Using XML: Special Edition (with CD-ROM)

Rating:
Summary: Crystal Clear and Extraordinarily Helpful
Review: I am sitting here with Lee Anne Phillips' "Using XML, Special Edition", and am astounded at how easy this substantial work is to follow and to understand. It's organization is so clean and logical that any additions seem unnecessary. All-in-all, the book is thorough in its explanations, logical in its presentation of the details of using XML, and utterly reader-friendly. Lee Anne Phillips has succeeded in removing the obstacles to understanding XML from the printed page. While not for beginners, it remains very easy to use, and is even enjoyable, due to Phillips' dry humor and experienced perspective on programming. "Using XML, Special Edition" furnishes the often missing pertinent explanations and background information that facilitate understanding XML. This book is a highly useful volume. I am confident that your copy will become happily tattered and dog-eared due to its usefulness.

Rating:
Summary: It gives you the Foundations of XML
Review: I bought five XML books, and have discarded some. I thought twice before buying this one, and still bought a used book This is the first book that explains in plain English the fundamentals and foundations of XML, Document Type Declarations (DOCTYPE), Document Type Definitions (DTD), and other related technologies. So far, I've only read the first seven chapters, which gives me enough material to understand the underlying principles of XML. It's true, you have to do a lot of reading, but it's rewarding. This is not a tutorial book (for that you may need a more basic Step-By-Step book) This is for Intermediate-advanced level XML users. Five stars for Ms. Lee Anne Phillips.

Rating:
Summary: It gives you the Foundations of XML
Review: I bought five XML books, and have discarded some. I thought twice before buying this one, and still bought a used book This is the first book that explains in plain English the fundamentals and foundations of XML, Document Type Declarations (DOCTYPE), Document Type Definitions (DTD), and other related technologies. So far, I've only read the first seven chapters, which gives me enough material to understand the underlying principles of XML. It's true, you have to do a lot of reading, but it's rewarding. This is not a tutorial book (for that you may need a more basic Step-By-Step book) This is for Intermediate-advanced level XML users. Five stars for Ms. Lee Anne Phillips.

Rating:
Summary: Horrible
Review: I don't even know how they can pass this off as a reference book, since the index is so incredibly bad. There was ONE page listed for the ELEMENT definition, and that page had nothing to do with what it is or how to write one.

I can imagine, based on the MEANDERING style of writing, what this author is like when she talks - interrupting herself over and over again, until it is forgotten what the conversation was about.

I'll never buy a book from this publisher again, since obviously the editors never read it OR they DID read it , and weren't technical enough to know that it was garbage.

Glad I only paid three bucks.

Rating:
Summary: If you want to read a book about XML, try another one!
Review: I'm an IT professional and I don't use XML in my work. I just wanted to find what XML is about. So I decided to buy a book. It happened that I chose this one. And I didn't like it.

First of all, the author writes a lot, but says few things. This becomes annoying. Then, another thing that I didn't like is that, after reading 150 pages, I couldn't tell anyone what XML was about. I had to go to www.w3c.org, spend some time reading some XML specifications and then come back the to the book. Only after I did this, the book made sense to me... But I bought the book in order to avoid reading the W3C specifications. I wanted something "lighter" than the standards...

Probably the book has some good things, but I don't want to mention them here because I am too affected by the weakness of this book.

My advice: if you want to read a book about XML, try another one!

Rating:
Summary: Horrible
Review: The author seems to know her staff pretty darn good but I think she doesn't know her audience. I am not a "computer geek" by any stretch of the imagination but I do code a lot and I purchase and read a lot of computer programming books. This is the first one I have read and didn't understand. There are no examples its all just theory. I read up to the the 150th page and still couldn't write a 6 line XML document. She talks about "well formed" documents, DTD's etc and doesn't show you what they look like. It was until I read another book, that I actually new what XML was all about and I could write somewhat sophisticated xml documents.

I certainly think this book is good for some people but it just didn't do it for me. So next time Lee Ann, when you write your book put a "for computer geeks only" sign in front to let us know not to touch it. There are three audiences for computer books: 1. Beginners ...2. Intermediate ...3. Professional ...Just pick one and and stick to it.

Rating:
Summary: Not an example...
Review: This book looks very nice in the shelves, it's fat and with a very nice cover, but inside is really a dissapointment. The writer it's the most theoric one that i had read in all my life. There are chapters that doesn't have a single example in them.

This book looks more like a RFC paper than a book itself...

Rating:
Summary: Nebulous and Not for the Beginner
Review: Unfortunately I have not had the opportunity to examine the book's accompanying CD. I find the book's lack of examples within the text - it doesn't seem to refer to any examples on the CD at all - rather disenchanting.

This book would help you if you already understood XML and wanted a firmer grounding in its theory, but if you're new to it then it could be quite a task to learn XML from the book.

I've read other reviews where the reviewers have criticised the author's writing style. Whilst this author's style is grammatically correct, the author tends to explain things in detail but not follow up with any type of "this is how to use it in a real situation...".

Naturally, your opinion may be different to mine but I would strongly advise you to find a REAL copy of the book in a library or a local book store and thumb through it. You might find it easier to understand than I did...

As a reference to consolidate your XML knowledge if you already have it, this book appears to be quite good. However, if you don't already know XML then I think there are easier books or even online tutorials to use.

Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive but Vague
Review: While there's a lot of material in these 880 pages, the writing style is annoyingly vague. It's difficult to tell what sentences or whole paragraphs refer to.
For each feature of XML, one would like to know its purpose and benefits before delving into a morass of probably true but imprecise, foggy and tenuously related statements. The author knows a lot about XML, but it's unclear how the information presented relates to solving problems.
Other reviewers have commented that more examples would have been helpful, which is true, but a clearer writing style would be a better place to start.