No comments about Hack Proofing XML with CDROM.

2 comments about Imperfect XML: Rants, Raves, Tips, and Tricks ... from an Insider.

1. It's a little tough to review this book since in general this is a nice walkthrough of a variety of XML standards. The title, however, hints at a book that would discuss schema design and common XML issues. There is a need for that book, but this is not that book.
   
   This book is a relatively short straightforward walkthrough of XML markup, data standards, searching, legacy conversions and performance. It's around 200 pages with around 20 pages. The tone is light but terse. Graphics are sparse and are used effectively.
   
   I think this would be an ideal introductory work for someone just starting out with XML. Though I think there are other books that are as good or better.
   
   If only this book had the content implied by it's title.



2. Ideally, you should already be using XML, to gain the most from this book. The author gives a guide to the huge overlayer of extensions and standards that have accrued atop XML, like barnacles on a ship. Unfortunately, threading this maze to understand what you might really need is not easy for many. So his viewpoint might help you.
   
   Also, at the implementation level, he offers practical advice about such key usages as XML data. He gives advantages and disadvantages. The latter is the best part of the book. Because other books that might explain the topic to someone new to it often just talk about the syntax and the great things that you can accomplish. Rarely will such texts discuss any limitations that have been found through painful experience.
   
   It's not just for XML data that he does this. For documents, networking, searching, performance and legacy information, he analyses the disadvantages.

5 comments about Secure XML: The New Syntax for Signatures and Encryption.

1. When you read the XML specification, you will notice that it contains no notion of security. Critical security functionalities such as encryption, digital signatures, and authentication are simply not part of the XML standard. XML is similar to many other protocols, languages, and operating systems in that it was originally developed without any thought to security and privacy. It is only after serious security vulnerabilities are discovered and publicized that they are patched. But this find, patch, fix mentality of information security is dangerous in that security problems can exist for months or years before they are found.

   Similarly within XML, much of the security functionality has been added post- facto, namely in Canonical XML, XML Signature, and XML Encryption Syntax and Processing. By adding security to the core feature set of XML, the W3C has ensured that,
   to a degree, the find, patch, fix method won't be the manner in which XML security is developed. A good reference book can help you navigate this XML security landscape.

   Topics such as authentication, encryption, XML signatures, algorithms, and keying are discussed. For the most part, the bulk of XML security is covered.

   Donald Eastlake, the lead author of Secure XML: The New Syntax for Signatures and Encryption, is the co-chairman of the joint IETF/W3C XML Digital Signature working group, a member of the W3C Encryption and W3C XML Key Management System working groups, and co-author of the XML Digital Signature, XML Encryption, and XML Exclusive Canonicalization standards. It is clear that Eastlake lives and breathes XML. As Eastlake is a writer of numerous W3C XML standards, and standards are often written in a terse and abstract manner; his book has a slightly stiffer writing style than XML Security. If you can get over this style, you can appreciate the comprehensive and uthoritative look at XML the book provides from one of the key architects of the syntax.

   Secure XML covers and details every XML security feature. Also, it spends a lot of time giving examples of syntax and language use. This is especially so in chapter 9, XML Canonicalization - The Key to Robustness. Canonicalization is the extraction of the standard form of some data and the discarding of insignificant aspects of the data's surface representations. The book notes that getting the right canonicalization is one of the most important, yet difficult aspects of digital authentication within XML. Chapter 10 goes into great detail about XML signatures and authentication. The chapter gives numerous code examples of various contexts, schemas, and elements that readers can use on their own XML servers. Chapter 10 also has numerous notes and historical information about XML security with information that can't be found elsewhere.




2. Suppose you have XML data that you want to regularly
   send to Bob, across the Internet. But it is of a
   confidential nature, so you don't want to send it as
   plaintext. Well, you can try using low level
   encryptions, like SSL or TLS. But these don't give any
   authentication, ie. Bob can't tell that you actually
   sent them. Also, once Bob gets the messages, they are
   all in plaintext, so he can't easily protect these
   against others, if he is on a multiuser computer.

