HTML Books

when i purchased this book, it was really great, the first 14 chapters were informative. It helped me learn HTML. The next 6 I found kind of useless. It goes over future technologies, or stuff that most already know.

However, for a novice new to the web this book is perfect. For somebody with net experience, a book with less information would be good.

Very easy to read and cover widely

when i picked this book i knew nothing about html coding. as i've finished this book its a whole new world 4 me. a great book to study even if u r a novice to html. highly recommended....

I was a beginner/intermediate html coder that wanted to be able to do more with html code and rely less on WYSIWYG programs. This book is long enough to detail all HTML tags (standard, IE-only, Netscape-only tags, new HTML4 tags, and even the ones that aren't supported by any browser yet), but easy to read through with lots of examples and step-by-step explanations. For someone who doesn't read too often, I breezed through the book in about three sittings coming out with the confidence I needed to have to be able to write HTML pages without WYSIWYG programs (i.e. Frontpage, HotDog, Netscape Composer, etc.) I strongly recommend this book if you want to understand and be up to date with all the latest web-technologies.

hi, I would like to say that this is an excellent book, it is very fun and interesting and of course it enables you to study HTML very very well! I highly recommend it!

A well thought out book, easy to read and understand without knowing HTML or CSS. This is one of those book you cannot trash but only keep in your packet.

HTML Dog is an amazing book for those who works with web sites development. Easy to read, easy to use, cheap to buy!

This book is not a comprehensive encyclopedia of every CSS nuance, but it presents all the main areas in a very clear, but not dumbed-down manner. Basically it answered my three questions:
1. I wanted to re-write an older web site using CSS and modern HTML web stds, so where do I start?
2. What is my best approach?
3. Why would I want to do it that way?
So along the way it clarified for me how I should use divs for page structure, improve my navigation lists, specify font size in the best manner, and most of all how to use css in a structured way with minimal rewriting of styles etc for subtle changes in page requirements.
The book is probably most useful if you want to follow his emphasis and use XHTML Strict with CSS.
Very nicely written, very cleanly laid out. The associated website is useful, but the book stands alone as a very useful reference or starter for someone wanting to design their pages in an effective standards-based way.

I spent some time really digging into other books in this category (library) with the intention of getting up to speed with modern web coding and best practices. I found this text to be the most useful, both as a learning resource and future reference guide and so, HTML Dog is now on my shelf. Note: The book is meant as a companion to an extensive online archive, and works well in this regard, as the more gimmicky (read: "fad") techniques are best excluded from the printed text.

He has nice writing and presentation style.
The book presents a nice introduction to those looking for a quick information. The quick is actually questionable, since you will have to go to his website and click each link to see output of simple HTML tag illustrations.

It lacks depth on many topics, and having to go to his home page to see the outputs of simple tag illustrations is boring. Books should have the information where I needed it, quickly see the output to know what is going on. If I need an e-book, I will buy one.
Most of the illustrations only give a real web-site, and not the codes he is trying to illustrate.
Whether he is got a nice web-site is not really relevant.

I bought this book recomended by some site. I quickly found out although it does go into some detail of Netscape browser it highly discourages people to use them and goes further by asking them to skip the netscape sections. This book encourages people to support Microsoft and encourages people to use code that is not compatible with other browsers in a since.

A lot of helpfull info in it but because of its bias strategy I give it a 2. Book is somewhat old now but decided to learn the older stuff so what I learned to code would be compatible with almost any browsers. Im gonna have to say I would discourage making this book a choice for your studies.

This is a terrific book for beginners; it has clear, easy-to-understand examples and gives you info other books assume you already know; like how to actually PUBLISH your site; but it has a couple of shortcomings that prevent me from giving it five stars. First, the section on VRML is a complete waste. Secondly, the scripting sections leave a bit to be desired, but they at least give you an introduction to basic scripting and DHTML. This is a good reference book for amateur web designers and a fabulous starter course for HTML newbies; however, more advanced web developers won't benefit at all from it; and even newbies will quickly outgrow it. That's a testament to how well it conveys the information!

For the intermediate level HTML programmer, this book covers a wide variety of topics such as style sheets, dynamic HTML, scripting, table and frame design, etc. I refer to it constantly.

