Rating: 
Summary: Not very useful!
Review: I bought this book with high hopes (The author makes references to Ayn Rand after all) The book is very limited in its discussion of BizTalk and it is a very cursory verbose overview with very little substance. The author continually makes extranious references and fails on numerous occasions to define his terms. Someone needs to write a decent book.
Rating: 
Summary: This book has almost nothing to do with Biztalk
Review: I could not find useful information in this book. It is not good neither for beginners nor for advanced users.
Rating: 
Summary: Good overview of XML. Terrible examples using OmniMark
Review: I don't know why the author choose omnimark language for many of his examples. The XML/XSL material is very instructive and well presented. The case studies are good in general. I just don't understand why omnimark language was chosen for the examples. This fact alone takes away 2 stars from an otherwise well written book.
Rating: 
Summary: Good stuff with some extraneous material
Review: I have to admit, I generally like MSPress books. While generally a bit shorter than some of the other publisher's books, they tend to have a lot of meat in them. XML and SOAP programming is no exception. The problem here is that a large chunk of this tome is dedicated to extraneous material.The first half of this book is great if you need some background on XML. While much of this material is interesting, it is skimming material for most of us who have developed with XML before and want to focus on SOAP and BizTalk. When the book finally does get into SOAP and BizTalk, the earlier material sets a nice stage, so this material is not a complete waste of time. The material on SOAP and BizTalk is quite nice and includes some examples in Visual Basic, so you are given a succinct intro to coding your own SOAP/BizTalk applications. The book focuses on schemas rather than DTDs, so some of the material is a bit bleeding edge. However, with Microsoft's commitment to tools to move from bleeding to leading edge, your development time will not be a waste. As schemas are more explicit and useful, I applaud the author on taking the journey out on this limb. The useful material of this book finishes with information on setting up your own BizTalk server. The rest of the book is largely wasted on SOAP and BizTalk references and a primer on the Omnimark language. To be fair, the SOAP and Biztalk references are not taken verbatim from the W3C spec, so they do add some value. I am not quite as thrilled about the Omnimark tutorial, although it might come in handy some day. To be fair to Mr. Travis, the book covers the major elements of the technologies it is scoped to cover (XML, SOAP and BizTalk) and does so in an easy-reading, fun manner. It will not make you a BizTalk or SOAP expert, but it will give you enough material to get to work. In summary, this is a very nice book if you are using Microsoft tools to develop B2B E-Commerce applications. However, it is also useful for those on other platforms as a basic primer. It can also help you develop cross-platform applications, but only if you choose Omnimark as your cross-platform developing language.
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Summary: For an Omnimark programmer like me...
Review: I'm surprised at some of the reviews I've read which seem to be slating this book because it uses Omnimark as the implementation language. My own hands on practical experience tells me that Omnimark is far better suited to XML and Biztalk applications than a language like Java. It is a shame that the language isn't better known, but kudos to the author for choosing what I consider the correct tool for the job, rather than using a Microsoft toolkit or a Java one simply because they are more popular. There is a learning curve, as for any new language, but XML processing applications developed in Omnimark are quick, efficient and vacuously simple to prototype.
Rating: 
Summary: Above the Rest
Review: I've been following the efforts of the W3C and the developers at Microsoft for over a year now. I have read a lot of books on the subject of XML. If you need to get up to speed in a short period of time with XML, SOAP, and Biztalk, this is the one you want. The author is clear and concise and often funny. It's a must have reference.
Rating:
Summary: Lots of staff changed in the final release
Review: I've had this book for a while and I can say that MS changed a lot of staff in their latest release. If you get this book you won't find many things the book talks about. My recommendation is to get Professional BizTalk by WROX(10 stars out of 5) and BizTalk Documented by Microsoft Press(8 stars out of 5)
Rating:
Summary: Lots of staff changed in the final release
Review: I've had this book for a while and I can say that MS changed a lot of staff in their latest release. If you get this book you won't find many things the book talks about. My recommendation is to get Professional BizTalk by WROX(10 stars out of 5) and BizTalk Documented by Microsoft Press(8 stars out of 5)
Rating:
Summary: Not XML neither Biztalk Book
Review: If you want to learn about Biztalk or XML or SOAP buy another book.
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Summary: Now, apply this knowledge in any practical way...
Review: Microsoft published this book? They allowed Biztalk to be in the title? Look folks, if you want to learn XML, there are lots of free sites on the web to help you out. If, however, you want to implement Microsoft's hot new Biztalk technology, this book has absouluely nothing for you. What a joke! The entire suite of tools you are interested in gaining knowledge on is summed up on one page (Other Biztalk Tools). I can build the same process using ASP, VB, etc... nothing new here. Want we want to know, Microsoft, is how to build sites to exchange documents using the tools provided in Biztalk! What is a port?! What is a... etc, etc Sorry folks, they never answer any of this. If you want to do anything with Biztalk, don't waste your money on this waste of trees. Go through the included tutorial in Biztalk, and hope for Beta2!
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