Sams Teach Yourself XML in 21 Days

Rating:
Summary: Propping up a coffee table
Review: As the other reviews say this book is a 100% waste of money! For me it seems like the authors were just writing / speaking to here themselves speak. They also just give WAY to many examples of SGML and HTML for a history lesson - really zero actual examples of working XML. Also I found severl errors sprinkled across this text and I found myself always flipping back to see what these authors were talking about. The only good thing this book is good for is proping up a coffe table or keeping yourself warm next to a roaring fire as you use this book for fuel.

Rating:
Summary: Ugh.
Review: Do yourself a favor and don't waste your money on this book. Buy the XML Bible instead. It is much clearer, deeper, and nicer to read.

Rating:
Summary: Look to a different source to learn XML
Review: I have bought a number of Sams books and found most of them very instructive, but this book was a total waste of time and money. There's no logical pattern to learning XML presented in this text. Topics are scattered and there's no recognizable learning pattern. There are too many references to SGML and HTML, and too few XML hand-on examples. If you need to understand the history and similarities of XML to HTML and SGML, go ahead and buy this book. If you need to apply XML or need to develop a good understanding of it for future development, look into a book that walks you through the development of practical applications.

Rating:
Summary: A real Teach-Yourself book
Review: I have reviewed many of "Sams Teach Yourself" series. I think Simon did a good job on covering the usefulness of XML without going through the huge SGML background check.

Having three year's SGML programming practices, I still found several surprises and useful reference links in this book.

Well, I have to admit that I failed to finish reading it in 21 "hours" which I normally did for these Teach Yourself books..... ;-)

Rating:
Summary: A Good Place to Begin
Review: I've been in a process of trying to learn XML for quite awhile, and the books to be found on this topic have been frustrating. I'm trying to learn something new, but find difficulty learning from book after book that has so many mistakes. I'm able to learn just enough to realize the mistakes in the book, why something isn't working, and then troubleshoot the XML document I'm putting together.

Learning XML is nothing, but producing a VALID document through a Document Type Definition that you must write yourself is harder. You're then learning that process too. Plus..XSL and XSLT..so that the documents are Web usable.

I found Sam's Teach Yourself XML in 21 days better than most books I've worked with so far. The book was helpful. I also appreciated the links offered for great software, one of them being Architag XRay for transformations. It beats using Saxon at a command line.

If you want to learn XML, this book can help you with some basics. A better book is Real World XML by Steven Holzner.

Rating:
Summary: Relatively Decent
Review: Normally I don't care for the Teach Yourself in X Days series, but relative to the other 20 some books I've recently looked at on XML, this one is actually pretty decent and includes a lot of helpful links for further readings. A good book to get started with if you're new to XML and want a detailed overview.

Rating:
Summary: A Good Place to Begin
Review: This book provides a somewhat technical introduction to several aspects of XML. Its 21 chapters are designed to be covered in 21 days over 3 weeks. The basics of XML are covered in the first week, followed by more advanced XML topics such as XML linking, and viewing and processing XML in the second week, and finally by programming and using style sheets with XML and real world XML applications in the third week. The book contains many examples, and a blurb on the back cover states that the code for the examples are available online at the publisher's Website. (There is no accompanying CD. A CD would really have been handy, since it could have contained all of the freeware validators and editors featured in the text, as well as the examples.)

Having just been assigned to teach a course in XML, I hoped that this book would not only contain a clear set of lessons for mastering the language as I have found in other SAMS Teach Yourself books, but also provide strong justification for adopting XML. I found the lessons to be less than clear. At times they seemed to be little more than simple documentation for various XML rules of syntax. Statements such as <element.type.name attribute.name="attribute.value"> leave me scratching my head and wondering "How do I use this?" Quite a few chapters in the second week and beyond are little more than introductory documentation for various bits of freeware editors or validators for XML. On the back cover, the publisher suggests that the book is written for beginning and intermediate levels. It may indeed be appropriate for beginners in XML, as long as the XML beginners happen to be already quite adept at HTML and fairly confident with JavaScript as well. It's definitely not a good starting place for Web newbies.

As for reasons to adopt XML, I found the following preface to chapter 21 very telling "Although I have tried to relate everything you have learned about XML in this book to something practical, and preferably something visible, that hasn't always been easy...In today's lesson I'm going to stick to that policy and although I will review some of the more esoteric applications, I will try to concentrate on XML applications that already work." In many areas in the book, the authors drag us through arcane details of XML syntax, only to point out that these features aren't actually usable yet because the required application software hasn't been completed yet, and that the specific syntax may change once the feature is finally implemented. It's all a bit too much too soon. This book may be of interest someday to historians of the Net, who want to learn about directions that XML might have taken as of 1999, but it's a bit frustrating as a guide to the future (if XML really does turn out to be the Web language of the future).

Rating:
Summary: Documentation for the pie in the sky
Review: This book provides a somewhat technical introduction to several aspects of XML. Its 21 chapters are designed to be covered in 21 days over 3 weeks. The basics of XML are covered in the first week, followed by more advanced XML topics such as XML linking, and viewing and processing XML in the second week, and finally by programming and using style sheets with XML and real world XML applications in the third week. The book contains many examples, and a blurb on the back cover states that the code for the examples are available online at the publisher's Website. (There is no accompanying CD. A CD would really have been handy, since it could have contained all of the freeware validators and editors featured in the text, as well as the examples.)

Having just been assigned to teach a course in XML, I hoped that this book would not only contain a clear set of lessons for mastering the language as I have found in other SAMS Teach Yourself books, but also provide strong justification for adopting XML. I found the lessons to be less than clear. At times they seemed to be little more than simple documentation for various XML rules of syntax. Statements such as leave me scratching my head and wondering "How do I use this?" Quite a few chapters in the second week and beyond are little more than introductory documentation for various bits of freeware editors or validators for XML. On the back cover, the publisher suggests that the book is written for beginning and intermediate levels. It may indeed be appropriate for beginners in XML, as long as the XML beginners happen to be already quite adept at HTML and fairly confident with JavaScript as well. It's definitely not a good starting place for Web newbies.

As for reasons to adopt XML, I found the following preface to chapter 21 very telling "Although I have tried to relate everything you have learned about XML in this book to something practical, and preferably something visible, that hasn't always been easy...In today's lesson I'm going to stick to that policy and although I will review some of the more esoteric applications, I will try to concentrate on XML applications that already work." In many areas in the book, the authors drag us through arcane details of XML syntax, only to point out that these features aren't actually usable yet because the required application software hasn't been completed yet, and that the specific syntax may change once the feature is finally implemented. It's all a bit too much too soon. This book may be of interest someday to historians of the Net, who want to learn about directions that XML might have taken as of 1999, but it's a bit frustrating as a guide to the future (if XML really does turn out to be the Web language of the future).