This book is a great for anyone wishing to learn HTML. It's clear and very informative. Beginner and intermediate HTML users will find it a great buy.

It's only short-coming is the absence of a list of tags and their uses. "HTML 4" by Elizabeth Castro has this, and it is very useful for a quick reference. However the Castro Text is less suited for a beginner.

The 6 in 1 guide covers HTML, CSS, and DHTML as well or better than many texts that cover only one of these subjects. The book really explains why things are done, instead of showing you how to do something but not telling you why you'd want to do it.

You'll be very happy with the book if you're just starting out.

Excellent reference book for the beginner in web publishing. HTML is the only way to go and this book will give you a firm understanding of "how to do it". There are a lot of books on this subject, but this is the one of choice.

I bought this book after reading Dave's articles on UML modelling for XML schemas hoping to learn more about the technique. So I was really interested in a quarter of the book but I still read the whole book.

Overall, its a good book as an overview to the whole XML modelling approach and it is great for a beginner or novice in the area. It explains the concepts quite clearly and provides some VERY SIMPLE examples.

But if you are looking for a book that guides you along on the "how to" aspect and application of knowledge, then this book doesn't quite have enough "meat" to be of much use.

In summary, for beginners only.

David Carlson's book on "Modeling XML Applications with UML" is an excellent contribution to the business of building distributed e-Business applications. My only complaint with the book is the title which emphasizes the subject of UML over the subtitle of "Practical e-Business Applications." Mr. Carlson painstakingly builds up the requisite knowledge one must possess around XML, DTD, XML Schema, other XML schemas, XSL, XSLT, XPath, XPointer, XLink, XMI, and UML in a lucid, cogent manner; both defining each piece of the puzzle and providing an excellent overview of how they all fit together. What has emerged is an excellent overview of the W3C and OMG efforts to recommend standards that serve the building of eBusiness applications. The examples that he provides are particularly useful as he draws from industry and open source efforts to define XML vocabularly such as Rich Site Summary and Jetspeed's Portal Site Markup Language (and he practices what he preaches, one look at his XMLModeling.com web site will testify to this). Of particulary value is the soup-to-nuts example that Dave cooked up, called Catalog Markup Language (CatML), in order to take the reader to just the right and intended level of understanding. These examples and the corresponding discussion is a non-gratuitous, yet complete, resource for anyone trying to get bootstrapped into all of the moving parts around building applications that cross organizational/corporate boundaries.

Dave leaves no stone unturned in pulling the whole story together in his description of portals, vortals and related technology that sets these valuable BtoB capabilities in motion; his prescience in describing the roles of various channels such as wireless devices is much appreciated, and for including a discussion on Web Services, which will be the next big architectural holy grail, makes for an excellent resource that paints a broad picture with just the right amount of depth on each subject.

The title tells us the main objective, which is the role of UML modeling in working with XML, but I would suggest that the story built up in an effort to reach this objective is much more valuable than the objective itself. Thanks professor, nice job.

It is quite a strange book: very interesting, depicting a complete, sometimes accurate, path between UML and XML languages, and trying to show the whole and complex environment that required the development of a language like XML. The fact that both UML and XML syntaxes are not explained in detail should not induce to consider this issue as an introductory one: a thorough comprehension of all quoted subjects presumes a good knowledge of a structured (possibly object oriented) programming language and some reference to an XML syntax textbook and a UML guide. You do not learn by this book either designing UML or writing XML code, but it represents a survey about the subject that can be interesting both for skilled people and beginners.

Like many web-related technologies XML and its many derivatives have evolved much more quickly than the support from traditional modelling and development tools. As a result many developers creating XML-based applications are doing so with the crudest of tools, and find it very difficult to either exchange ideas with more traditional developers, or to benefit from the strengths of more powerful tools and modelling approaches. This book sets out to address that issue, and it does an excellent job.

At the same time, the book provides a valuable introduction to a range of XML and e-Business technologies for those more familiar with traditional approaches. I found it answered a lot of questions I had about XML which had not been addressed by reading more typical "how to" books, so this book bridges the divide both ways.