   One answer is to incorporate encryption into XML, by
   defining cryptographic standards that sit atop XML,
   and generate XML documents with encrypted data. These
   let you and Bob use powerful XML-based routines like
   XPath, XLink and XPointer. Plus, you can now do things
   like append your digital signature to your plaintext
   file, encrypt the combination with Bob's public key,
   and get a resultant XML document that you can send
   Bob. Upon receipt, he can decrypt it and verify that
   you are the author, all the while dealing with XML
   documents.

   This book explains the emerging XML standards that
   make this possible. They discuss at a high level the
   various cryptographic algorithms, like AES [Advanced
   Encryption Standard], Diffie-Hellman and MD5. Little
   mathematics is needed, as they leave the mechanics of
   the algorithms to other books. Instead, they describe
   the XML infrastructure that uses these.

   The book has a necessarily comprehensive description
   of canonicalisation; which refers to the rewriting of
   an XML document in a standard form, prior to
   encryption. Otherwise two semantically identical
   documents would give different ciphertexts, which is
   confusing.

   If you have been wondering if you should encrypt your
   XML documents, and how to do so, this book may clarify
   many issues.




3. Collaboratively written by Donald Eastlake (Co-chair of the joint IETF/W3C XML Digital Signature working group) and freelance technical writer Kitty Niles, Secure XML: The New Syntax for Signatures and Encryption is a solid, accessible, step-by-step guide to the processes for encrypting and ensuring security of XML applications. Individual chapters competently address canonicalization and authentication, encryption, cryptographic and non-cryptographic algorithms, and much, much more. Highly recommended for advanced XML users, Secure XML is a comprehensive, technically proficient, and detailed instructional resource and reference filled from cover to cover with extensive discussion and practical examples.



4. This is a great book. I rarely give a book 5 stars, but this one has earned it.

   The author's technical and standards body background is a tremendous help in helping the reader sort out the substance from the hype. This book covers XML and cryptography basics, DTDs, XML Schema, XML digital signatures and encryption, and SOAP.

   I like the author's comparisons of XML with other encoding schemes, particularly ASN.1 DER which is prevalent in the security standards world.

   Also helpful are the author's "soapbox" comments, which handily dispel the notion that you should accept all parts of a standard as the absolute truth and the final word. For example, "X.500 identities are baroque hierarchical names in which each level of the hierarchy consists of an arbitrary, unordered set of attribute-value pairs. They are just one of the complexities and false assumptions (such as the assumption that everyone would allow themselves to be listed in one global public directory, including companies listing all their employees) that doomed the X.500 Directory as originally conceived". I love it!

   You'd be hard pressed to go wrong with this book.




5. In researching business requirements for enterprise web services, it soon became obvious that XML security would be an important issue.

   I happened across this book, with a seemingly simple format and am impressed with the information it provides, the progression of information, and how well I was able to understand and comprehend the concepts detailed.

   After reading serveral books on XML in general, I would recommend this book to anyone just wanting to learn XML concepts.

   I wish more technical books gave me the same feeling of usefulness that this one gave me.

   As they say in the movie industry... "An enthusiastic thumbs up"

5 comments about XML in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition.

1. I have read part of the book and tried to use it as a reference, but always confused with the bad organization, not to mention some typo errors.
   personally, I don't recommend it.



2. The authors managed to compress an amazing amount of information in a very small amount of space, without affecting readability. Including coverage of XML, DTD, Namespaces, XSL, Xpath, Xlinks, DOM and much more, including Schemas (missing from previous edition). As a bonus we get reference for XML, Schemas, Xpath, XSLT, DOM and SAX. Much more than good value for money, it's a real bargain. Just not recommended to absolute newbies



3. This is the only XML book I have - I skimmed through several and this one was far and away the best. You will have to know what you are trying to do and sort of figure out which parts of the book to pay attention to as there is so much there. I spent some time with DTDs only to realize they were unnecessary for what I was doing. But the book allowed me to build an application from scratch.



