No comments about Service Orientation Market Trends Report: Predicting the Future of XML & Web Services.

3 comments about The Complete XML Programming Training Course (1st Edition).

1. The book/CD is very nice for learning XML fast, you can run many of the examples as you go through the material when using the CD, which enables you to learn it faster. The book and CD are not bogged down with useless detail (like the Wrox "Professional XML" book is). It's pretty straight to the point, but sometimes you need to go to other sources to fully understand or get more details.
   My only complaint is from description, I expected video presentations and great multimedia capabilities. The multimedia is mostly just explanations of sample code line by line and it is all audio, no video. Really you pay alot of extra money for a CD that has the same exact information as the book, so you may want to save some money and just by the book.



2. This is a worst concept. The book is good. That's why 2 stars. For the book, alone, I would have given 4 stars. I wouldn't waste my money for any item in this series. Just buy the book.



3. I much enjoyed the book that is part of the package. As usual with the authors, I found that the book was concise, to the point, very pedogical and clear. I liked the self-review exercises at the end of each chapter as well.

   I also enjoyed the table of content of the book that was obviously designed for programmer (so many introduction xml book avoid all useful topics - DOM, SAX etc). The "bonus" chapters (server-side programming with Java etc) while not useless, sounded a bit like they were there only to fill the book but never mind.

   I was very disappointed on the other hand by the CD ROM that came with the book. It only features the text of the book in unattractive format and offer only scant interactive or multimedia material (ok there is an interactive quizz). Reading the publisher description, I had come to expect an actually interactive CD ROM. For this reason, while I would warmly recommend the book as an introduction to XML (one of the best around, with Beginning XML from WROX) I would advice for buying the book alone, not the course package.

5 comments about XML Developer's Guide.

1. This book is filled with really interesting examples that go way beyond your average XML book. The bad review I saw here mentions a bug in an example (something you are likely to find on any XML book), but what it doesn't mention is that there is a complete website of errata and additions to the code in the book (something you are not so likely to find), and the example was a really innovative and complex one: creating a JPEG image out of an XML file that describes colored areas. This book is more packed with interesting and useful examples for XML apps than any other I've seen. It has errors like many other books on new technologies, but they are publicly fixed and the information within is well worth looking.



2. This book may cover lots of ground, but it seems that I can not find anything in the companion CD. The book lists code fragments and refer the complete code to the CD. There is no src for chapter 6 (DOM). Src list is incomplete for chapter 7 (DOM).I have not found a DOM API, I have not found an evaluation (or recommendation) of DOM parsers. The book may be OK, but the CD is horrible. The web-site is lot much better either.



3. Even though the content of the book is very intriguing, and provides a clear introduction to the XML technologies (XML, SAX, DOM etc.) most of the Java code in the book does not even compile. The errors some times are deeper than mere typographical errors, e.g. void member methods later on called with the expectation to return a rather complicated Tree object etc. Too bad, because together with the attempt to use standard design patterns in java code dealing with XML, it could have been indeed an excellent book.



4. First of all this book has lots of Errors in printing and the supporting web-site of the author is down since i bought this book,the Cd also does not have all the Codes and upto dates APIs.
   It seems that author does not want to give complete knowledge to its readers.
   It seems i have to read another XML book to read this book.
   it does not cover the topics in details.



5. First and foremost, this is NOT a book for beginers. I found it hard to understand at times but this might be because of all of the errors in it. The book itself seemed to be written well. If I was more advanced in XML, I think I would have gotten a lot more out of this book. I will review it again after I become better at XML. Get this book if you already have a good grasp of XML.

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

1 comments about Creating Dynamic ASP.NET Server Controls Using XML.

1. What ever you do, don't pay a dollar a page for this book. The information it contains is available several places on the web at no charge.

4 comments about Professional SQL Server 2000 XML.

1. Wrox has always prided themselves on code intensive books, and this is no exception. Unfortunately, they are also getting a bit intensive in the area of adding authors to be the first one to market. This leads to a book that seems a bit disjointed. With as few chapters as this book has, I do not see the need for so many authors. I guess it is the length.

   Pluses in this book include the chapter on FOR XML and the chapter on OPENXML. I believe this is the area where most developers will like to spend the most of their time. I would have liked to see FOR XML EXPLICIT get a bit more coverage, as this is the bear, but the examples are workable, so I cannot complain too much.