The book starts out by setting out its aim - to bridge the XML and UML communities, and provides a high-level overview of both areas. It then focuses in on the key issue of e-Business integration, both as a common challenge and an area which will naturally affect both communities.

In subsequent chapters the author discusses defining a business vocabulary, and shows how an XML vocabulary can be modelled in UML, or generated from it. Having established this basis the author then discusses a number of XML-related standards, including XMI, XPath, XPointer, XLink, XML DTDs and Schemas, and XSLT, in each case using UML models to explain how the pieces fit together.

Finally, the last few chapters present an overall e-Business architecture based around the examples in the rest of the book, bringing all the pieces together in the context of Web Services.

It's the curse of all technical writers and publishers that whatever you write is rapidly out of date, and this book suffers a little from that. Published in 2001 it views several key standards (such as XSD and core Web Service protocols) as "proposals", and frequently omits details from examples because of this uncertainty. A reader would be well advised to supplement it with more up to date reading around the technical details.

That said, this book is well written, easy to read, and covers a niche which is still almost unoccupied. The companion web site backs the book up with some valuable material, including a free downloadable tool for XML modelling, generation and reverse-engineering.

I'd love David to do a second edition, moderately refreshed to present a 2004 view of the various standards and how they fit together. The core of the book wouldn't have to change. Until that book turns up, I'm happy to recommend this one.

David Carlson has produced a book that discusses how to integrate two important technologies: UML and XML. More than that, the book serves as a primer to both. Even if you already know UML or XML, you'll probably learn something new about each. References are supplied for those who want to learn more. For me, I also found that the book planted seeds for new ideas.

The material is presented in a practical way, around a simple business application. This makes the technologies more concrete and easier to understand. Fortunately, the reader is not overwhelmed by endless code listings - though there are enough nuts and bolts to make the concepts understandable.

Key concepts such as vocabularies, schemas, and portals are explained well. The book also touches on related technologies, such as RSS, XSLT, SOAP and UUDI. All in the context of a practical use case. I found the examples useful even if I design community based portals and not e-Business applications.

Hopefully the book will lay down the foundation for standards in schema development.

The book Return to Treasure Island was, there is no other word for it, great. The plot twist were the best I've seen,and after a bit, I didn't dare try to predict what would happen next. The Characters in the book stood up and seemed to really be talking. The only thing that I'm afriad I have conflict with is that it was too easy a read. The book was more of a 6th or 7th book,though I liked. Also, it could be improved by more detail, and maybe more revealing inter thoughts. Also, the questions that pops into mind is where did the animals that were 'stocked' come from? This would have helped me better understand the type of Island it was. I was glad that, while it did have a good ending,and turned out the way I thought it should, I am so gald it wasn't just another ''and they lived happily ever after,the end.'' type of book. My deepst congrads to Mr. Trammal on his book, and I wait, ears up and eyes bright for any other Y.A. books he plans to come up with. Who knows? As an old lady, you may just catch me curled up and reading Return to Treasure Island once more.

I liked this book because it was interesting. This book made me feel like I was in the story. It was descriptive and detailed. I think it could be improved with more action, and more characters.

We read the book "Return to Treasure Island." Oddly Enough, I enjoyed it, that's pretty strange because I don't usually find adventure books entertaining. One of the parts I found interesting is that Jonathan and his new found family did not just live "happily-ever-after", and would not have guessed that his mother would have been ill, and weak, and I also would not have guessed that the person that jumped out of the bush would have been the dad. I give this book 4 stars.

The book Treasure Island by Jack Trammell is a very good book, although there are some parts that I would have done differently, such as the ending. Uncle Pinchbeck at the end did not seem as believable. In reality, a man with a gun wouldn't just stop and be so kind to everyone, especially when he is still on top of the situation.

Another thing is the parents, who act like they have gotten a divorce, or like they're not friends. I also would have given the animals on the island a more active role. Also, the two goons, I thought they would come to their senses and stop their boss. After all, he treated them like trash.

I give this book an A-, but I think the author should write another sequel, maybe where the Uncle tries to retake control of the island and steal some of the treasure, capture Jonathan's parents, and have Jonathan and Katherine save the day again.