4. This books starts out with a quick explanation and walkthrough or XML 1.0 specification that is pretty good. It is lacking a XML Schema (XSD) section as well covers very briefly the XSLT (XML Stylesheets) anyone wishing to anything with sytlesheets after reading this book will be disappointed. XPath coverage is pretty good as well as SAX, & DTD. XLink, XPointer, are talking about but nothing in depth. All example code is in JAVA. Anyone wanting specialized knowledge of ASP.NET / .NET / MS SQL usage of XML should look elsewhere (this is somewhat understandable due to the publish date.)



5. This is a well-written reference on XML 1.1. Slightly over half the book is tutorial in nature, while the remainder of the book is reference material (on XML, Schemas, XPath, XSLT, DOM, SAX, and character sets). The explanations were clear and the reference portion quite complete. I recommend this book as a good reference on XML.

5 comments about Platinum Edition Using HTML 4, XML, and Java 1.2.

1. Thank goodness the copy I have is hardcover. I've had to hot-glue the binding already (Ok, it's been after a year of use).

   Use it every time I want to launch into learning a new web development technology. It's not exhaustively in-depth on any subject. But it more than gets your feet wet on all of them. Presents a well-rounded view of what it takes to get the job done.

   Often use it as a reference -- when other, more focused books fail. Chock full of useful tips. Have found it to be consistently accurate.

   Buy this book, read it cover to cover as quickly as you can, then expand on it with more focussed books. I consider it a bargain.




2. This book is just what i was looking for. When i was hired to a web company i didnt' even know what HTML stood for. This book takes you deep enough into things you need to make basic html pages, all the way to venturing into basic javascript, and java. Its isn't something you want to buy if you want to learn java, or java script. This book, however, will help you tremendously when it comes to two things: (1) Just learning html, from what it stands for - to creating tuly user friendly webpages, that look and feel good to users. (2) it serves as my offices Number ONE reference for HTML. It has been our reference manual for months now. It has yet to really let us down. IF you want to learn html with no background in computers (even if you didnt' even have a commodore) GET THIS BOOK IF you want a good reliable reference manual for HTML; GET THIS BOOK



3. This is a thick book. But never misunderstand the fact that no matter how many pages are included in a computer reference, there will always be information missing for the most advanced user. HTML 4 is covered in-depth -- and should be the primary reason for wanting to purchase this title, for I have not found a better reference on the subject anywhere. Java 1.2 and XML receive good general overviews. A review previous to mine suggests other, more comprehensive titles, if one wants to delve into the world of Java and XML fully. An excellent suggestion and something that should be taken into account before buying.

   Regarding "Platinum Edition Using HTML 4, XML, and Java 1.2," it should be noted that for first-time site developers that are looking for an introduction to HTML 4, this is probably not the best way to go. The basics of Web development, such as the best placement for links, graphics, and text, are summarized in the first fifty pages. (First-timers should look for Web development books that cover both HTML 4 and graphic design well.) Following, is a reference-style book that comes in very handy when looking for specific information (that this book covers). I would say, and I think that I share the sentiment of other readers, that this book is geared toward the intermediate to advanced site developer.

   Several more aspects worth noting: The style of writing is clear and straightforward, with few grammatical mistakes; there are plenty of examples (code and screen) with good descriptions of why something works; and I would've preferred that the screen shots be in color, but that would probably double the price.

   This is a good reference book for HTML 4, that includes an overview of XML and Java. It's not everything, but it's excellent nonetheless.




4. The book covers a little bit of everything, which makes it overall a nothing. Although it attempts to be encyclopedic, yet it fails to even make mention important and basic things such as http cookies! From cover to cover, the book is filled with contrived examples and useless discussions on generalities. This is NOT a good technical book. -- NOT RECOMMENDED.



5. I am professional web developer and have been using this book for already a year. It is exellent as an introductory book and then as an everyday reference. For some resons its coverage of JavaScript is not displayed in the book name, but this is the best book I have found about JavaScript and its integrations with browsers.

