XML Books

Pragmatic Ajax: A Web 2.0 Primer (Pragmatic)

This is a very good book, if you want to jump into Web 2 development. Authors waste no time in getting you up and running with practical examples. Examples are chosen wisely, explanation is excellent. Just keep in mind that the book is what it says, it is a primer, besides Web 2 is a big topic, yet authors do a remarkable job.

I really liked this book as an introduction into Ajax and found it better than 4 other books I looked at. It has the basics as well as detailed examples using the top 4 frameworks. Usually a book chooses one and may contain a page or two about one or more other technologies. This is a great primer for anyone and it may even aid you in deciding which group of Ajax technologies to implement.

Mike

Personally, I don't really use this book too much. It is a very general primer to web 2.0 with AJAX. It covers the Dojo toolkit and Prototype / Scriptaculous JavaScript libraries, but doesn't show you the true power of JS and really leaves you wanting more.

However, if you are lost or new to the web development world, this book will give you a good foundation. I would recommend picking up the O'Reilly definitive Javascript book and Prototype / Scriptaculous "bungee" book by Pragrmatic Programmers immediately after.

Well written and excellent, great info in the first 50 pages. Much better than the Ajax on Java for the nutshell which seems to worm around. This book tells it like it is. Just my opinion. I think anyone who is being inundated with Ajax boasting should read this and see what its all about.

This book is everything one can want form such a book. Before I read this book, I knew nothing about AJAX, although I read few articles on the internet, I couldn't find such nice explanations and examples. Now I use AJAX wherever I can, and I can't immagine my life without it. Buy this book and you won't be sorry.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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."

Title says it all. Jeni Tenison is an outstanding XSLT developer, her book are top notch. If you develop XSLT pages consider the book...

I found this to be an excellent book for XSLT beginners. I've been a web developer for about 6 years now (HTML, JavaScript, CSS, etc) but was totally new to XSLT. I was able to follow the examples in the book quite easily, and found the explanations to be clear and comprehensive. I was able to incorporate some of the examples into my own work right away, in particular the section on recursive templates.

I buyed this book in Octuber, 2002. Recently I started to read it again. I think this tell many of the book. It is a very useful book and explains complex things in a very easy way. I would recomend this book to anyone that is thinking seriously to go into the XSLT world.

Jeni calls it "Beginning" XSLT since she probably wanted to attract new-comers, but this book goes well beyond the intro stuff. I have 3 books on XLST, the others being good books, but this is by far the best. Real world examples, plenty of explanation for each. What else can I say. Buy this if you need to work with XML/XSLT.

This is an exact copy of the book published by Wrox in 2002. I found a used copy of the Wrox edition for three bucks in a bin of a technical store. Looks like the folks at APress took the rights and re-published it. And I am noticing here now that the 2.0 version is scheduled for pubblication in a couple of months.

Bought this book about a month ago, so I think I've had a pretty good chance to review it. It's very good, despite the fact that Mozilla hasn't got up off their keesters yet! I'm an XML developer with limited Java experience, but the JXUL project they put in there as their open source project is very, very cool! That I think was worth the price of the book.

I personally thought the RDF chapter was a monster (scary to me!) but very well covered! I'm sure when I progress as a programmer I'll be doing a lot of the RDF.

I think the book is very well written, especially considering I am still a beginner/intermediate web developer.

In my line of work with SGML, the transition into XML comes pretty natural and with that the notion of "Hey, there is really a lot of cool stuff one can achieve with this!". Especially when you add XUL, XBL, RDF, and JavaScript/DOM to this.
Thats where this book comes in really handy. The chapters are laid out pretty well and don't require a lot of experience with XML, although some basic knowledge of how a markup language work helps. The only downside about the whole XUL at the moment (in my view) is that its currently only supported in Netscape 6.x. The XUL support in Mozilla got broken somewhere between milestone release 0.92 and 0.94. However, the jXUL project looks really promising and would certainly make up for the lack of browser support since this will run as stand-alone applications in a "Runner" application.

As others have mentioned, the chapter on RDF was pretty scary and daunting and should be revisited by the reader a couple of times. There are of course lots of RDF resources on the web that could provide more help and insight.

The chapter on Netscape Themes (including the appendix containing all the different images and buttons used) could probably be left out in the next edition, to give more room for RDF or DOM?

Grand total; A very good book on this topic that certainly will inspire the reader for further research in this area.

I bought this because of the JXUL project. To that end I found this book very handy to understand that basics, intermediate aspects and application of XUL, RDF, XBL, etc.

A lot of time is spent talking about Mozilla (obviously). The problem is that a lot of that content will be quickly out of date. Discussion of other projects like Luxor (like JXUL), Xavier (server side) and the enhancements made in Mozilla since being published would make a welcome second edition. May-be wait for Mozilla 1.0.