I really liked this book because it is like a suspense story, because at the end of each chapter it leaves you hanging so that you have to read on. It is about this boy who lives with his uncle and he has a friend, a girl, who was curious about his uncle. The boy finds out that his uncle is not who he really is. He has this Island and it used to be his Mom and Dad's and there is buried treasure on it. The boy doesn't think his parents are dead, so he goes to the Island with the girl by sneaking on to his uncle's boat. They get caught and run away and they find his parents. His mom is sick so they have to help get medicine for her. When they get ready to leave they create a big distraction and get mom and dad on the boat. They have the goons at gun point so they can't do anything stupid. And mom talks to the uncle so that he doesn't do anything crazy. Then they get home with the treasure.

This is a well written book to obtain a quick understanding of CGI.

Dear Mr. Rafe Colburn:
Buddy! Just thought I had better write you to THANK you for your book, 'Sams Teach Yourself CGI in 24 Hours". I bought the book last Christmas, and though progress is slow, things are sinking in GOOD!
I just wrapped my head around Hour 15, Session (State) Management, and cookies. Your book is extremely well laid out, easy to understand, and there hasn't been an exercise in your book that I haven't been able to complete yet! The exercises are challenging and fun yet possible with your book. Once again, THANK YOU SO MUCH!
I have found it to be an OUTSTANDING resource for myself, a beginner in the PERL programming language.

This book encompassed most of what CGI is all about and did so straight forward enough to where a beginner could learn from it. It covers the basics of programming in a sense with all of its topics and how it's structured. It wouldn't be feasible to go straight from using the book to application programming, but like I said, it's good for beginners to start getting a feel for what the server side world is capable of and how things work.

I have been learning CGI/PERL/PHP for the past 6 months now. I am currently in an internship and my job is to update the webpage. This book was great! This book helped me a lot. I am definitely still a begginner at CGI and this book taught me a lot of basics. You won't learn how to create professional looking guestbooks or message boards but you will learn the basics of how to create them. This book covers just about everything you need to know to get started.

The content of the book impressed me. Prior to reading the book, I had taught myself Perl programming, and had learned the basics of forms processing. I didn't understand some of CGI jargon I came across in more than one Perl book that glossed over CGI in a single chapter somewhere toward the back of the book. But this book on CGI programming gave me all the information I needed to feel like a CGI pro, someone who could keep his cool in any discussion where "CGI" was spoken.

Some of the information in this book is worth writing down, so you can remember the clear understanding that reading the book gave you, and so you can regurgitate that understanding to other people later, say after months of no complex CGI programming. This book offers enough explanation to make you see things from a webmaster's perspective, but also a UNIX programmer's perspective. Without more than a basic idea of how the UNIX command-line works.

I will confess that if you don't know Perl, I don't think you'd have the same reaction I did. But CGI books shouldn't have to teach you Perl, and at the same time, Perl is THE language for CGI programming. The "brief" coverage that this book gives to other CGI languages is not meant to underplay their relative importance, but rather to give Perl the attention that it's due. Also, realize that PHP is not a CGI language, and I wouldn't classify JSP as one, either, so you definitely won't find mention of them in Rafe's book as anything other than alternatives to CGI.

So learn some Perl, say from the new "Beginning Perl" book from OReilly, and then get Rafe's book, to learn CGI. "Teach Yourself CGI in 24 Hours" is worth buying and studying.

I'm about 1/3 of the way through the book right now, and I am pleased with it so far. I'm pretty familiar with computers and the Internet already, but the authors include enough information for beginniers to get a good grasp on the terminology early on.

The book breaks down the material into 21 lessons, implying that each one should take one hour per day. A word of warning: you'll probably need more than an hour unless you're a really quick study. The early lessons are pretty basic and go by quickly, but by lessons 5 & 6 the terminology starts coming fast. The authors offer several suggestions for HTML editors to use while reading the book, and I highly recommend downloading one (I use the free HTML-Kit, and it works quite well).