3 comments about XML in Office 2003: Information Sharing with Desktop XML (The Charles F. Goldfarb Definitive XML Series).

1. In my efforts to learn and understand XML the past year and a half I have come upon a decided lack of interest for the subject among my technical writing colleagues. Single-sourcing with XML has simply been too difficult to set up. You need a DTD or schema (or EDD in FrameMaker) before your can start writing, and style sheets to present it. It seems that XML has mostly been used in web services like on-line shopping.

   If tech writers are using XML, it is probably because they were already using FrameMaker with SGML earlier and have just converted their documents to the XML version. Furthermore, if you are not using FrameMaker 7.0 as an authoring tool, you had to find some other new tool, like XMLSpy, Authentic or Veredus, which have many capabilities, but seem "geeky" to a tech writer.

   INTRODUCING XML IN OFFICE 2003
   You can't imagine how delighted I was to see this book recommended in a newsletter, because that was the first I'd heard about the XML facilities in Office 2003. When my husband updated to Office 2003, I bought the book to see how it works. To my dismay, I discovered that the XML facilities are only in the Professional edition, so I ordered a 30-day trial version of Office 2003 from Microsoft and started reading.

   One of the authors, Charles Goldfarb, has been in on XML since its conception (and birth, way back in 1998!) so he is one of the big XML gurus. Now gurus are not necessarily, by definition, good writers of introductory books. However, Goldfarb has his own series of excellent books, motivating and educating developers and users in the wonders of XML.

   This introduction is well structured and well thought out. All the steps are well described and easy to follow. There are even separate XML tutorials to bring beginners up to speed without boring more advanced users. The only difficulty I found is that the book is so richly illustrated that some steps refer to a screen capture on a following page.

   USING THE BOOK
   Part 1, Introducing Desktop XML, aims to motivate you with "The reason why" it's worth your while to get the 30-day trial version and keep on reading.

   Part 2, Working with XML in Office, has you creating XML documents in Word, using external XML data in spreadsheets, exporting and importing XML in Access and creating XML websites in FrontPage. You will also discover how easy it is to import XML data, like zip codes and stock market data, from the Internet. You can download all the code for the examples from www.XMLinOffice.com.

   INFOPATH
   An exciting new feature is a new Microsoft product, InfoPath, which you can use to create "smart" forms. The book includes a CD with a free 60-day trial version. InfoPath can become your front end to XML-enabled databases, or any other data-based XML application. (Note: you have to open the sample InfoPath documents in Design mode, and then publish them to your own computer to be able to see them in action.)

   XML TUTORIALS
   If you have never seen XML before, there is no need to shy away. Goldfarb provides you with all you need to know in Part 3, XML Tutorials, in the back of the book. Each chapter in Part 2 lists the skills you need to understand and perform its activities, with a reference to which tutorial to read prior to the chapter. So, while more experienced readers can start right off, beginners do a tutorial or two in the back of the book before starting each new chapter.

   USING XML IN OFFICE 2003
   I found working with XML in Office 2003 easy and intuitive. All the information you need is in the Task Pane on the right side of the screen. Just drag tags from the pane to your document. If you want to produce XML quickly, you can even use the built-in Word Markup Language (which catches every bit of Word's complicated style markup). Nevertheless, it is much better to learn what little you need to know to author pure XML in Word, which it does beautifully. XML is an open format that you can import into any other XML document in, say, FrameMaker, InDesign or Quark, so it is worth keeping it pure.

   BEYOND THE TUTORIALS
   Of course the hard part is making the first decision to actually create a working document in XML. Other than in tutorials and class exercises, I have not gotten there yet. I figure it won't be long before I update my 30-day trial to the real version of Office 2003. It really isn't difficult to get started, because Office 2003 provides you with a number of templates with all the necessary schemas and style sheets, which you can modify for your own use. Now you have to figure out how to convince your employer that this is exactly what you need to make your documentation work more efficient and user friendly.




