1 comments about Developing .NET Web Services with XML.

1. Not recommended for MCSD or MCAD 70-310 exam preparation!

   Conceptually, the book covers all of the bases that an aspiring XML developer would require, including somewhat thorough concept, explanation, example, and summary investigations.

   Where the book greatly lacks is the code samples; many will not run, and multiple programming languages are introduced.

   Don't buy this book for study.

No comments about XML, Web Services & Service-Oriented Architectures Competitive Landscape Presentation.

No comments about Definitive XML Application Development.

2 comments about Inside XML DTDs: Scientific and Technical.

1. Because the topic is changing so quickly, it is difficult to publish a current book on XML. Even with this disadvantage, the book gives the reader the information needed to understand how XML works, what its potential is, and generally how to implement it. I have two negative comments:
   1. The book is a too cursory with emerging technologies which will be the mainstay of the technology: DOM, XSL, XSLT, SAX. These parts are critical for implementors and should have been discussed more thoroughly.
   2. For a book on markup, they should have gotten the table of contents marked up correctly.

   On the whole, an excellent book. Very readable.




2. The book does not focus on the "Scientific and technical" side (only 1/3 of the chapters). Maybe that is why the subtitle has disappeared from the cover. Chapters 1-9 and 21-24 are generalities about XML and XML-aware applications. These would have been much clearer if the authors omitted to present all these useless options such as PUBLIC identifiers. Chapters 10, 11 and annex A paraphrase the MathML specifications. The MathML specs, freely downloadable online, are unusually clear themselves so the book does not bring much. I would have liked a word about the XSIL format, an index for the CD, and a correct table of content. I understand that if the authors had taken the time to write a well focused and pedagogical text, it would have been obsolete before publishing. Yet I am still looking for a book on XML for scientists.

5 comments about Mastering XML.

1. This book is useless, I recommend Sybex to review this unorganized book again. Not suitable for beginners at all.

   I found myself trapped with verbal explanations that keeps saying "you don't have to understand it now, more of it will be in the next section". This kind of stuff really discourage readers. This book will only prove that when you buy it you will "waste your money and your time".




2. If you know Html and want to learn XML, this is a book for you.
   It tells you in layman terms the concepts of XML without getting you bogged down.If you are a programmer (java)you can read just upto chapter 11 and then look at the java Api or go through one of the IBM tutorials and you will be all set.I agree that there is lot of repetition of the concepts but you can just skim the topic or read it again.



3. Lacking any serious depth even for beginners, and a complete waste of 900 perfectly good pages worth of paper. What a mess!



4. This book tries to cover a tremendous amount of territory:
   * The history of document markup and XML.
   * XML concepts and syntax.
   * Document analysis and DTD and schema design.
   * CSS
   * XSL/XSLT
   * An array of development tools
   * A range of XML application servers
   * IE channels
   * RDF, P3P, WDDX, MathML, SMIL
   * Case studies from D&B, Dell

   That's an impressive and ambitious list.

   Unfortunately, the authors are over reaching and have prepared a book that looks like it was rushed to market. It is full of typos, grammar mistakes and nonsensical examples. It is almost incoherent in some places. The coverage from chapter to chapter is extremely uneven: Chapter 22 provides 13 pages of coverage on XML and Java. If it only took 13 pages to teach it to you, you probably wouldn't need the book to learn it.

   Even as a dedicated reader with eight years' experience in publishing and content management, I found these shortcomings extremely frustrating and confusing.

   If you need a survey book that covers a lot of stuff about XML without really trying to teach you the language and how to work with it, this book might be okay. For example, a business manager who has heard about XML or is contributing to the decision to use the technology might get some mileage out of the Dell or D&B case study. A curious home user just trying to get their feet wet might also appreciate the book not giving too much technical detail.

   But if you're in technology or really need to learn how to use XML, Mastering XML is not a good choice. Its shallow coverage of the language's fundamentals and the hardcore technology for using it will disappoint.

   (...)




5. 1)They should break this book into series and cover the various topics in depth.
   2)You master nothing,just barely scratch the main topics.

1 comments about XML Web Kit.

