SGML Books

This book. Is what it is. The ideas presented are not new.
It's full of code which should have been left out of the book.
His writing style is hard to read. He goes off on tangents that make no sense.
A very bad book.

The book is kind of blur and not much indication on how to do it. It is not worth to get one actually.

XML is a critical emerging technology which has the potential to revolutionize database connectivity in enterprise software development. While the author provides knowledge about XML document design and delivery, the book falls short of providing meaningful insights to those who wish to construct integrated commercial XML/Database systems.

The writer doesn't seem to have a good idea of the history and development of these database concepts for commercial use. For example, he doesn't seem to know that Object databases have had repeated failures in terms of performance, maintainability and a host of other factors in mission critical applications.

He would have gained by referencing "Foundation for Future Database Systems: The Third Manifesto," by C.J. Date and High Darwin, and by familiarzing himself with "The Great Debate," where E.F. Cobb demonstrated how non-relational models are orders of magnitude more complex than relational models for the same problem.

As someone who has architected and developed large scale XML-based database applications, I sense that the author has come from a perspective of writing specialty XML document delivery databases for non-commercial purposes in the biotechnology industry, and provides minimal material which would be useful to anyone seeking to implement industrial strength XML databases (in an application server, for example) or to use XML messaging with relational databases (e..g., with webMethods and Rendezvous' Tibco.)

The author has a writing style which is quite chatty and unprofessional, which continually distracts from its purpose, which is to compare XML, Relational and Object database design issues. Buy this book to skim through it as a reference, but do not expect it to be of great value to many of the issues that are likely to be faced in building enterprise class databases. You can find better information of a higher quality on this subject for free by visiting [certain websites] and reading many of their XML-related articles. It may be of more value if you only wish to create XML document servers.

The author discusses some interesting topics, but I found the book far too full of vague statements about the usefulness of various ways of encoding XML and of database architecture. Similarly, the chapter on querying XML databases was enough to whet my appetite, but it was mostly on the representation of queries (useful, to be sure, but confusingly presented), had little about efficiency considerations (surely of paramount importance when discussing queries), and presented as "algorithms" methods that are so unrefined and simplistic that they're better labeled "query methodologies."

To be fair, I haven't been all that impressed with the other XML books I've been skimming...

This is a great book, very useful for programmers, database developers, students, system architects, and anyone else who wishes to effectively use, design, or build XML databases. A basic knowledge of XML and databases is assumed, and the focus of this book is on pulling them together. Some advanced techniques are described in this book and the presentation is fairly dense in those areas.

The book covers variety of topics like:
How to design a schema for an existing XML DBMS beginning with the concepts of the field being modeled and resulting in compatible schemas for XML documents, relational databases, and object-oriented applications.
How to store XML data in a relational DBMS, object-oriented DBMS, or flat files, and how to make decisions on which approach to choose.
How to design a system architecture that contains an XML database, Web server, and user applications.
How to develop a user interface for XML data accessed via a Web browser or Java application.
How to query an XML database and what algorithms support XML database querying.
How to create a native store for an XML DBMS.

This is probably one of the worst teaching CD's I have ever seen. Indeed, the author, who is also the instructor for the college course, clearly has no concept of what good programming skills or good presentation styles are . The entire course was basically copy & paste exercises with no real instruction whatsoever. There was no challenge. I could have learned just as much on my own. To add insult to injury: he gets the money for the poorly written (and required) CD. I would give it 0 stars if I could.

Do not buy this "book" (it is actually a "Web-site" on CD) unless you are forced to buy it as required material for a class... and in that case - borrow it from some other poor soul who has already purchased it - since they certainly will be happy to get rid of it.

It is hard to imagine anyone finding this a helpful item. The author apparently has no idea how to present information in a cohesive and usable manner, and seems to have only a beginner or hobbyist level grasp of the principles he is attempting to teach.

He seems to be preaching about "Intelligent Tutoring Systems" and how to make a great web site using Javascript, but the overall navigation, presentation, and content of the "site" is so amateurish that it is embarrassing. Most of his code examples are of poor quality and show a misunderstanding of programming principles, or are at least so poorly thought through that it is a disservice to the student or Javascript beginner to offer this material as being instructional. In my opinion, the student will come away from this material with a misunderstanding of web site development, Javascript programming, and professional practices - if she/he is able to actually follow the materials and can get past all the broken links and dead-end pages that is.

