Beginning XML (Programmer to Programmer)

Rating:
Summary: This book Stinks
Review: (This is a review of the 1st edition of this book.) My title to this review may be contradictory, but what I mean is, this is a good book for someone with absolutely no background in XML, as long as that person has some technical background in a related field, like HTML, Javascript, Java, etc. If this is the first book or experience you've had with any web-related technology, then you'll be hard-pressed to keep up.

Hunter does a good job explaining each item and I really like the way he branches into many related technologies, instead of just plain XML. Those related technologies include XSLT and XPath, DOM, SAX, DTDs and schemas. Some of these things, such as schemas and DTDs are essential for learning XML, so I'm glad they are covered.

At the beginning of the book, I thought that Hunter was another Microsoft lemming, just following the Microsoft trends and technologies. But it soon became apparent that he uses MS products where they make sense, but is quick to point out their drawbacks. It irks me to no end how the entire world chooses an internationally-accepted standard, then MS decides to come up with their own. Hunter does a good job of pointing that out.

One complaint is that this book doesn't do much in helping the Macintosh user that's starting into the XML field. That may have been remedied in the 2nd edition, and to be fair, there weren't a lot of tools available for the Mac user when this was written. I did find some Mac tools and found it humorous how the Windows, Java and Unix tools require extensive use of the command line, altering class paths, etc, while the Mac version was "drag the file onto the icon" to accomplish the exact same thing. But that's how the Mac world works.

Rating:
Summary: New edition is vastly updated
Review: First, please note that all of the reviews prior to September 2004 refer to older editions of this book.
More importantly, the 3rd edition was a large overhaul of this existing material and includes a lot of new coverage (XML 1.1, RSS, SVG, Relax NG and more) not found in the earlier editions.

Rating:
Summary: Very Poor Indeed
Review: Firstly, before you wish to study XML you're going to need to know a host of other languages. Below is a list of languages you'll need to have an understanding of if you want to use this book, as these languages are used in the chapters given:

Chapter 8 DOM - Javascript
Chapter 9 SAX - Java or Visual Basic, you'll also need their respective expensive development studios.
Chapter 10 SOAP - ASP, VBScript, Javascript. Also note SOAP encoding rules aren't covered.
Chapter 11 Displaying XML - CSS
Chapter 12 XML & Databases - VBScript, ASP, ADO. You'll also require Microsoft Access.

You'll also need many of the languages listed above in order to follow the two case studies, and with case study one it will help if you know a bit about Java Servlets.

Even if you do have all this knowledge the book isn't very good anyway, as a matter of fact it's quite terrible. The chapter on XSLT is incomplete by far. XSL-FO isn't covered at all. XML Schemas are covered over two chapters but this is still far from complete. Web Services are mentioned but not covered. To be honest nothing is covered properly, you're given a taste and then told to buy another one of their books if you want to learn properly. Plugs for their other books occur over and over again, I lost count of the number of publications of theirs they wanted me to buy in order to teach me what this book was suppose to teach me. Note also that there aren't any questions at the end of each chapter, so you can't test what you have or haven't learnt, as the case may be. Basically they are talking at you and hoping you'll become an expert without getting you to attempt to apply what you are trying to learn. Also the books age is really starting to show. Bearing in mind this books size (about 800 pages) it really doesn't cover much. I also found the order of the chapters was ill thought out, there was no flow.

The annoying thing is that the book is full of babble, if they cut the babble they could of covered each subject more thoroughly, but of course if they did that then you wouldn't need to buy the other books they keep plugging. I don't think Wrox Press appreciate anymore the time and effort it takes to master computing languages. This book will only serve to increase the time it takes to learn XML and its related technologies.

I found Wrox support to be exceptionally unhelpful when I wrote to them with a few queries on areas that aren't explained at all, or are covered very poorly. I wrote several times and I was practically ignored, finally, when I complained quite heavily, they responded, but they still didn't answer some issues so I gave up on them. They claim in the book that they offer exceptional support, well that wasn't my experience. On one problem I encountered they responded by sending me to a web page with a sample chapter from their competitor's publication where my answer could be found. I couldn't believe it!!! Wrox support hindered my efforts in learning this technology further.