   I also enjoyed the updategram chapter. This ability was highly touted in Microsoft marketing events, but took quite some time to surface. The case studies help put the technology in a real world light.

   The negatives are few. First, I believe far too much time is spent on XSD schemas, at least with the way it is presented. In a real world scenario, you are probably going to pull the schema from an existing database, which makes this material NULL and void. If you do get into writing XSD, you will find this material far too shallow.

   I also would have liked to see how this technology could blend with the direction Microsoft is pushing .NET. I realize this is not the topic of the book, so I have not hammered on this. Perhaps the next book will be SQL Server 2000 and .NET?




2. I had mistakenly thought that Wrox books were held to a higher standard. First getting a taste for them going through both of Rob Vieira's two SQL Server Programming books and regarding them as the finest technical books I've ever seen. However this Professional SQL Server 2000 XML is a disappointment. Part of the problem lies with having 12 different authors because it seems a bit jumpy. I think I'll really try to limit my future purchases to single source efforts. Also, no care was taken with the code examples that you can download from the Wrox website. The book shows the source but there is really no way of really matching the example to the source other than guessing the name. Often I've needed to open up all 15 or so files in the directory to realize that the particular example is not included. I'm picking my way through but it is not pleasant.



3. I looked at two other SQL Server 2000 XML books, but found this one to be the best - covering almost everything on SQL Server 2000 XML. Very well written, nice examples help understand the technology better. The chapter on Updategrams is very useful. I wanted to learn updategrams and this chapter covers it nicely to get started using them in production.



4. It is a good book as far as explaning what SQL Server has to offer regarding XML capabilities but it should have covered the case studies fully with the .Net Framework. Also, it covers very good the IIS configuration, and how to manage XML Templates, XPath and Schemas. The book has a migration example from ASP to ASP.Net which does not cover ADO.Net. If you want a rich source on how to integrate SQLXML and the .Net Framework THIS IS NOT THE BOOK.

5 comments about Sams Teach Yourself XML in 21 Days.

1. 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.



2. 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.



3. 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.



4. 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).




5. 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.

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.

5 comments about Professional PHP4 XML.

1. PHP itself is usually very straightforward and easy to understand, but throw in the world of XML and things can become overwhelming very quickly. DOM, RSS, SAX, XPath, XSLT, XSL, XML-RPC - wow! Professional PHP4 XML will answer the questions "What is XML?" and "How do I use XML within PHP?"

   The book starts off with a nice introduction to PHP, including the use of classes and file functions. It isn't meant to teach you everything you need to know about PHP, but to be refresher course for information that will be used throughout the book. It was nice to see the promotion of the new superglobal arrays in this section of the book.

   Next, they jump into a chapter devoted to XML Fundamentals. This chapter explains the rules and syntax that a well-formed XML document must adhere to. DTDs and Schemas are discussed as methods to validate XML documents as well as define XML vocabularies. All in all, after reading this chapter you should have a good base to build upon for the rest of the book.

   The rest of the book is devoted to giving you detail on the different derivatives of XML and how and when do use them with PHP. Topics covered include:

   * SAX via PHP's Expat parser
   * DOM
   * XPath
   * XSL via Sablotron
   * Third party class for PHP such as XML File and phpXML
   * RSS
   * XML and databases
   * SVG
   * XML-RPC

   One of the things I love about this book is that for each of these XML derivatives, they provide a detailed list of advantages and disadvantages. This enables you to determine which of these technologies is best suited for the application you are designing.

   This book is an excellent resource for the beginner and advanced programmer alike. It is a mixture of a tutorial and reference book without comprising either. If you are serious about developing applications with PHP and XML, this book should be in your collection.




2. If you want to learn how to use PHP and XML this is the book. I have several others but this is the one that shows you how to do it with real life code exammples.



3. I echo the praise already given in detail by the other reviewers here. This book gives an excellent detailed account of XML technology as well as the application of XML in combination with PHP. I was completely new to XML and found the text easy to follow and the concepts were easily applied by examining the example code. Please note that this is NOT a book for those new to PHP, it is for an experienced PHP programmer (in my opinion). It does give an overview of many aspects of PHP, but if you are brand new to PHP, I would recommend starting with a Beginning PHP text. Beginning PHP4 by Wrox is an excellent place to start. There are several others. If you're familiar with PHP, though, and looking to expand your skills or your project to include XML, this text is the place to look.