I bought this because because of the JXUL project. To the end I found this book very handy to understand that basics of XUL programming and quickly got me up to speed.

A lot of time is spent talking about Mozilla (obviously). The problem is that a lot of that content will be quickly out of date. Discussion of other projects like Luxor, Xavier and the enhancements made in Mozilla since being published would make a welcome second edition. May-be wait for Mozilla 1.0.

xul appears to have changed a lot since this book was printed.
many of the xul tags discussed and used, the xul templates used,
have changed. thus, most of the xul examples in the book are
not going to work in firefox.

e.g. the xul css skin url is no longer the same. lots of tags
such as "titledbox" have been renamed.

i'd say this content is deprecated.

also, in my opinion, these chapters add no value
to the book and in general weakens the
existing content:

an xml primer
css
the jxul project

If you are looking to buy just one book on HTML and RELATED technologies book, then this is it. A COMPREHENSIVE book. Explains every thing in a very lucid way. Easily assimilate complex topics with this book. The future is in HTML/XHTML and Javascript. Get this book and get ready.

If you are starting out with HTML/XHTML, you might be advised to get a tutorial. This work appears to begin with basics, but even the early chapters provide much more information than a novice wants or needs. (The "Links" chapter--Chapter 4--for example, describes all types of links, many of which a beginning web page author probably won't need to know about until he or she has acquired quite a bit more experience.
That said, this book is a good reference with lots of helpful tips. It may not be as complete as other reviewers hoped, but I have found it quite handy for learning many advanced topics. And, although the edition I have (the 4th) has been out a couple of years, the material is still mostly uptodate. In short, it is a very good resource.

I spent many hours reading through books on xhtml to find the best reference manual. This is the book that I chose. I find it very easy to locate the data I need and exceptionally thorough. There are plenty of good clean code html & xhtml examples. But what makes this book a book that you will keep, are the tables in the back defining everything from attributes to special character codes. It is after all a reference manual. Like most technical subjects, each book seems to have an area where it shines. None have it all. However, this book is the best overall.

This book is a good reference if you are doing a web page. It shows html, xtml and java language. It's a very good dictionary to find terms for diferent things that you would like to put in your web page as music, backgrounds, links, etc.

This Reference is very very comprehensive. It also covers CSS 2.0 (completely, no need to buy a CSS 2.0 reference unless you need a learning book or a pocket reference).

It also covers XML to an extend most Web Developers need to know without becoming an Authority in the subject.

A lot of examples that are not always useful. The Appendixes for HTML and CSS are among the best I have seen. Browser Compatibility is also addressed in easy to read "grid" like format.

If you are interested in this book, you should already be aware of the importance of XML. Perhaps you already have used it elsewhere. More importantly, you should already have the basics of Perl. The book does not start from scratch on it. Though it assumes no prior knowledge of XML. It shows what can be done in Perl, to parse, change and write XML. Numerous modules already exist, especially for parsing. You really do not want to write an XML parser!

Once you've understood enough to have your own custom XML files and be able to write Perl to read and display these, then it should get easier. Those initial steps can then easily be modified as your XML data and analysis changes.

One of Perl's great strengths is in processing text files. That is, after all, why it became so popular for generating dynamic web pages - web pages are just text (albeit text that is supposed to follow particular rules). As XML is just another text format, it follows that Perl will be just as good at processing XML documents. It's therefore surprising that using Perl for XML processing hasn't recieved much attention until recently. That's not saying that there hasn't been work going on in that area - many of the Perl XML processing modules have long and honourable histories - it'd just that the world outside of the Perl community doesn't seem to have taken much notice of this work. This is all set to change with the publication of this book and O'Reilly's Perl and XML.

XML and Perl is written by two well-known members of the Perl XML community. Both are frequent contributors to the "perl-xml" mailing list, so there's certainly no doubt that they know what they are talking about. Which is always a good thing in a technical book.

The book is made up of five sections. The first section has a couple of chapters which introduce you to the concepts voered in the book. Chapter one introduces you separately to XML and Perl and then chapter two takes a first look at how you can use Perl to process XML. This chapter finishes with two example programs for parsing simple XML documents.

Section two goes into a lot more detail about parsing XML documents with Perl. Chapter three looks at event-driven parsing using XML::Parser and XML::Parser::PerlSAX to demonstrate to build example programs before going to talk in some detail about XML::SAX which is currently the state of the art in event-driven XML parsing in Perl. It also looks at XML::Xerces which is a Perl inteface to the Apache Software Foundation's Xerces parser. Chapter four covers tree based XML parsing and presents examples using XML::Simple, XML::Twig, XML::DOM and XML::LibXML. In both of these chapters the pros and cons of each of the modules are discussed in detail so that you can easily decide which solution to use in any given situation.

