Rating: 
Summary: the best you can get for xml
Review: another bible, just like others, the best books you can find to learn a subject completely... all topics are fully described with so many examples and a cd with xml files that can be useful
Rating: 
Summary: Good coverage of XML, but why bother?
Review: ERH (the author) knows his XML terminology and concepts backwards and forwards - so if you want to learn what XML is all about you can do no wrong with this book. Stop reading here and buy a copy already. If you are not sure if you want to learn XML keep reading this review.As a side note this book is HUGE. After the first three chapters of this Bible you get into what is basically theory, since that is what XML is - theory (for most people anyway). Now I'm a web developer, so I'm biased in that regard. If you are a web developer thinking of moving into the XML sphere - I have to ask why? Shouldn't you rather be learning some nice PHP or MySQL - stuff that will, you know, make your web site cool and useful instead of more (unnecessary) work for yourself? Well I shouldn't say that (I did though didn't i?), you might be able to make an extremely complicated page out of XML if you are really, really bored. Or, you could just zap off some regular HTML that will actually work in most browsers for now and the forseable (?) future. The best part of the book of course is that ERH (the author again) uses Baseball as his XML specification of choice - this makes it both interesting (as far as that is possible with this technology) and fun. If you want to learn XML, pick up a copy of this hefty tome. If you aren't sure if you want to learn XML do not pick up a copy of this hefty tome as you will never read it, and even if you do you'll be unlikely to use any of it. I like the cover - a standing robot. That's how you'll feel after 'reading' this incredibly large book. Actually you'll be sitting.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding desk reference
Review: First, I have to admit that no book can cover the whole of XML technology. It's spread so far (into XSL, Xlink, XPointer and more), it has so many companion technologies (FO, CSS, X/HTML, SAX, DOM, etc), and the standards change so fast that it's hopeless to look for The One book.
That said, this book is an effective guide and introduction for experienced programmers - beginners may find it a bit much, and may not like the lack of cut&paste code. This gives the clearest coverage I know of DTDs. It also covers XLinks, XPointers, XInclude, and the basics of schemas well enough to put those tools to use. You can try, at least: some of the standards (like XPointers) are so new and unstable that very few browsers support them.
The discussion of CSS is a good start, but will work best in conjuction with a book solely about CSS. Most CSS books, however, talk only about HTML, so this helps bridge the gap to CSS/XML. There's a short section on XSL, probably too short for any real application writers - Kay's XSLT book will help a lot. There's also a short, informative section on XSL/FO. Harold may intend this more as a look into the future (FO isn't in browsers yet) and as a comparison to CSS than as a real programmer's guide. He finishes with a brief description of XHTML and SVG.
Although the core of XML syntax has been stable for some years now, the larger sense of XML is a fast-changing and fast-growing family of interlocked standards. It's way too soon for the last word on the topic, and experts haven't settled on usage conventions. Some of us can't wait, though. We need XML help now, and this book does a good job delivering that help.
//wiredweird
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Read
Review: Having worked very little with XML related technologies for more than 2 years now, I was skeptical when a colleague recommended this book as a good strater to learning more advanced XML related technologies. But, I found it an excellent read. Using this book, I've built a small portal framework that uses XML and XSLT to seperate the logic and presentation layers. I also took the time to read the rest of the book and found it accurate and clear. Especially the part about namespaces. I recommend this book to every programmer who wants to pick up XML quickly and does not have lots of time.
Rating:
Summary: XML Bible
Review: I found this to be well written, concise and extremely informative. I have some experience writing web pages in HTML but am not an expert webmaster my any means. I found that he presented the ideas in good detail, and usually referenced well known web resources (W3.org, etc.) as places to get further detail on specific concepts. Mr. Harold didn't waste words or space on irrelevant fluff as so many technical writers are wont to do. If I have one issue with this book, it would be that Mr Harold uses too many baseball references in his examples - most of that data was completely lost on me, a baseball (un)fan. All in all, I found this book to be well worth the investment. It will have a place on my reference bookshelf for a long time to come.
Rating:
Summary: Not so much a Bible as a Book of Genesis
Review: I'm going to start out by saying I'm glad I bought this book. It's a good introduction to XML. The early chapters on XML and DTDs are very good. They got me up to speed quickly so I could explain to my managers why our company should pursue XML and what the benefits will be. The chapters on CSS-1 and CSS-2 were excellent and very useful even for writing regular HTML. Overall, the first 13 chapters were just what I needed. Coverage of XSL was weaker and, in many respects, inadequate. The book never really discusses XPaths in enough detail. I thought the chapter on namespaces was too late in the book. The book is fleshed out with exceptionally long examples that added little value past the first few lines. The chapter on reading a DTD (chapter 20) was a good idea, poorly executed. The complexity of the DTD selected by the author was totally inappropriate for the level of this book, even if the DTD was extremely well written. The author never covers schema construction, and only briefly mentions them at all. Given their superiority over DTDs, this was a glaring error. I was also disappointed by the lack of instruction on how to move XML across the Internet between applications. XML that never leaves the system it was constructed on is of little value. Many of these problems are caused by the age of the book. It's over a year old now which, in XML terms, makes it yesterdays news. Now that this book has got me excited about XML, I'm off to find some more.
Rating:
Summary: The 3rd edition is an excellent update for this series...