I do have a few complaints. The authors seem to spend a lot of time covering "deprecated" HTML tags, which are considered outdated in favor of CSS. They say that it these tags are good ot know if you find them in older websites, but for someone like me who is new to HTML, including the old tags with the new is a bit confusing, and I frequently have to check the appendix to make sure that the tag I'm using is not obsolete. CSS has not been covered extensively yet (it looks like lesson 9 will do that), but it looks pretty different from HTML. If a new edition of this book is made, the authors need to ditch the outdated HTML and include the CSS right from the beginning.

My other complaint is that, for a book on HTML, the examples aren't that well edited. I just finished lesson 7 and was having a difficult time adding color to my pages until I realized that the author(s) had accidentally used a comma instead of a semicolon. That tiny mistake made a huge difference, and it's not the only tiny mistake they made.

I purchased this book for a college course I am taking titled "Web Design and Development". The instructor chose the the textbook but it is well written and has numerous examples of good web site and page design. Gets into some of the more advanced features of creating web pages using XHTML and CSS. I would recommend this book for a beginning web programmer or administrator.

This is one of the better written Web books I have read. Everything is well organized, with lots of relevant topics and useful examples. Even if you have prior experience with web design, it's not a bad idea to delve into these pages as a refresher and for guidelines on current HTML and XHTML standards.

The authors go the next step by introducing some of the more dynamic components of web design including client side Javascript and PHP for server-side scripts (along with a quick overview of ASP and JSP). These sections are quite brief for the most part (which should not come as a surprise in a book titled 'HTML and CSS'), but will help steer budding designers towards their next challenge.

I would certain recommend this book to anyone who is new to web design. It does much more than just teach you about HTML and CSS. The book progresses quickly, but not too quickly, and you will find yourself putting together your own interesting looking web pages in no time.

This Laura Lemay person is associated with a lot of well received books. This one, different in substance from her others, while there is not much in great depth, there is quite a bit of good stuff here. What is here, is well presented, good examples, and more for the beginning and intermediate reader. Good intro to CSS, some Javascript and ajax. This is a good buy (here at Amazon, I paid ~$22) . Get'em while they're hot.

and then the bottom falls out. This book is fantastic as far as a beginner or review course for html and basic CSS. However . . . the chapter on CSS layouts and positioning (lesson 9) leaves ALOT to be desired. I became completely lost when I reached this chapter. I don't know which one of the authors handled this lesson but I'm hoping they'll fix it for future editions. They assume that the audience knows more than they should about class and IDs without ever providing adequate examples. The examples that are provided seem to skip steps. Still a good book but if you're new to CSS layouts and positioning like me, you're better off googling a CSS tutorial for beginners.

I liked this book because it took you through her whole life in chronological order. However, it was not very useful for the information I was looking for. It talks about her as a slave and an abolitionist, but it doesn't say much about her as a feminist. I would've been five stars if the author had given more on her and feminism.