Don't buy this book, its old, massively incomplete, and leaves you hanging time and time again. It's really just a plug for their other books on XML and its surrounding technologies, so it is deliberately vague.

Rating:
Summary: Not for beginners.
Review: For me (with 20 years of professional programming experience) a software book that calls itself 'Beginning XYZ' means that I should be able to read it from cover to cover and when I'm done, I should have enough of an understanding of XYZ to be able to actually use it in a productive manner. 'Beginning XML' completely fails by this definition.

I am quite a fan of Wrox Press books and some of the 'Beginning' books will take you to the intermediate level by the time you are done. But Beginning XML is a mish-mash of confused ideas and faulty logic. One Amazon reviewer was completely on the mark in saying that it's sometimes hard to follow the reasoning in this book because a single sentence will start off one way and then contradict itself by the end of the sentence. The main frustration of this book is how often I could not understand the argument in a single paragraph or even a single sentence.

This book also fails very badly on separating important stuff from stuff that doesn't matter. Because it's not well organized, I had to do the work of figuring out what is going on in each topic instead of having the book tell me. (If I wanted to learn XML from other people's code, I could have just gotten code and saved money by not buying the book.)

Also, as an XML beginner, I don't need constant references to Web sites that give the W3 specifications on various XML technologies. There is much other detail of use only to advanced XML users.

I gave the book two stars instead of one because it may be of some use to programmers with much more experience in XML, and because the authors did make some effort. (Some books are so full of text and coding errors, I feel that I've been taken advantage of. These are the 1 star books.)

In short, not for beginners. If you want a great beginner's book, do yourself a favor and get 'XML Step By Step' by Michael J. Young (now in a second edition).

Rating:
Summary: bad book
Review: hard to read.
too much large.
imposible to finish the book, and to learn nothing with this book.

Rating:
Summary: Best XML Introduction
Review: I've read several 'Introduction to XML' books, and this one is by far the best for users with at little more than a basic understanding of HTML beyond a WYSIWYG environment. Unlike other shorter titles, this book spends a great deal of time covering the basics of XML (without spending many a dry page in theory) and a host of accompanying technologies which make up the family XML belongs to.

There is no shortage of information, examples, screenshots, or explanations. Shortly into Chapter 2 you begin a hands-on approach to learning, using freely available editors and parsers to create XML data files and documents; all in a graduated learning fashion, each example building on the skills gained from the last. Don't want to type it? The code is readily available for download and the book shows the results within screenshots.

Beyond the main body of the book itself are appendices which can provide greater context for you as to how to implement XML in different environments, such as application and web development. These appendices can be skipped without hindering the over-all learning environment.

As described, the title is quite lengthy. However, XML is typically not a stand-alone language, and to truly harness XML you need to understand the other technologies XML uses - and this title gives you that knowledge in a very reader-friendly fashion. What you will gain from reading this title is well worth the time invested.

Rating:
Summary: Dull but effective
Review: Overall, this book is worth the money...but it's a mixed blessing.

Ye GODS is this book dull. XML is a dry, dull topic to begin with. Declarative programming is a dry, dull topic. (Or perhaps I've just reached my limit with new programming concepts, and they're not fun any more.) This book does little to liven up that native dryness. But I suppose I don't read programming books for excitement and adventure. Still...I've read nerd books that had less of the "propped-up eyelids" effect. There have even been moments when bold propositions on the revolutionary nature of OOP had me feeling the rush of wind in my (now non-existent) hair, the smell of salty sea air in my nostrils, and the the thrill of the chase in my veins.

This book is more like an all-day visit with your prim Baptist grandmother. It might save your soul, but you won't be telling your friends about it later.