Review: I've had the opportunity to go through the XML 1.1 Bible by Elliotte Rusty Harold (Wiley), and I must say it's impressive. Any time you get a tech book going into a 3rd edition, you have to think that the author is doing something right. If you fit the criteria for the target audience, you should be pleased. The chapter breakout:
Part 1 - Introducing XML - An Eagle's Eye View of XML; XML Applications; Your First XML Document; Structuring Data; Attributes, Empty-Element Tags, and XSL; Well-formedness
Part 2 - Document Type Definitions - Validity; Element Declarations; Attribute Declarations; Entity Declarations; Namespaces
Part 3 - Style Languages - CSS Style Sheets; CSS Layouts; CSS Text Styles; XSL Transformations; XSL Formatting Objects
Part 4 - Supplemental Technologies - XLinks; XPointers; XInclude; Schemas
Part 5 - XML Applications - XHTML; Modular XHTML; The Resource Directory Description Language; Scalable Vector Graphics; Designing a New XML Application; Index I mentioned the "target audience" above. As you can tell from the chapter layout (and also in the introduction), the author is targeting XML as used in web page design. You won't find anything in here about how to write a Java program to parse out XML using one of the XML parsers available. If that's your need, don't get this book. You'll be highly disappointed. This should be used as more of a reference tool for working with XML or related technologies like DTD or XSL. I also appreciated the author's explanation as to what went into the 3rd edition. Rather than just add more stuff to what already existed, he removed XML technology chapters that just never caught momentum, like VML or RDF. So although the book is still 1000 pages, it's made up of content that is usable and applicable to the current state and direction of the technology. It's nice to know you're not getting a rehash of material just so the author can squeeze a few more bucks out of a title. Thanks! The conversational and informal tone of the writing makes the material very approachable and readable. The examples are clear and concise, and relevant to how the technology would be used in the real world. Overall, a very good selection to add to your XML bookshelf.
Rating:
Summary: The 3rd edition is an excellent update for this series...
Review: I've had the opportunity to go through the XML 1.1 Bible by Elliotte Rusty Harold (Wiley), and I must say it's impressive. Any time you get a tech book going into a 3rd edition, you have to think that the author is doing something right. If you fit the criteria for the target audience, you should be pleased. The chapter breakout:
Part 1 - Introducing XML - An Eagle's Eye View of XML; XML Applications; Your First XML Document; Structuring Data; Attributes, Empty-Element Tags, and XSL; Well-formedness
Part 2 - Document Type Definitions - Validity; Element Declarations; Attribute Declarations; Entity Declarations; Namespaces
Part 3 - Style Languages - CSS Style Sheets; CSS Layouts; CSS Text Styles; XSL Transformations; XSL Formatting Objects
Part 4 - Supplemental Technologies - XLinks; XPointers; XInclude; Schemas
Part 5 - XML Applications - XHTML; Modular XHTML; The Resource Directory Description Language; Scalable Vector Graphics; Designing a New XML Application; Index I mentioned the "target audience" above. As you can tell from the chapter layout (and also in the introduction), the author is targeting XML as used in web page design. You won't find anything in here about how to write a Java program to parse out XML using one of the XML parsers available. If that's your need, don't get this book. You'll be highly disappointed. This should be used as more of a reference tool for working with XML or related technologies like DTD or XSL. I also appreciated the author's explanation as to what went into the 3rd edition. Rather than just add more stuff to what already existed, he removed XML technology chapters that just never caught momentum, like VML or RDF. So although the book is still 1000 pages, it's made up of content that is usable and applicable to the current state and direction of the technology. It's nice to know you're not getting a rehash of material just so the author can squeeze a few more bucks out of a title. Thanks! The conversational and informal tone of the writing makes the material very approachable and readable. The examples are clear and concise, and relevant to how the technology would be used in the real world. Overall, a very good selection to add to your XML bookshelf.
Rating:
Summary: Get started with XML
Review: If you need to get started with XML and its related technologies, this book is a great choice. Harold knows the subject inside out and his informal tone makes even such a huge tome very readable. The 3rd edition is a good improvement over 1st I've read a few years ago, the chapters were reorganized, updated and redundant material was removed.
Rating:
Summary: This is where you start!
Review: Many beginners will be put off by the sheer size (1200 pages!) of this book. Big mistake. There aren't a lot of books that cover all the basics of XML technology, focus on the real needs of XML newbies, and do so in clear, readable prose. In fact, this may be the only one. The problem with XML is that you can use it for a lot of different things. (Hence those 1200 pages.) So people who write about it tend to be specialists in some specific area, like building XML web applications, or designing XML document schemas, etc. Or else they're markup standards wonks, good at picking out the tiny nits that make the whole concept work, but terrible at explaining what XML is *for*. Harold, by contrast, knows his readers, and knows what they need. He makes very few assumptions about what you already know. If you know how to use a text editor (but see below for a warning) and a web browser, you're ready to go. The author leads you step by step through all the basic concepts. There are a *lot* of steps, of course. But only the first 200 pages are absolutely essential for every reader. Not everybody needs to know about Document Type Definitions, Wireless Markup Language, or Scalable Vector Graphics. Not that there's any flab here -- all the different XML applications Harold describes are widely used, and it makes sense to include a good basic intro to all of them. Harold also avoids a mistake I myself probably would have made -- he carefully avoids dealing XML's historical baggage. XML is a limited version of SGML -- a technology that wasted decades floundering in its own complexity. For once history really is bunk. I do have some issues, more with the publisher than with the author. The big one is the sample text files on the CD -- all with Macintosh line endings! Judging from the screenshots, the author works mainly with Windows, so we can't blame him. If you're not a Mac person, you need a text editor that can handle these files, or a program for converting them. Notepad doesn't work, Wordpad does -- but complains a lot about "discarding formatting." If you're a vim user, add "mac" to the fileformats option. Actually, it's pretty silly to even bother with a CD for this kind of material. Attention publishers! Book buyers are not impressed by "bonus cd-roms" that contain freely available software and text files that would be easier to download from the web. Nor are they impressed by silly markteroid terms like "Bible". Who are you, Charleton Heston?
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