Her name was Isabella but her parents called her, Belle. Sojourner Truth is a story about a strong woman who demanded integrity. Slavery's long shadow cast over families rendered them helpless to save their own children who were sold, and powerless to save themselves from cruel and unkind treatment by the masters. Their lives were filled with heartbreak and suffering and the only times of relief were when they got together to sing mournful songs or cried out to their god to help them. Belle was one of the first black women in the country to win a court case. She won back her six-year-old son who was sold. She was free, but her four daughters were left in slavery. She took her son and went to New York to seek better opportunity and promised to send for them once they were freed at twenty-one years of age. Her son, Peter, had an obsession with taking things that did not belong to him and she needed to seek rehab for him. She was very tall and her feet wore size twelve shoe. She never owned a pair of shoes until she was an adult and hired a cobbler to custom make them. The book is a collection of data, rather than a mellifluous story, rife with names of people involved in the slavery issue, so that it is difficult to follow in many places. After Belle and Peter arrived in New York they found a Methodist Church where black people worshipped. There a brother and sister who had been sold away from her parents years ago found her. She found that one of the elders of the church whom she had worshipped with and who had passed away was another sister. Belle was taken in by a religious scheme and accused of murder. It took her three years to prove her innocence. Peter never rehabilitated and finally after being jailed numerous times his mother and a minister got him commissioned for duty on a ship at sea. He wrote letters but she never saw him again. In the 1830's New York was a center for the abolitionist movement and the management of the Underground Railroad. Slaves wanting to run away were contacted by a "conductor" who would give them directions to safe houses along the way until they were in a free state or Canada. Songs were used to pass code messages and the North Star was used as a guiding light. At forty-six, 1843, Belle changed her name to Sojourner Truth and went East which she thought was directions from God. She traveled to camp meetings speaking and singing and talking about the suffering of slavery. The simplicity of her language and the sincerity of her message, combined with the courage of her convictions made Sojourner a sought-after speaker. She was cautious of fanaticism and didn't like noise and commotion. Noted abolitionists were William Lloyd Garrison, publisher of The Liberator; Wendell Phillips, known as abolition's Golden Trumpet, and George Thompson, a noted British abolitionist. David Ruggles and William Sill have been credited with helping to free over 600 fugitives while serving on the Underground Railroad. Fifty thousand slaves escaped through this organization. Women's rights were also sought during this same timeframe. Sojourner was not educated, but Olive Gilbert wrote her biography and she sold it at meetings. The audiences changed drastically as a pro-slavery group called the Copperheads formed in the north. Her mission became dangerous, but she never gave up. She attended a woman's rights convention in Akron, Ohio where she gave a historical speech aimed at the pedants and hypocrites, combining her slavery experience with women's inequality and frequently reiterating, "Ain't I a woman?" The fugitive slave law was an obstacle to abolitionists to the point that some were preparing for war, but Sojourner did not want war. From 1851 to 1857 she spoke out for anti-slavery and women's rights. In 1853 she visited Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, written in 1852 as a response to the Fugitive Slave Act. By 1856 over two million copies had been sold. Sojourner retired at 60 in Harmonia, Michigan and was joined by two of her daughters and two grandchildren. At 62, she went back on the speaking tour, accompanied by her grandson, Sammy. There were at least two hundred slave uprisings between 1800 and 1859. John Brown was a radical abolitionist and after his trial and execution was hailed as martyr, a symbol of freedom. People sang "John Brown's Body" and later during the civil war Julia Ward Howe wrote "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" to the music of "John Brown's Body." It was a personal favorite of Abraham Lincoln, who would be remembered as "the Emancipator." Sojourner visited with Lincoln and ask for an autograph for her "Book of Life," a scrapbook of her memoirs. She thanked him for doing so much for her race. The civil war was over April 9, 1965 and Lincoln was dead of an assassin's bullet six days later. At seventy, Sojourner worked for the war department at Freedman's Hospital. Susan B.Anthony devoted efforts to women's suffrage in 1869 after the fifteenth amendment was passed in 1868 and Sojourner teamed up with her. Black males were allowed to vote, but not females. They all died before women won the right in 1919. Sojourner's last cause was to travel with a petition for congress to sign a land grant proposal for the black people who had worked for no pay. Sammy grew ill with a fever and died before he was twenty-five. She never stopped mourning for him but continued to do occasional speaking and women's rights projects until her death at eighty-six.
Trish New, author of The Thrill of Hope and South State Street Journal.

A thrilling book that I was intrigued to read during my summer home for 2 weeks. The book takes a rather twist which im impressed how not many decided to put on their reviews.

It's a great more than a biography of a groovy... woman...but what's more is that it chronicles of not just one, but many courageous individuals battles against injustice... really!

There's an impressive ending which it has been posted before in this amazon review section.

Buy the book!!! Places to go, take a look in a reading rainbow!

This book starts out with the birth of Sojourner Truth and takes you all the way through her life. You learn about her as a slave, as a free woman, as a preacher, an abolitionist, and an activist for the rights of both blacks and woman.

I personally did not know much about Sojourner Truth, but I do now.

If you are looking for a great novel to entertain you or for something to keep you on the edge of your seat, then this book probably isn't what your looking for. If you want to learn about history and an inspiring lady than I would say pick up this book and read. There is nothing worng with knowledge and this book is a great way to learn.

Sojouner Truth Ain't I a Woman takes place in the 1700's-1800's, about 300 years ago. This genre is non-fiction. If you like true stories then read this!
This story is about black people being slaves. Sojouner works for a family that beats her. She works for them for about 13 years. Then she gets sold again and the family tells her she can leave at 27 years (a year before she is suppose to.) The family says, "No you can't leave we changed our mind," when she was about to leave. They finally make a deal and say, "Okay, you can leave."

