basics
Review: I wanted to harness XML to automate some of the tedious aspects of producing content for my website, HTML help projects, and inside my commercial software products. I have successfully used DocBook/SGMLtools to produce documents of various types, but I wanted the additional flexibility that XML promises. After all, isn't XML an extension of SGML?

With that simplistic goal in mind (generating boilerplate XML and doing simple transformations), I started scouring the Net in search of a good primer. I ended up with this book to learn the basics.

This book is consciously aimed at readers who have experience and knowledge with HTML, and a passing familiarity with XML. It bills itself as an example hands-on driven informational tutorial. Unfortunately, it falls short, and in my opinion is a little myopic.

The first five chapters of this book lay a good foundation for understanding XML. Unfortunately, it isn't until chapter five, that you are actually (almost indirectly) walked through the process of REALLY using XML. Finding an XSL processor was tedious, requiring several Net searches.

This book effectively presents the basics, and keeps going (far beyond what I wanted to know). It even steps you though building a simple e-commerce solution (with Java and XML).

Compared to the other XML resources I looked at, this one is the best at providing a good introduction. After reading this book you won't be a guru, but you should have a concrete understanding of the basics.

Rating:
Summary: Good book, not enough explanations
Review: This book does a very good job of introducing you to the basics of XML. Once you read the first 5 chapters, you are pretty clear about the basic concepts related to XML. But its after that, that the book falls apart. The chapters on DOM and SAX are not well-explained, and seem a bit shallow. There is quite a bit more to these APIs than mentioned in the book. If the book was intended for "real world", then it fails, because the information given in the chapters after chapter 5 is definitely not enough to write real world applications.

The last few chapters are good for design of XML applications, but it seems there are just too many examples and not enough concepts explained. I understand that the book intends to teach "by example", but readers can't be expected to learn things out of reading code!

There is another problem with the book also - its a bit old and out-dated. The chapter on XSLT, along with many other chapters, does not have information confirming to the current XSLT recommendation.

All in all, an OK introductory book for XML, but not a master piece.