2. With the XML advantages in the Office 2003 suite of applications not being glaringly obvious (at least not to me), I gave this book a whirl. I'm glad I did.
   
   

   It's consistent in its organization - presenting the capabilities of Word, Excel, Access, FrontPage, and Office forms to use, manage and manipulate XML-based data - first from within the applications themselves, and then from more robust subsystems using Office's embedded Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). It shows how easy it is to manage data by building great apps with simple scripts. (Notably missing was a discussion on the applications of XML within PowerPoint, although I'm admittedly unsure if that's even an issue.)
   
   

   The book's voice is very friendly and non-intimidating, using chapter around 15-30 pages at most, making for a pleasant, quick reading experience. On this note, I found the Excel chapters and those on WordML especially valuable. As far as the examples themselves, all were practical and easy to replicate locally, whether by menu or through code. There's a healthy lean towards the use of SOAP by making Web services calls for importation of data that's a great addition.
   
   

   The book also has something I found that many modern programming texts don't - an easy-to-understand explanation of schemas and how to construct them. All books discussing XML obviously make mention of the use of schema, but the vast majority don't explain it well. The authors do a great job of not only explaining schema's role in an app, but also how to build it, which is something newbies will appreciate.
   
   

   Still, in this day of modern distributed applications and datashaping, I also would have liked to see the VBA-based examples complemented/contrasted with .NET programming concepts and code, working against the APIs for each Office app. Also, one thing I found somewhat annoying was that the code, while complete and hearty, always referenced "in Line 25...and then in Line 30", without marking the lines of code, forcing the reader to manually count-and-mark the lines. This was a minor nuisance, but a nuisance nonetheless.
   
   

   But the good in this book far outweighs the bad, and the content and examples can be picked up by any level of staffer in the workplace who's familiar with Office apps. It's a great read.




3. Mr. Goldfarb is on a tear with yet another book about XML and XML technologies. In this case it's about the integration of XML into Microsoft's Office Suite for 2003. This is an impressive peice of work and it shows through in the book, which is far superior to his XML handbook, though it does suffer from similar problems. Once again the book has aggressively short chapters and has an uneven level of detail. In addition some of the chapters feel like a lift from the handbook, which is not necessarily a bad thing give that they are from the same author. And the book also has a strange organization, for instance leaving the explanation of XML standards and syntax to the last few chapters of the book.

   That being said the book is still far better than the XML Handbook. And I think in large part that has to do with the fascinating topic which is Microsoft's excellent work in integrating XML into their products. This is a worthy read, especially if you are a developer looking to leverage the XML capabilities of the Office suite.

3 comments about Java P2P Unleashed: With JXTA, Web Services, XML, Jini, JavaSpaces, and J2EE (Unleashed).

1. this book has too much redundant info and lacks coherence. try the jxta in a nutshell instead; to the point, simple and clear.



2. This book's title is a bit misleading, as it covers a lot more than P2P. In addition to JXTA, it also has chapters on Jini, and several chapters on Web services. Some of the chapters are better than others; the chapters on JXTA are especially informative. Because the book has many authors, some of the information is repeated, but that does not detract from the book's overall high quality.



3. Peer-to-peer (P2P) has progressed from a curiosity to a serious opportunity for businesses to move beyond the costs and limitations of traditional client-server based computing. With a choice of several new, maturing technologies, Java developers need a single source to explain the benefits of each technology and help them see how to fit the P2P "pieces" together - both in building new systems and integrating with existing ones. Java P2P Unleashed: With JXTA, Web Services, XML, Jini, JavaSpaces, and J2EE starts with a discussion of the P2P architecture, referencing similarities with existing, familiar systems while previewing several types of P2P applications. Java P2P Unleashed explains how to plan ahead for security, routing, performance and other issues when developing a P2P application. Each Java P2P technology is approached from a P2P perspective, focusing on implementation concerns Java developers will face while using them. The last section includes several large-scale examples of different P2P applications - managing content, building communities, integrating services, routing messages, and using intelligent agents to gather information. The final chapter looks ahead to future developments in Java P2P technologies, including the use of J2ME. Java P2P Unleashed is confidently recommended for Intermediate to Advanced level users. 752 pages.