She knows she has no place to live and people invite her to live with them, but she has to work for them to get money. Then she leaves and tells stories of her life and people like the stories!

When I read this book, I thought to myself, I feel sorry for black people back then. I really loved this book so much! My opinion is if you are prejudiced then you should read this book, and that might change your mind.

This book is a compact and thorough guide to XQuery. The Jonathan Robie tutorial in the beginning of the book is itself worth the overall price of the book.

This is a good book if you know what you are getting. If you are looking for a focused guide to XQuery practical applications you aren't going to like this book. It's worth repeating, this is not a general reference or introduction to XQuery. This is a set of articles on XQuery related topics. The first 'chapter' is an introduction to XQuery which is actually quite good. After that is a chapter on the history of XQuery. Then there is a chapter on XSLT and XPath, which is a nice, but brief, introduction to those topics. There is a section on the semantics of XQuery which is so thick you could cut it with a knife. The book finishes with two chapters on relational to XML mapping.

If you are a serious XQuery user, are interested in a case study in standards development, or are into relational theory this book is probably worth a look.

Full disclosure: I know all of the authors and count them among my friends.

In spite of that, I can honestly say that I think this book is a very valuable guide to the emerging standard query language for XML. The insights provided by people who are actually doing the day-to-day design, and implementation in some cases, of this language are not available in any other XQuery book.

The various chapters of the book provide overviews, design precepts, detailed examples, and thorough explanations (even of subjects as arcane as the static typing rules of the language).

I enthusiastically encourage everybody interested in XQuery to add this book to their libraries.

A very useful explanation of XQuery and how to use it to analyse XML data. The book shows how this can be done with or without a supporting XML Schema or DTD that describes the XML. The authors explain why this goes beyond a Google-type search. The latter does not (at least currently) know or use any structural information about data, primarily because it scans all types of mostly unstructured data.

But the rise of XML has driven demand for XQuery, to take advantage of this structure. The book also shows how XPath is used, as part of the XQuery implementation.

Another merit of the book is its good description of the difference between XQuery and XSLT. The latter also has been getting a lot of attention from programmers. But, as explained by the authors, XSLT is mainly used on document centric data, mostly to generate HTML. By contrast, XQuery has no such restriction.

Simply good. A collection of essays written by so many well-known names in the industry covering various aspects of the XQuery language from a "A Guided Tour" to "Introduction to Formal Semantics". A book that would be very useful for people with XSLT background, and need more power to do their job. A book that closes the between Relational Databases and XML.

A good number of authors and innovators contributed materials to this book:
- Don Chamberlin (an editor of the XML Query Use Cases, XQuery 1.0, XML Path Language 2.0 working drafts),
- Denise Draper (one of the editors of XQuery 1.0 Formal Semantics),
- Mary Fernandez (one of the editors of the working drafts of XQuery 1.0, XPath 2.0 Data Model, XML Path Language and XQuery 1.0 Formal Semantics),
- Howard Katz (editor of this book)
- Michael Kay (an editor of the XSLT, XSLT 2.0 and XQuery Serialization and XML Path Language 2.0 working drafts)
- Jonathan Robie (an editor of XQuery 1.0, XML Query Requirements, XML Syntax for XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0 working drafts)
- Michael Rys (an editor of the XQuery Formal Semantics, XML Syntax for XQuery, XML Query Requirements, XML Query and the XPath Full-Text Requirements working drafts)
- Jerome Simeon (an editor of XQuery 1.0, XPath 2.0 and the XQuery Formal Semantics working drafts)
- Jim Tivy (System architect of the ODMC 1.0 SQL Engine for Microsoft)
- Philip Walder (an editor of the XQuery, XPath Formal Semantics and the XML Schema working drafts)