4. Wrox Press seem to have become masters at putting together volumes from a large number of authors. This 600-page volume is another example. This way of working does have some drawbacks, there is a little repetition of some basic stuff throughout the book, but not enough to truly detract from it.

   The book, after some expository material, details 11 projects of increasing complexity. They use PHP, MySQL, PEAR::DB, Smarty and PHPLib. The target audience, according to the book jacket, are programmers who already have a good knowledge of PHP, SQL Databases and XML. Frankly, I think they overdo the amount of experience you need to use and benefit from this book. If you are on top of all those topics well enough to consider yourself ¡°professional¡± then this book may be too simple. If, on the other hand, you are, like me, conversant with PHP and SQL but would like to take yourself up to ¡°professional¡± use of technologies like XML, templating and WAP enabling then this book will be good




5. The problem with this book is that one example relies on examples from another chapter. Therefore, you have to pretty much read the entire 900 pages to get an example in the latter chapters to operate properly.

   An additional problem is the reference to downloading classes on websites that no longer exist.

   If you already know XML parsing, then this book is fine, but then I guess you wouldn't need the book.

5 comments about XML: A Manager's Guide (2nd Edition) (Addison-Wesley Information Technology Series).

1. I found this book to be a concise and easily understood overview of what XML can do for business. I've shared copies with one or two special clients and gotten a positive response.



2. First, the length of this book is just right for a manager.
   Second, the content of this book is just what a manager should know about, especially on the impact of application development process, resource and skill.
   Third, the edit style is friendly for the manager, too.
   So managers, don't hestitate to take and read this tiny book!



3. In the world of over-hyped and under-performing technologies, the manager, who is often not technically proficient, is left trying to make decisions with insufficient or inaccurate information. Attempting to keep everything organized and learn the basics of and justifications for the new technologies is a hurdle that few can leap. Fortunately, this book lowers the bar to some extent. It is an explanation of the new XML (eXtended Markup Language) technologies without being a tutorial on the particulars.
   As an overview, it covers all of the primary aspects of XML, what it is used for, how files are structured and the general standards that now exist. It will not teach you XML, but from it you will learn what it can and will be used for. Some time is also spent on XML messaging and web services as well as the different type of documents that can be created. The explanations are well done, landing neatly within the narrow range of being technical enough to be worth reading but not so technical as to be beyond the grasp of the intended audience.
   If you are interested in understanding what XML is and are not yet ready for the technical details, then this book will show you what you need to know. In the hyper-competitive world of modern business, knowing what XML can do in data transfer and storage is a necessary skill for many. This book makes the opportunity to learn it readily available.



4. Excellent rendition of the XML landscape, painted mostly in broad brushstrokes, but detailed in places with enough code samples and product names to show what it's like on the ground with this technology.

   Describes the problems that XML attacks. Moves on to expose some details of XML and DTD. All of the related acronyms and buzzwords are then catalogued in the next two chapters on associated standards and web services. Surveys the array of infrastructure software for supporting XML-based applications. Proposes processes and skills for building applications with XML. Finishes with an examination of ten typical applications for XML.

   Positions these technologies within conceptual frameworks. Takes pains, for example, to distinguish clearly between remote interface and business document messaging architectures before launching into the details of XML messaging and web services. The classification schemes for XML infrastructure software and XML applications are also most helpful.

   If you've read and appreciated David Taylor's popular books on object technology, then you'll like Mr. Dick's presentation, which follows the same pattern. The prose is clear. Major divisions are clearly marked. Every paragraph is summarized with a brief sentence beside it in the margin. I find these summaries particularly helpful in locating a specific paragraph that I want to re-read.

   Mr. Taylor, who in addition to establishing the pattern also wrote the foreword, is probably correct: for those of us who will read only one book on XML, "this is the book."




5. XML (eXtensible Markup Lanaguage) is an evolving and increasingly important language used to efficiently and effectively communicate data in context...put another way, to communicate information.
   
   "XML: A Manager's Guide" offers a clearly-written and well-illustrated guide for executives who want to learn about XML. I recommend this book for anyone interested in gaining some insight into the nature and benefits of this language.
   
   This is an introductory book, but it provides a good foundation upon which one may build a deeper understand of, and appreciation for, XML.