XML for Real Programmers

Rating:
Summary: XML Unexplained
Review: *** Disclaimer: I couldn't finish this book, so my review only covers the first half. For all I know, the 2'nd half is a masterpiece, though I doubt it. ****

This book is terrible. In 20 years of reading computer books (including several years reviewing prospective book manuscripts), I've never come across a book anywhere close to being as badly structured and written (and, just as unforgivable, as badly edited) as this mess. The author clearly is handicapped by not being a native English speaker as the writing is dense and sometimes takes quite a bit of effort to decipher.

OK, I can work around the language difficulty, but in addition, the book's remarkably content-free. For one, the examples -- which don't come till after a few extrordinarly tedious rehash chapters on XML structure -- are trivial.

The ultimate insult: the book assumes that the reader *is already intimately familiar with XML*. "XML for Real Programmers"? To me, the title sounded like the book would be a good intro. to XML for an experienced programmer; it's not.

Avoid this book. If you need to learn XML, start with the W3c.org standards documents.

Rating:
Summary: Just Great...
Review: I think this is the only book on the market that shows useful code. I am very happy that I bought the book. This book is my bible for my consulting job.

Rating:
Summary: Extended Markup Language?
Review: The first sentence almost made me close the book to never reopen it again. "Extended" Markup Language? When writing a book about XML, its a good idea to know what the acronym stands for!

Rating:
Summary: envelope pusher
Review: This book on XML is a refreshing break from usual books on the topic, like "An XML Primer." It illuminates the creative possibilities that XML is uniquely qualified to afford, and its main thrust is to show the many innovative possibilities of XML that allow the XML programmer to interface his design structure with other languages and utilities, like Java and Perl. Anyone venturing into the XML world should make this their second book purchase, right after the one that introduces him/her to the basics of XML. This envelope-pushing book will have you doing the same in the very near future.

Rating:
Summary: XML Unexplained
Review: What dissapointed me was the title compared to the contents. I was expecting lots of good code, explanations, and tips from someone who had found a lot of the gothcas that come about from writing code with these new XML parsers and stylesheets. There is almost no code until page 178, and even this code uses IBM's xml4j and the TX methods, which are very outdated. SAX is barely mentioned until chapter 8, pg 424 of a 449 pg book. The Author spends a lot of time on this "XML website" development, but I don't feel the pages were well spent. Not much code and not a real production level design IMHO. The "Java and XML" O'Reilly book is more of a programmers book. For XSLT, I like "XSLT Programmer's Reference" from Wrox.