Rating: 
Summary: Several "Bibles" in One
Review: After borrowing the "XML for Dummies" book, I decided to buy this one because it contained introductions to DOM, java, javascript, xsl, xslt, etc. The book is a very good value for the money & helped me find a solution that I'd spent days looking for. It also helped me start writing javascript using DOM right away, which was invaluable. It has very good explanations, examples & lists (e.g. properties & methods of the XMLDOMnode object). I didn't always like the way examples were presented, but overall I think it's a valuable learning and reference tool.
Rating: 
Summary: This book is a MUST!
Review: As a programmer, I am exposed to numerous resource manuals so you can imagine my hesitation when I picked up yet another reference guide. However, much to my suprise "Inside XML" is a well written, well devised book, that provides me with detailed, easy-to-understand, and valuable information on XML day-in-and-day-out. This is definitely one of the best-used resources on my desk - and I highly recommend it to anyone who wishes to explore the world of XML further. You can tell a lot of hard work went into the construction of this title - kudos to the publisher and author!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent "foundation" book
Review: As it says on the cover, this book is intended to be a foundation. It doesn't spend a lot of time on one subject, he spends a good amount of time on quite a few subjects.Writing an XML book is a difficult adventure. It's not very long before you start to stray away from "true" XML. You start to get into using the DOM or SAX to manipulate your files and use them for what they were intended to be - a way of storing data. To teach SAX or the DOM, you need to make sure the reader has some skill in a programming language (Steven chooses Java and JavaScript.) As a result, he spends time talking about both languages before getting into using the DOM or SAX. If you have the exprience, you can just skip these and go on. But for someone (like me) who has limited knowledge of Java, it's an essential chapter. The book also has an excellent presentation style. Steven writes as if he's teaching a class. He introduces a topic, and then uses the skill he just talked about. But instead of writing the whole program and then going over it, he builds it right in front of your eyes, talking about what's going on each step of the way. It's very easy to pick this up and become quite proficient at the skills he covers. All in all, it's a great place to get started. It's not going to be an end-all-be-all book. It doesn't try to be that. But if you want to hit the ground running in XML, this is a great place to start.
Rating: 
Summary: Big, empty and useless
Review: Do you want to learn about the personal preferences of the author? Do you want to learn that Microsoft Internet Exporer is the best thing that ever happened to the humanity? Then this book is for you! Do you want to learn about XML technologies? Then it is definitely a wrong book. I do not completely agree with the previous reviewer that the book is poorly organized. The fact is that in spite of its 1000 pages, it has essntially no material to be organized. Almost on every other page, the same lengthy example is reprinted. Of course, it could've been shortened -- to make the point it illustrates more clear -- but then it would have reduced the total number of pages in the book... The book is useless both for the beginner and for the intermediate level. It has no systematic description of the language or its features. In fact, there is no more or less full (not to mention good) description of any of the topics covered in this book. In stead, the book contains chapters on Java, Perl and JavaScript. Never mind, that these chapters contain no information that could be used. The Perl chapter, for example, simply contains the printout of Perl modules available on CPAN. As long as it makes the book bigger... The author apparently has never heard about Xerces and Xalan parsers and only from rumors heard about the existence of non-Windows operating systems. So if you are looking for something to use as a weight -- buy this book.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent introduction to XML
Review: For many people XML is a huge mishmash of markup and confusing syntax. Inside XML is an excellent resource for people who want to get to grips with XML quickly. Although not for the extreme beginner, the steep learning curve of the book is excellent when you need to know *fast*.
ALl major topics are covered including basic XML, DTD's (both internal and external), XML Schemas, XSLT including XSL-FO and XPath - two things I haven't seen covered well elsewhere when talking about XSL., XPointers, XLinks, XHTML and the always handy RDF/RSS. Additionally some treatment is given to client-side processing in Javascript and different processing models (SAX and DOM). Server-side processing examples are mentioned in Java and while the introduction to Java was probably a bit unnecessary, when you have to demonstrate implementations, Java is probably best suited to the job being relatively cross-platform. One aspect I particularly liked about the book was the graded way in which each topic was introduced. Enough basics of the topic were introduced early on so that you could get up to speed while enough advanced matter was also introduced further on so that you could really crank out some quality work or consult the specifications without getting hopelessly lost. Overall and excellent work and I look forward to checking out 'Inside XSLT'
Rating:
Summary: This is the one!
Review: Having read Steven Holzner's Java Black Book, I ordered this XML book "sight unseen." This is the best XML book I've seen to date because it strikes the right balance between theory and application. Within just the first few pages, you have a good grasp what XML is, how it is used, and how YOU can actually use it. Too many other books seem to delve too deeply into XML anatomy or a specific application of XML, that the reader comes away with little understanding of what XML is and how it can be used, regardless of the specific environment.
Rating:
Summary: Very well done!
Review: I am very impressed with this book. It provides a thorough, step-by-step guide to the technologies. You need this book to understand how the pieces (i.e., the alphabet soup of XML-related standards) fit together. I have several other XML "overview" books, and this is by far the most comprehensive.
Rating: 
Summary: A very repetitive and unorganized book!!!
Review: I don't know how this book has 4 1/2 stars on reviews, I really think that the author is more concerned on the number of pages than on explaining XML. I don't deny that the author knows about the topic, but I just think that the deadline to finish the book was too close or that he doesn't knows how to organize his ideas. He starts talking about one thing but then he mentions some property about that and he gives a brief explanation then he says that he will cover it later and then he gives you the same explanation but with a better example. Also, he claims to have a lot of examples but you will find that the examples are just the same, he prefers to write a 50 lines example again and again on the book than just writting the new thing he want to comment. So I really think that the author though that a 1100 pages book would be more attractive to the customers.
Rating:
Summary: Great, Great, Great
Review: i found that this book explained everything i needed to know as a first time XML coder... Holzner doese a great job with every aspect of the topics addressed. i found it easy to read and in most cases i had to force myself to put it down...he really knows how to put it into a bigginers perspective.. only topic i wish he would address is ColdFusion and transforming XML to application data using WDDX. overall if you want to know XML this is the book for you...
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Learning Tool.
Review: I found this book to be very thorough. It is well written as well as logical in its progression of teaching you what XML is and how to use it. It's a bit in depth to use as a "quick" reference, but if you're trying to get a grasp of XML and it's structure, I would recommend this book. If you're an advanced user, you'll still find things of use in this book, it will just be in a spelled out manner rather than a quick listing.
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