Rating: 
Summary: Not worth the money
Review: Book is more-or-less ok, but organizationally tends to be a bit disjointed. Also, basic elements of XML are not defined as clearly as they might be.For example, Chapter 3 is titled "XML With .Net in Detail--How Does XML Fit in with .NET". However, the major portion of this chapter is devoted to XPath in-and-of-itself, with only minor reference to .Net. Moreover, I found myself getting lost a bit in the XPath presentation. No doubt this was due to some extent to the complexity of XPath itself, but it seemed like the authors could have been clearer in their presentation. After reading the first three chapters at my local Borders, I switched over to the Microsoft Press "XML Step-By-Step". I find the "Step-by-Step" presentation to be much clearer on the basics, although not as comprehensive (no XPath!). In general, I find the Microsoft Press books to be distinctly better these days then the Wrox books. But I would say that the Wrox VB.Net "Handbook" series does have some real merit, reminding me of the original Wrox books that I used to savor back in the "old" days.
Rating: 
Summary: Hmm...
Review: Book is more-or-less ok, but organizationally tends to be a bit disjointed. Also, basic elements of XML are not defined as clearly as they might be. For example, Chapter 3 is titled "XML With .Net in Detail--How Does XML Fit in with .NET". However, the major portion of this chapter is devoted to XPath in-and-of-itself, with only minor reference to .Net. Moreover, I found myself getting lost a bit in the XPath presentation. No doubt this was due to some extent to the complexity of XPath itself, but it seemed like the authors could have been clearer in their presentation. After reading the first three chapters at my local Borders, I switched over to the Microsoft Press "XML Step-By-Step". I find the "Step-by-Step" presentation to be much clearer on the basics, although not as comprehensive (no XPath!). In general, I find the Microsoft Press books to be distinctly better these days then the Wrox books. But I would say that the Wrox VB.Net "Handbook" series does have some real merit, reminding me of the original Wrox books that I used to savor back in the "old" days.
Rating: 
Summary: Could have been a great book
Review: I am only on chapter 3 and have actually enjoyed the subject up to this point but I don't believe I have ever read a techbook with so many gross mistakes. For example, page 76 states "ANSI does use a BOM" when in fact it should have said "ANSI does not use a BOM" which is easily concluded from prior text. Also, the very first code example in ADO is horribly written. One gets the impression after awhile that this is the rough first draft of the actual intended book. Wrox doesn't even list this book as one of their products on their website and I have yet to find the public errata website for this book.
My criticism notwithstanding, the book could have been a great book had someone taken the time to clean it up. I get the impression someone pushed these poor guys into getting this thing "on the street" way before its time.
Rating: 
Summary: A Superb Introduction to These Great Technologies
Review: I am very impressed with this book. It starts off by introducing XML in the first couple of chapters then spends three chapters of teaching the reader how to integrate .NET and XML. This gives a great grounding, allowing the reader to start to developing integrated solutions (such as the book's phone book app case study) after one hundred pages and to produce a fairly comprehensive site in just a couple of hundred pages. Although they are briefly mentioned in the initial chapters additional elements such as the DOM, XPath, XSLT, Schemas, ADO.NET and web services are given their own chapters later on. The book finishes by consolidating what the reader has learnt with a comprehensive case study. This segregation was very clear and appealed to me by allowing me to pick and choose from the technologies I was interested in (for instance as I often develop for Flash with XML I could skip over the two XSLT chapters because I use Flash to apply formatting). I am thoroughly impressed with this book because of its clear delivery. I am a real fan of .NET anyway and the authors have managed to put across in a very clear way just how simple it can be to develop with these two technologies. And just to cap it all, as if I am not taken enough with this book it even regularly refers to Edinburgh, my home town, in its examples! I would thoroughly recommend this book to anyone who is taking their first steps in using XML with VB.NET and wants to take their skills to the intermediate level. Mike Poole...
Rating:
Summary: Not worth the money
Review: I bought this book because of its title and it's the only book out there like it. I have found this book to be very dissapointing.
1. You need to download the code from Wrox to understand the examples in the book.
2. The samples in the book are complex and isn't easy to follow.
3. There are not enough examples. It might be good for you, but I would not recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: I Don't Like It
Review: I think there are far too many details included that don't interest the average developer.
Rating:
Summary: Waste of $$
Review: If I could give this book negative 100 stars, I would. I could say a lot, but a quote from page 235 about the XmlDocument class (not some ancillary class, mind you, a PRIMARY class for the topic) should sum it up: "There are some properties and methods we won't discuss here...so for specific information on these look at the MSDN documentation." WHAT!!!!!! That is only one of several times the reader is instructed to use MSDN, as if we all hadn't been there before we got this book. I might understand that if this was not such a narrowly focused topic, but XML specifically for VB.NET is not exactly an undertaking to write the history of the world. This book is so bad it actually makes me angry at the people who wrote and published it. It's a fraud to put this book on the shelf.
Rating:
Summary: Good practical book
Review: Showed some good practical examples. Maybe not enough to learn XML technolgies on its own, but it showsed how they can be used in .Net which was good.
Rating:
Summary: Poor content structure, very poor code samples
Review: The point for a beginner's book is to layout concepts clearly and to make their application evident through clear and COMPLETE examples. The examples in this book are fragmented and there is no proper reference to portions of code that are key to program segments working. I have been programming for 10 years and I cannot follow the struture and examples clearly. Bottom line, there is poor content structure, very poor code samples and poor explaination of concepts, especially for a beginner's book but even for an expert programmer. I am taking this one back to borders. It should never have left the press in the first place.
Rating:
Summary: Good practical book
Review: This must be my most disappointing WROX book so far: - The authors haven't done a very good job of integrating their texts. It is sometimes very obvious that different persons wrote parts of the same chapter. Some information is repeated unnecessarily, other information is omitted. - Like the other reviewer said, sometimes the title of a chapter doesn't cover the content very well. Also, some XML standards aren't explained very well, and text seems to go on forever, instead of explaning it with a bit of code. - My book fell apart in my hands after only a few weeks use. This was a first for a Wrox book for me (I own about ten). I tried to contact WROX about this, but I got a canned reply, stating that they no longer do support through email. All they do now is the P2P forums, and code download... Thanx WROX! - WROX' standards seem to have slipped lately. It used to be that any book from WROX could be bought unseen, since they were of a good quality no matter what the subject. Lately things have slipped badly, and to make things worse, prices have gone up. I won't be assuming the 'only good books come from WROX' mantra anymore. I have been impressed with the Microsoft books lately, and may switch to them.
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