4 comments about Cocoon 2 Programming: Web Publishing with XML and Java.

1. Deal with a thing while it is still nothing; keep a thing in order before disaster sets in. A quote from Lao Tzu on the cover of this book which the Sybex production team would have done well to have heeded.

   It does not help that the competition - Zeigeler and Langham's offering from New Riders - is both clear, structured and liberally sprinkled with examples. This only accentuates the contrast with this exhibit, which leaves the reader as confused after closing the covers as before he or she opened them. No, correction, make that more confused.

   There is no lack of substance here, but also no shape, no argument and no goal. Cocoon is a system where data flows naturally from generators, through transformers, and is dispatched on its way by a final serialiser component. Yet, here in chapter four, the authors announce unconvincingly that a explanation in reverse sequence is ... errr ... in order. Off they go explaining serialisers. Fine. Chapter five, bafflingly, skips transformers and discusses site maps. We finally reach generators in chapter eight. Is this the wrong end of the telescope or are we staring into the proverbial liquid filled boot?

   It goes on like this, avoiding any form of educative example and meandering though theory without ever fully explaining why and where. To use a generator I need to know what it generates, but I can search in vain for coverage of even a fraction of Cocoon's generators.

   The book almost hits its stride in a reasonable explanation of XSP but then blows it , with a chapter on logic sheets. How would you explain what a logic sheet is? Why, obvious! by listing twenty seven tables of unannotated data before offering any explanation how to put this information to use.

   Oh dear. I can imagine the work the writers put into this book. It is often very detailed and many long evenings must have been devoted to research. How sad that the editors at Sybex didn't insist that some shape should be battered into the manuscript before it hit the press.




2. When I originally saw this book, I was intrigued by an alternative way of presenting this fairly complicated material and the seemingly relevant examples. I felt that it was generally incomplete and scattered.

   Take the section on custom Generators, for example. The example is derived from an example is a previous book written by another Sybex book on XML and JSP, so it seemed like a nice comparison with an alternative technology. The introduction to the example discusses the dynamics of a branching survey and why a custom Generator is sometimes necessary. Unfortunately, the example doesn't follow through on the promise or the lesson. The example code that I downloaded from the website turned out to be incomplete and inconsistent with the book. Although I eventually got the example running, the end result wasn't compelling enough for me to understand the purpose for writing the custom Generator in the first place.

   I was dissapointed and frustrated with this book. For those trying to learn about Cocoon I would suggest Zeigeler and Langham's New Riders book (Cocoon: Building XML Applications).




3. What the authors of this book desperately needed was an editor. This book is a mess. There is no sense of flow. There is no attempt by the authors to explain a topic and then delve further into it building upon what they show us. Instead we get detail. We are told Cocoon is made up of these frameworks and these frameworks use these design patterns and are made up of these pieces which are made up of these pieces. And in the end we know no more than when we started. We are told Cocoon contains these Java classes and are given a sentence explaining each one. We are given lists of SAX classes with no clear explanation of why we should be interested. There are lots of tables and lists and charts that explain nothing. The book never gives a clear explanation of what Cocoon does or how Java fits into Cocoon. The chapter on LogicSheets is a perfect example. There are thirty three tables in this chapter going page after page with no clear explanation of what the tables mean. Then the example at the end of the chapter is so trivial as to be meaningless. In fact, the examples throughout the book are much too simplistic and don't demonstrate the power of Cocoon. There is no question that an enormous amount of research went into this book. It's a shame that the authors weren't able to present that research in a useful way.



4. Six months ago, as no Cocoon book existed yet, this thin volume could have been interesting, but with the release of Moczar and Aston it is simply not worth the money anymore.