One example of the poor quality of the material is that when you select the button to view the "correct" answers for two of the three Javascript tutorial quizzes - you are shown the answers to the first quiz. Not very helpful! And this is typical of much of the material.

If the author had followed his own advice in the following quote from the "book" then perhaps at least the material would be readable and navigable, if still virtually useless:

"Creating an effective and attractive Web site involves much more than throwing images and text onto a background graphic. Flashy images and super-cool technology won't keep viewers on your site. It's necessary to learn how to construct a creatively-designed, carefully developed, consistently maintained Web site."

Don't bother buying this product - you are guaranteed to be disappointed.

This CD-ROM book took me step-by step through all the intricate moves necessary for programming and installing a well-designed web site. The clear instructions are beautifully organized and illustrated throughout. I highly recommend it to anyone who has basic computer skills. The designers of some of the sites I've visited could improve their skills if they took lessons from this first-class instruction manual.

I read this book for a class, and was disappointed. The writing could have been a lot clearer, and there were numerous typos which is very problematic when you are trying to read/learn code)

Nice cut and paste job of basic information freely available out on the web. Don't waste your money..

Good for Basics, Textbook like approach.Easy to follow

Just what I wanted. Good comprehensive cover of the basic princples. Thanks

This book is too complicated for someone that just wants to get started with Frontpage.

I was dissapointed with this book because it really doesn't document or explain many of the new features in Frontpage 2003 --particularly the database and Windows 2003 Server Sharepoint Services capabilities. The chapter on forms does not explain how to integrate the form with a database, giving the excuse to see a later chapter. The later chapter on databases then states that most database features are out of scope of the book. How about starting with some basic coverage of how to setup Frontpage 2003 to work with sharepoint team services? If you don't do it right, you simply get an error message from Frontpage stating that these features don't work because one has to have a server. I got the distinct impression that the authors have never really used Frontpage 2003, wrote most of the content based on earlier versions of Frontpage, and relied too much on Microsoft's skimpy Frontpage 2003 documentation for the new features.

Contrary to one of the other reviews on this site I found this to be an excellent structured approach to learning XSL. The book however is not a reference guide as much as a step by step tutorial. Read cover to cover the reader should gain a good indepth knowledge on the subject. The content is light enough to keep you interested but not so light that you're left guessing and the later chapters (while not necessary to gaining good XSL knowledge) cover a lot of advanced topics such as XSL-FO.

PS. No where on the back cover or in the contents are topics such as JAVA or CGI mentioned. The reviewer who expressed dismay at lack of coverage in these areas should have bought a different book if that's what they wanted to start off with.

After a comprehensive search through the jungle of available literature on the much talked topic 'XSL', I - a total beginner to XSL, X-PATH, X-POINTER, X-LINK - decided to purchase the book 'Just XSL'.

My objective is:
- to be able to develop professionally written XSL
with all the necessary surrounding languages where necessary
(such as X-PATH, X-POINTERS, etc.)
- to know 'XSL surrounding languages' where necessary or to be
able to evaluate what is why, where necessary under which
circumstances

My goals are:
- to learn the principle structure of XSL
- to learn the correlating languages going along with XSL
- to systematically understand all necessary syntax, tree
structure and whatever should be involved
- to practically apply studies to 'real-world' examples
under different degrees (beginner, intermediate, advanced)
(eg including CD, etc.) for XSL and necessary surrounding
languages
- to know how to incorporate XSL into or with web based
languages (eg Java, CGI) and database development
- to be provided with suggestions on available tools on different
platforms (for Mac, Unix, Linux, Windows, etc.)

My learning targets have unfortunately not been met by this book, unfortunately. Although the books talks a lot, it lacks of a structural approach and has thus not met my learning goals. All in all, I am obliged to get another book on the topic so I am left with the starting situation again: which one? I hope it will not be another waste again ..... Students always have a limited budget.

This book totally sucks. Topics are reworded and are all over the book.

Then he'll have a special note wherein he will recall the days of the typewriter days.

You would see mention of washing machines, your mom.

Total nightmare.

I have been researching moving SGML documents to the Web, and this book provided a comprehensive coverage of this topic. The authors lay out the various approaches to converting SGML to HTML and give the positive and negative aspects of each. Although the book is geared towards SGML/HTML implementations, it also gives a good description of SGML (in particular DTDs). I recommend Using SGML to anyone who needs to understand SGML and porting SGML documents to the Web.

