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Rating: 
Summary: Still the Best Place to Start
Review: Data organization is XML's strength, making it an excellent mechanism for transfering information from one application to another -- whether it is a database, a legacy system, or a web site. Strangely, the author never really gets the point across.Even near the end of the book, the author only briefly mentions the XML parsing tool called SAX (the popular XML/Java API). Unfortunately, he fails to provide details on it use. SAX offers an easy way for computers to read an XML file and extract the data. Perl and Active Server Page APIs are also available for those who do not program in Java. But, data organization is only one of the strengths of XML. Many others exist. (The author misses these, too.) This book is the worst technical book I've ever purchased. If it were feasible, I'd give it negative stars. If you are interested in learning AND using XML's capabilities, check out David Hunter's "Beginning XML". Compare the table of contents. You'll see the difference.
Rating: 
Summary: Great Introduction
Review: I first read this book a few years ago, and still read excerpts from it periodically as friends get involved. In one of the early chapters, St Laurent basically asserts that WYSIWYG was actually a technological setback. I knew at that point I was going to enjoy the book. If you're into computer science, and want to understand the technology - this is a great place to start.
Rating:
Summary: Great Introduction
Review: I first read this book a few years ago, and still read excerpts from it periodically as friends get involved. In one of the early chapters, St Laurent basically asserts that WYSIWYG was actually a technological setback. I knew at that point I was going to enjoy the book. If you're into computer science, and want to understand the technology - this is a great place to start.
Rating: 
Summary: A good intro (only if you know absolutely nothing about XML)
Review: I think my title says it all. This book was very helpful to me and it should be for anyone looking for an introduction and a little history on XML. It starts out very basic though, and moves sloooowly up the knowlege ladder. I was tired of it quickly and found myself skipping chapters to get 'just the facts please'. If you know nothing about XML and need an intro, you may want this book but I would look around for others as well. This lacks hard-core examples.
Rating: 
Summary: Not for curious folk!
Review: I'm a web developer who knows both HTML and CSS. I bought this book wondering what the world of XML could be about. I was told that it was the "future" of the internet or something. I browsed some online tutorials, and found that this was not just some simple language you could learn in a couple weeks. As I opened the book, I started reading the introduction. The beginning of the book is very interesting because St. Laurent gets into much detail about where XML came from and the roots of practically every language it derived from (like C). But as I read on into the book, he was very wordy. this book needed a CD-ROM with it. The language itself is very simple. But there are many rules that you must follow. To a typical, experienced developer his language is probably most understandable. As I was reading about DTDs n such (i had to read it over a bzillion times) I got even more confused. Finally, I just decided to put it down. His explanations were NOT in layman's terms so the curious user could understand. True, he did give lengthy explanations, but it could be because I read it all during school in small snippets. I never tried out his onlione stuff he has pasted all over the book. What I'm saying is I don't think this book is for curious new users. Maybe users thatr understand all the basic stuff, then just wanna use it as a reference or be told why exactly something does something. A user said earlier that he doesn't leave the reader guessing random code. Well, if you flip thru the back, you can see that the lengthy code pages offer tiny explanations. The IS a ton of code pages. Just thought I'd point that out. I would not recommend this book to anyone. The cheapest is not always the best.
Rating:
Summary: Not for curious folk!
Review: I'm a web developer who knows both HTML and CSS. I bought this book wondering what the world of XML could be about. I was told that it was the "future" of the internet or something. I browsed some online tutorials, and found that this was not just some simple language you could learn in a couple weeks. As I opened the book, I started reading the introduction. The beginning of the book is very interesting because St. Laurent gets into much detail about where XML came from and the roots of practically every language it derived from (like C). But as I read on into the book, he was very wordy. this book needed a CD-ROM with it. The language itself is very simple. But there are many rules that you must follow. To a typical, experienced developer his language is probably most understandable. As I was reading about DTDs n such (i had to read it over a bzillion times) I got even more confused. Finally, I just decided to put it down. His explanations were NOT in layman's terms so the curious user could understand. True, he did give lengthy explanations, but it could be because I read it all during school in small snippets. I never tried out his onlione stuff he has pasted all over the book. What I'm saying is I don't think this book is for curious new users. Maybe users thatr understand all the basic stuff, then just wanna use it as a reference or be told why exactly something does something. A user said earlier that he doesn't leave the reader guessing random code. Well, if you flip thru the back, you can see that the lengthy code pages offer tiny explanations. The IS a ton of code pages. Just thought I'd point that out. I would not recommend this book to anyone. The cheapest is not always the best.
Rating:
Summary: Good introduction, Easy Read
Review: It was an easy read. Not a very technical book had easily understood xml examples. I liked all the references to outside sources for further details. Did well in introducing DTD, CSS, XSL. I would like more on database generated xml, dealing with the database structure.
Rating: 
Summary: A very disappointing book for software developers
Review: It's not very often that you find a book that lines up with your level of experience and curiousity, but this Primer was a perfect match for me. As a webmaster with 5 years of scripting and markup experience, I appreciated that this book didn't waste any time with HTML. It is an excellent entry point to XML - I couldn't imagine there being a better one out there. It answers "what is XML?" and "how can I use it?" and gets immediately to these points. The author very effectively uses the book itself as an example of what an XML document looks like - i.e. he goes back and scripts an actual chapter in markup. It is very well written (I read 150 pages in one sitting two weeks ago.) Some people might complain that there is too much focus on creating documents and not enough detail about enabling e-commerce, but I think this aproach is necessary. I have since purchased other more detailed books on the particular facets of XML that I'm going to implement for e-commerce, but I wouldn't have gotten here so quickly if it wasn't for this primer. Very highly recommended if you are a webmaster and you don't need the HTTP and HTML background & want to jump directly into XML.
Rating:
Summary: Good level, examples for beginner. Best I've found so far.
Review: Pros: Provides XML at a beginner's level concisely. Good examples. Excellent references to web resources (brave guy - writes URLs with real ink) Cons: Typesetting/composition confusing and tiring. Needs a better font, more white space, code examples spanning fewer pages & set in a fixed-width font. Could be better organized. Lacks reference resources (but references to the web may be a better use of reader time.) Will suffer the obsolesence common to all books written about draft standards. Conclusion: It's probably the best commercial book yet available (5/98) - well worth the relatively inexpensive price.
Rating:
Summary: XML technology in its dawn
Review: The recent book by Simon St. Laurent brought me really delectable reading about things I have never heard before. Nonetheless, it tremendously instigated my interest in this field. As for the content of his book, I highly value very comprehensible style with many straighforward examples and even more references to websites. The book is not just a primer - I consider it small beginner's encyclopaedia to the future of web. We may wish more such books by him, e.g. about CSS and topics related to XML documents formatting. If I could dare to evaluate the book in brief, I would say: well done!
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