Even though that some of the chapter in this book will benefit an expert programmer, with a solid background in XML, there are more than enough chapter that will benefit the beginner and one's who are no really familiar with XPath, XQuery and XSLT. The book starts by going over the basics of the XQuery language. The Guided Tour is simply a refresher, and introduces the reader to XQuery and its syntax/semantics. It talks about the differences between XPath and XQuery for example, and the benefits of XQuery over XPath. Small code sections are used to convey to the read the difference of one technology versus the other. XPath and XQuery get a lot of attention in this book as there are lots of similarities between the two as far as syntax is concerned and plenty of difference as far as its capabilities with XPath.
The author[s] dedicate the second chapter to the principles behind the design decisions of the XQuery language. Don Chamberlin, the author of this chapter, write the following mission statement for XQuery:
"The purpose of the new query language was to provide a flexability to extract information from real and virtual XML documents."
It is very refreshing to see the committee for creating XML actually went to the process of defining requirements, design definitions and the rest of the formal specification realization before they actually "wrote" the language. The message of formalism is very clear throughout the book. At each stage of design for this new language, proper documents have been generated (Use Case doc, Requirements doc, etc) that portray a good process. The section on formal semantics adds the following:
"After the Java programming language was released, several formal semantics of the language were written. Some of these semantics revealed errors in the type system, which in turn could lead to security holes in browsers that run Java programs. ..."

XQuery looks very similar to XPath, and this book spends a couple of chapters (a little of chapter 2, and most of chapter 3) to talk about the similarities, differences and influences of one language over the other. The new releases of XSTL, XPath and XQuery 1.0 look very similar since these groups collaborated with each other throughout the process of development. If you don't know anything about XPath or XSLT, and want to know how they differ and hoe they have evolved in the recent years, chapter 3, by Michael Kay, is what you need to read - or may even start with before you read the other chapters in this book. Chapter 3 starts off very easy, but it goes into more advanced topics such as optimization techniques used with XQuery - specially the one's that have been used before with XSLT and XPath for the same purpose.
One of the most interesting chapters in this book is chapter 5 on Formal Semantics. It is rare and rather refreshing to see a language being broken up like that and it's predicate logic and semantics be given in such detail. You can skip this chapter all together, but I suggest otherwise. Even if it is to realize how language processing and semantics of a language work. I would love to see such topic for C++ or JAVA... This chapter is good for anyone interested in optimization techniques and wishes to learn more about the details and correctness of the XQuery language.
Applications of XQuery at they apply to Databases and how it can be integrated into databases are covered in part 4.
XQuery had the capability to navigate, select, combine, transform, sort and aggregate XML data - thus making the integration of XQuery with the backend database very powerful and rather simple. XML data, and how it can be integrated into the database with the help of XQuery is covered in detail and two techniques are laid out: the LOB (large object) representation where the entire XML data is saved as a large object in the database, and the composed representation where each XML element is stored individually.
Even though XQuery is fairly a new language, the authors in this book go to great length depicting the formalism, the correctness, the stability and flexibility of the XQuery language. The chapters that cover Database integration with XML data clearly convey the power of this language, and thought process that went behind designing such stable and powerful language.

Although I understood just about everything in the book, but I think it needs a little improvement on how to use the FTP protocol. Also, the author needs a little more detail on some parts, most probably image maps. I truly like the CD that came with it. I got into a little trouble copying it on my dad's computer (yes, I'm ten years old). This book really deserves a four star.

I knew nothing about HTML and creating web pages before reading this book. Now, I design web pages to supplement my income. This book is written in plain english and any technical/industry jargon used is explained by Shafran in great detail. This book is easy to understand and instructions are written in step-by-step detail. The CD-ROM that is included with this book is very helpful.

Although I understood just about everything, the book should emphasize a little more on the FTP protocol. Also, the author should talk a little more about some things, most probably image maps. Otherwise, this book has what you want. The CD is awesome. I got into a little trouble for copying it onto my dad's computer (yes, I'm a ten year old). This book really deserves a four star.

As a beginner I found this book informative and easy to understand. It has allowed me to take my intrest and apply it to my career. The included CD has many interesting and useful graphics, sounds, etc. I highly recommend this book!

When I started reading this book, I did not know what HTML was.Now i can produce pretty impresive webpages all thanks to that book. I've learnt how to produce pages with embeded video's,sounds and pictures. What an amazing book. However, I still have one critiscism (sorry) the book does not teach you how to create frames.Never the less it's a good book