I'm still slogging through this weighty tome but so far it hasn't provided much in the way of solutions. This book might be a nice reference for someone who's at the point where they want to address obscure SGML problems, it definitely isn't appropriate for someone new to SGML.

The XML and SGML Cookbook is really more about SGML than about XML, but users of the entire family of markup languages will find much to learn in this entertaining and readable tome. Jelliffe starts with vivid descriptions of the information structuring process, with useful warnings and suggestions throughout. His recipes for document structures are useful and cover a wide variety of possible situations. The section on internationalization is compelling, explaining clearly the wide variety of issues that complicate data processing and typesetting.

The price may seem a bit steep, but the information is well worth it. The layout is much friendlier than the rest of this series, a welcome companion to keep next to your keyboard as you work on your latest *ML project. Beginners will need an introductory guide to the syntax, but this is an excellent guide to the process and the theory behind markup language development.

This book has too many errors where the author intended to type one thing, but wrote something different. There are also the usual typos. This makes the book confusing to a beginner as you'd only catch some of these errors if you already knew ASP.NET. In most cases, the broken examples have the potential to cause the reader hours of frustration.

All in all this is one of the worst edited technical books I've seen.

After the first 2 chapters, it was painfully clear this book was not written by someone familiar with the release version of Visual Studio 2005 - which this book references and recommends for following along with the examples. I will give the author the benefit of doubt on this - and assume that he simply tried to write this book too early using a pre-release version of Visual Studio 2005. Regardless, the result is an extremely confusing tour of ASP.NET 2.0. This is particularly disappointing given the intended audience for this book.
I could find none of the downloadable examples mentioned, but even more frustrating was that I could find no errata on the McGraw-Hills Web site or on Jim Keogh's Web site.
I strongly suggest you avoid this book. I will be returning it today.

The title should be asp.net 2.0 Demystified for the Clueless. It assumes you know nothing about programming then trys to explain loops, sub routines, functions and data types; if you understand these this book isn't for you.

Besides the errors mentioned in other reviews this book continually let's you know you can build ASP.NET sites using notepad, while technically true who would want to when VWD Express Edition is available Free and even comes on CD with the 24 hours book.

A better starter book would be ASP.NET 2.0 for Dummies by Bill Hatfield. If you are a bit higher on the learning curve try ASP.NET 2.0 in 24 Hours by Scott Mitchell.

On page 2 of the introduction, it says "You can copy examples illustrated in this book from our web site" - which is where? Because nowhere in this book can I find any kind of URL. It could be the publisher's at [...], but once you get there, this book isn't listed for either code downloads or for errata (and it should be on both web pages).

And I wouldn't need to find their web page at all if it weren't for the errors, starting with the first web application project in Chapter 3.

For example, you're told to name the property ID you assign to a button as CreateAccount. But when you write the server-side code a couple of pages later, the property in the instructions is now called CreateNewAccount. For someone totally new to this material, following it exactly - and in a book supposedly intended for those people - it's these kinds of details that can mess you up. Also, in the step-by-step instructions, you can't "set the Read Only Property to Read Only" as you're being told to do. The Read Only property is either "true" or "false."

(In chapter 2, you create the famous "Hello, world." By why does the author use aging HTML tags like "< b >" instead of XHTML or XML tags like "< strong >"?)

I'm only 3 chapters in and I'm already disappointed. What should have been an accessible book for beginners is a potential nightmare journey of not knowing when something went wrong because of something you did or because the book has led you astray.

For a complete beginner, this book is OK, otherwise I think people are going to find it light on the details. Of course, it's the details that are hard to discover and get right.

Also, space was devoted to topics that are not really germane, like CVS, Emacs and vi. Of course one has to edit DocBook files, but devoting 3 chapters (out of 12 total) seems like padding.

Save your money and spend your time on the Linux Documentation Project web site.
This book does not contain a single useful detail on how to install and configure the software used to render documents, so make sure you're using a distribution of Linux which includes the tools. Windows users are out of luck.
None of the Chapter 5 example links work on the CD-ROM. The examples in the book and on the CD-ROM are not very complete or useful. The book and CD seem slapped together without organization or quality control. I'm sorry I bought it.

When I ordered this it was described as a paperback. It is nothing but a flyer. It ended up costing with shipping almost nine dollars and if I return it I have to pay another four dollars. It isn't worth my time but this was very misleading and I just threw it out. It is sad as this was for a boy who is trying to change his life. He is trying to find direction but thank you for not meeting my needs.