Some of the material is covered very well. The opening chapters are clear and concise, and the material on XML namespaces was very helpful to me. Other material is not covered so well. Some of the examples in XSLT, especially XPath, are tossed out, and are hideously confusing. It is only two or three paragraphs later that the confusing aspects are cleared up (if at all). I find this maddening, because I tend to hover on the example, and the paragraph immediately following it, until I figure it out. (I hate leaving unresolved questions in my mind when I'm reading programming books. Too often, they stay unresolved, and then I find myself lost when I'm attempting to code.) When I would finally give up in despair, I'd find the answer a bit further down the page, and realize I'd been wasting my time. Overall, when I got through the XSLT chapter, I understood it, but it was much more frustrating than it needed to be. I sense the lack of a good editor (or maybe any editor) here.

There were also a few strange examples written for, as the author himself admits, the "sheer perverseness" of it. DON'T DO THAT! If you want to have a sidebar where you show some unusual ways of doing things, fine. Keep them out of your primary examples. This is where a good editor steps in, clears his throat, and points a stern, accusing finger at the offending passage. A single word--"Out!"--suffices to bend the author to his will.

But I have to admit that I have yet to see somebody write a good, overall introduction to XPath that doesn't completely confuse and discombobulate a newbie. So it isn't just this author who is at fault.

The chapters on XML Schemas and DTDs are good. The chapters on the DOM and SAX interfaces are excellent. I nearly enjoyed reading them.

A lot of the later stuff in the book doesn't really belong in a "Beginning XML" book, if you ask me. SOAP, XML and Databases, Linking and Querying XML...these seem like at least intermediate topics, if not advanced. In my opinion, the "Beginning" part of the book ended more or less at page 385, even though the book goes on to page 603 before you hit the appendices. (The appendices contain some helpful reference material.)

I'm also not terribly happy with Wrox's "sell more books" technique of having "Beginning" and "Professional" books that have so much overlapping material. A lot of the stuff in their "Professional XML" book is not much more than a rehash of material presented here. It's dull enough the first time! The diagrams on the backs of their books imply that there's a progression from one book to the other. I didn't think that reading the "Professional" book was worth the effort after reading the "Beginning" book. I just picked out bits I was interested in. That meant at the bookstore, because I sure wasn't going to fork over the price for another big book I wouldn't read.

One other thing--the book has far too many errors in it. Admittedly, Wrox is very good at having online errata for their books to provide corrections. But careful editing up front is always preferable. The whole nerd book industry has a really awful reputation for sloppy editing. It's time that changed.

Nevertheless, there's no doubt that this book gives you a good grounding in a broad range of XML topics. Be prepared to be confused by the XLST and XPath material. (Consider looking at other sources for XPath in addition to this one.) Be prepared to visit Wrox's errata page for this book, and write in all the corrections in your copy. But this book does fairly well for a single-volume introduction to XML. If only it weren't so dull!

Rating:
Summary: A pleasant introduction, yet many shenanigans
Review: This book introduces XML concepts at an easy to understand level. The chapter I enjoyed the least was the SAX chapter, mostly because the writer had such an outrageously different style than the rest of the book, and tried a little bit too hard to be entertaining. I understand the third edition will be out soon, so I highly recommend that one. A lot of the material here is very outdated...I think the original publishing date was 2001 for the 2nd edition.

Rating:
Summary: Not bad, but dated now
Review: This book isn't all that bad, especially if you don't intend to read it cover to cover. There are portions of the XML tutorials that are very informative and to the point. Some of the examples are also well thought out and educational. Its weak point lies in its structure and its overall focus. It seems to bounce around a bit, and I can see how some readers might lose their way or get confused.

The best way to use this book is as a reference guide. Look up what you need from the index, and read up on it. For a more thorough approach to learning about the entire world of XML, though, there are better titles available.

Also, having said all that, this book is a bit dated by now. Any current book on XML would introduce you to some of the newer XML standards that have emerged.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book for beginners...
Review: This is an excellent book for newbies to XML. I had to learn XML for a project FAST! Using this book I got up to speed with other developers on the team in no time. I used a coupon from UnderTag.com, so it was almost free for me too.