   It is often rather superficial and is packed with questionnable fillers à la Wrox: one really wonders why the authors and the publisher felt compelled to include useless 'introductions' to css, xhtml and xsl (and more) in a book on cocoon!

No comments about SAS(R) 9.1.3 XML LIBNAME Engine: User's Guide.

4 comments about XForms Essentials.

1. The author is a member of the W3C XForms Working Group, so he knows what he is talking about. This guide is a great starting point for getting to grips with XForms whether or not you are already familiar with HTML forms. This is a much better place to start than the XForms spec, which is pretty impenetrable to your average forms author. Micah takes you through the basics, shows you where XForms fits with other W3C standards, and gets you started with authoring. Once you are feeling a bit more confident this book serves as an excellent reference. One of the really nice things about the book is that there isn't too much of it. It gives a good grounding in the subject without any waffle. In the course of my work I have spoken to several others who have similarly found Micahs book to be an essential starting point to XForms, and a solid reference book.



2. XForms is, very quietly, changing the way that we view the web, putting it on a much more solid XML based footing. While the specification is difficult to comprehend at the best of times, the power of the specification is such that it provides a solid basis on which to build the XML web.

   Micah Dubinko's book cuts through a great deal of complexity of the form and illustrates in clear, concise examples how the most critical features are used, elucidates much of the reasoning behind how certain features evolved (a bonus coming from his days helming the XForms specification itself) and otherwise provides a thorough yet easy to understand introduction to what is undoubtably one of the most important specifications to come out of the W3C.

   My company is using XForms to build significant portions of our infrastructure upon my guidance, and I hand a copy of this book out to each one of my programmers. If you deal with XML at all, this book should absolutely be part of your library.

   Kurt Cagle
   Chief Technology Architect
   Seattle Book Company
   and Author (SVG Programming, XQuery Kickstart, Beginning XML, etc.)




3. This book is a poor introduction to XForms. In a text that is only slightly larger than a pamphlet, the author attempts to do much more than simply introduce XForms, and the result is that nothing ends up being explained well.
   
   The relatively few pages of the author's own creation are written in a prose so terse that in some places it reads like gibberish, and the rest of the text is a reference that repeats what is available in the W3C XForms and XPath specifications and the XForms for HTML Authors document.



4. One of the recent IBM acquisitions leads me to believe that the XForms standard will begin to play a larger part in my area of software expertise. To that end, I got a review copy of XForms Essentials by Micah Dubinko in order to try and get a basic understanding of the standard and technology. The book does a pretty good job of that, but is probably more useful for someone who is all ready to dig in and use it.
   
   Contents: Introduction to Web Forms; XForms Building Blocks; XPath in XForms; XML Schema in XForms; The XForms Model; The XForms User Interface; Actions and Events; Submit; Styling XForms; Form Accessibility, Design, and Troubleshooting; Extending XForms; Examining Microsoft InfoPath; The GNU Free Documentation License; Index
   
   Dubinko starts off by examining how HTML forms work, and then transitions into how XForms addresses some of the problems (heavy reliance on scripting, restriction to flat key/value data pairing, etc.). Chapter 2 does a pretty high-level overview of an XForms document and what components do what in the layout. From there, you start to get pretty deep into the different areas that make up the entire XForms family, like XPath and XML Schema. At this point, having a solid footing in XML technology is probably required (or highly suggested), because the terminology gets technical and a fair amount of reference material starts to creep in. If you're actually using XForms in your application development, then you'll be able to use those reference sections to understand and use things like datatypes and computed expressions. I also really liked the appendix section on the comparison between XForms and Microsoft's competing InfoPath implementation. It does a nice job highlighting the major differences in a really short number of pages.
   
   While this might not have been the best "first" XForms book for me to read, it definitely does a good job in covering the information for the right audience. If someone were faced with a software application that used XForms and they needed to support it, I'd definitely suggest getting a copy of this book. The technical nature will help as you get your hands dirty on a daily basis. If you're simply looking for a high-level understanding of XForms, there's a fair amount here that will cause your eyes to glaze over...