1. This package combines three titles from the Charles F. Goldfarb series that have been for sale seperately for some time and are now offered in single box.

   Of the three titles, the main interest of the "Cookbook" is its emphasis on internationalization, especially character sets, extensive listings of which are provided. However, these listings are available for free on the Internet in a much more convenient electronic format.

   The "Handbook" provides a basic introduction to XML, and then goes on to offer hundreds of pages of paid advertising space to suppliers of XML tools to essentially describe why their products are great.

   These three titles do not seem to have been written to complement each other and in fact demonstrate sufficient overlap in content. This, combined with the questionable quality of the individual titles, makes one wonder whose interests are served by this package.

No comments about Creacion de Sitios Web Con XML y SQL Server 2000.

5 comments about Applied XML: A Toolkit for Programmers.

1. Although this book tries to cover a lot of useful information, the overall effort is poorly written, lacks coherent organization within each chapter, and at times rather juvenile. The youth of both authors is clearly evident and the book is better skimmed than read (often too painful to read). Oftentimes the authors put the cart before the horse when trying to teach a concept. Likewise, their examples tend to be rather weak and trivial rather than based on real-world usage patterns and scenarios. The authors' lack of professional experience in creating the kinds of applications that benefit from XML detracts from their overall ability to present the capabilities of XML in a professional manner.



2. This is divided into three parts. The first part, roughly a quarter of the book, includes a detailed, technical discussion of XML and DTDs. The second part, roughly half the book, is devoted to DOM (Document Object Model) and Microsoft's extensions to DOM. Examples largely use Microsoft's XML support. Some limited use is made of Java, but mostly the author's use JavaScript, Visual Basic, and ASPs (Active Server Pages). There is a moderately complex example, an online shopping demo, done from two different perspectives--both using ASPs under Microsoft's IIS (Internet Information Server) on the server-side, with one using Microsoft's IE and JavaScript on client-side and the other using a Java applet. There is also complete source for a Visual Basic program that presents an XML document's tree structure. Finally, the last part of the book, roughly a quarter, is devoted to XSL (XML Stylesheet Language). This includes a detailed, technical discussion of XSL.

   This was published in July 1999 and so is somewhat dated. I suspect that the book continues to sell because it is on the recommended reading list for IBM's XML certification test. The back cover indicates that the authors are students that interned at Microsoft. Their bias toward Microsoft is unfortunate. It isn't clear that Microsoft has any place in a discussion of XML and associated technology and tools. Contrary to the authors' remarks, Microsoft's XML parser does not conform to the DOM specification. Moreover, languages and tools like Visual Basic and ASPs that are only available on one platform are of limited utility to programmers that need work on multiple platforms (NT, Unix, Mainframe), that is, programmers in the real world. The authors' choices in this regard make their book of limited utility.




3. intended for the programmer new to XML/XSL - has the clearest explanation of the structure behind the DOM model, and how to use it out of the 4 or 5 books I went through. Gives you enough understanding of foundation to layer in complex code, in several different approaches. I really liked the level of their example - not the trivial bits and pieces found in books like WROX, but a coherent and complete set of code. This is not a reference manual, which is probably just as well with XML/XSL being the moving target it is, but a textbook that actually enlightens. I thought the organization was well-thought out - but I got the book because I'm NOT an expert in this.



4. I was new to XML and I searched everywhere for something that could make me comfortable with it. Thanks to this book, I am now very comfortable with this technology. Highly recommended for those new to XML.



5. I was recommended this book as an introduction to XML/XSL, being a web application developer myself. Well I was lucky to already be familiar with things such as Active Server Pages, Javascript, SQL server, and script programming in general, because otherwise this book is very hard to read.

   The first two sections give a very clearly written overview of where XML fits in the current Internet world (though published in 1999, this story is still true I think), but after that the book quickly becomes rather technical with lots of references to chapters that are still to come. Moreover, some of the examples contain awkward typos. Still, after reading this book I have the feeling that I am now quite capable of designing and realzing XML/XSL based web applications myself, especially after re-creating their on-line shopping demo, an excellent example that the two authors provide. Their (previous) involvement in Microsoft I did not find bothersome; on the contrary, since Internet Explorer is still the only browser that supports XML in a decent fashion, their knowledge of IE5 comes in handy.

   All in all recommended for the more technically oriented people involved in web app design, although the book could maybe by now use a revision and an overall quality review.

No comments about The Essential Guide to XML Technologies.

5 comments about XML in IE5 Programmer's Reference.

1. Author Alex Homer (NOT Horner) tackles the difficult task of explaining XML--for which the standards are not yet nailed down, but which Microsoft's Internet Explorer 5 browser supports in its own peculiar way. The book is aimed at programmers already doing Web-based programming who want to manipulate XML documents on the Web. There are two key technologies supported in IE5 and described in this book. One is the Data Source Object, which can be used to process XML documents set up like a database. It requires that each XML record have the same kind and number of elements, like records in a database. The other technology is the XML Document Object Model, an Application Program Interface that lets Web programmers manipulate XML documents of different structures (using programming script). One chapter that does not seem to require any script writing is the one covering stylesheets, CSS and XSL, with which you can display XML documents nearly anyway you want in IE5. Finally, there are several chapters of references for XML and IE5 that should be of great help to any Web programmer itching to get into XML. The hands-on examples of code are great, often accompanied by links to the publisher's Web site, where you can download updates and source-code examples.



2. Problem #1: The publishers say "It gets straight to the point,..." -- I DISAGREE. Typical Wrox problem.

   Problem #2: In the first few chapters, sample code is either absent or in fragments that dont run as a whole program. Thus, you go thru' 110 pages and still feel like you are getting nowhere.

   Problem #3: Author keeps on jumping ahead of himself in the first 3 chapters. He talks early about advanced topics ("comes to the point" indeed!) giving sketchy, partial details that dont educate an old-hat but confuse the newbie.

   Now the good news: If you bear through the first 3 chapters, you will get a lot. Like most books, you will gloss over lots of stuff and learn to learn from learners.




3. The new XML features in IE5 are exciting, and we're starting to use XML to publish complicated db data on the web. This book got me up and running, so I've gotten a lot of use out of it. But my feeling is that no one has really figured out how to explain XML very well, and this book, like all of the other XML books I've read, seemed a little muddled and difficult to read. The first four chapters of the book are devoted to XML theory and descriptions of the various technologies MS uses, and I found them a little confusing, despite the fact that I was already running some of the XML-Apache code. For me, though, the bottom line is that the technology is so useful and exciting that it's worth expending a little extra effort to pick it up. If someone knows of a better book, email me and let me know. But for now, as far as I know this is an imperfect book that's the best way to learn an important new technology. For that reason, I recommend it.



4. This is another example of the quality (most) Wrox publishings have. The book includes some very good and essential reference to the most useful XML technologies including core XML, XSL(XSLT), Schemas&DTD's, the MS-XML Document Object Model (DOM), ActiveX Data Objects and lots of other stuff.

   It also includes a collection of very extensive reference appendices to all the techniques described above.

   It makes a perfect starting point for XML beginners because:
     1) IE5 and the MS-XML parser are included in most modern PCs and their setup as easy as a few clicks with your mouse (unlike XML-Apache and Enhydra!).
     2) IE5 is a visual environment which easily creates results that can be instantly viewed.

   Something I did not personally like much is that it uses JavaScript(JScript) in most of its examples except for a few ones dealing with Active Server Pages.

   I 'd also wish it had a few examples on COM scripting with the MS-XML parser (yes, it's a COM server, but the book says nothing about it!). It's so important that if you use Distributed COM (DCOM) with the parser you can create client/server XML 'databases' on virtually every Win32 machine!




5. I have to say that this book IS complete about the XML for IE5 subject. Of course, this a Programmer's Reference so it's not a book to learn and it's obviously IE5 specific. If you can live with those constraint and you are looking to do get the best out of IE, take this book and you will have all required information.

   Bottom line, very practical and compact reference; but it will probably need some adjustments when Microsoft will release future XML capabilities to be conform to the W3C recommendations.