Section three covers generating XML documents. In chapter five we look at generating XML from text sources using simple print statements and also the modules XML::Writer and XML::Handler::YAWriter. Chapter six looks at taking data from a database and turning that into XML using modules like XML::Generator::DBI and XML::DBMS. Chapter seven looks at miscellaneous other input formats and contains examples using XML::SAXDriver::CSV and XML::SAXDriver::Excel.

Section four covers more advanced topics. Chapter eight is about XML transformations and filtering. This chapter covers using XSLT to transform XML documents. It covers the modules XML::LibXSLT, XML::Sabletron and XML::XPath.

Chapter nine goes into detail about Matt Sergeant's AxKit, the Apache XML Kit which allows you to create a website in XML and automatically deliver it to your visitors in the correct format.

Chapter rounds off the book with a look at using Perl to create web services. It looks at the two most common modules for creating web services in Perl - XML::RPC and SOAP::Lite.

Finally, section five contains the appendices which provide more background on the introductions to XML and Perl from chapter one.

There was one small point that I found a little annoying when reading the book. Each example was accompanied with a sample of the XML documents to be processed together with both a DTD and an XML Schema definition for the document. This seemed to me to be overkill. Did we really need both DTDs and XML Schemas for every example. I would have found it less distracting if one (or even both) of these had been moved to an appendix.

That small complaint aside, I found it a useful and interesting book. It will be very useful to Perl programmers (like myself) who will increasingly be expected to process (and provide) data in XML formats.

Using practical, real-world examples, XML And Perl is the collaborative effort of Mark Riehl and Ilya Sterin to demonstrates how to perform a variety of XML tasks, ranging from such basic tasks as XML parsing, to more advanced tasks such as writing XML event handlers, RDBMS integration, and XML transformation. XML And Perl is a continuingly useful addition to personal and professional XML and Perl reference collections.

The authors of this book, definitely know the subject. I believe one of them is an author of quite a few XML modules, though both are widely known in the Perl XML community.

This book definitely covers the state of Perl and XML. It goes over the most important modules, in great detail and providing concrete examples. I especially like the first two chapters, which in detail get you prepared for the rest of the book. The coverage of XML parsing theory was a great topic to cover. Two large chapters, each dedicated to SAX and DOM respectively, covered both parsing technologies in great detail.

Many, many, more great chapters. Apart from some typos, which are inevitable in any book, this book stands way above the O'Reilly counterpart, which I also own.

I wrote a review VERY critical of what OýReilly passes off as reference books. Their various CD Books are pathetic. Shortly after getting burned on two of their books, I was in need of a solid technical book on perl and XML. Well instead of OýReillyýs Perl and XML I voted with my dollars for Reihlýs XML and Perl. This is how a technical reference should be written. If you want to get into the perl and xml saddle quick, you canýt have a better boost thatn XML and Perl.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

I am a proficient MSXML coder but i can't get what I want (knowledge about .Net XML programming objects) from this book because the author habitually relies on advanced concepts from related technologies to explain things. So unless you are a pretty competent .Net programmer and already proficient in ADO.Net/ADO you will struggle to understand this book and struggle to understand the significance of what you are being told and why. I gave up and resorted to looking for articles on MSDN. Undoubtedly there is good stuff here but Mr Esposito writes as an extremely knowledgeable person for the already extremely knowledgeable person only.

Dino does a great job on this book. It is a great reference on how Microsoft handles and processes XML.

This book only has one drawback that it is outdated as it refers to Visual Studio 2003 and many things in Visual Studio 2005 have been changed or are outdated.

Hope they pubblish soon a book that is more up to date.

Gr8 book if you need assistance with xml programming and also helps in using all methods of reading, writing and using xml. Dino! High five.

Dino Esposito has total, absolute command of the subject matter that he expertly teaches in this book. This is a template for how all technical training books should be written. I wanted in-depth coverage of the XML object library in .NET and that is exactly what this book delivers. This is THE book on XML in .NET. Don't waste your money on anything else.

It is also terrific supplemental material for the Developing XML Web Services and Server Components certification exam. I recommend Mike Gunderloy's book as an all-encompassing source (look up my review for that book); however, I recommend reading the first four chapters of this book before you start Gunderloy's book if you don't have much experience reading and writing XML in .NET. Chapters 12 and 13 on remoting and web services, respectively, are also great sources of exam prep material. In fact, Chapter 12 on .NET Remoting is the best chapter on the subject you will find anywhere.

Terry, MCAD and MCSD for Microsoft .NET

Dino tells all in this superb and in depth look at XML on Microsoft's .NET platform. The book is well organized, starting at the fundamental classes and then branching out to the high abstraction level .NET classes and other Microsoft products such as SQL Server 2000 and Internet Explorer.

As an example of why this book is so wonderful, there have been several situations where I needed to do something in XSLT that just didn't seem practical (maybe not even doable). The section on how to use standard .NET languages such as C# from XSLT is itself worth the price of admission.

Keep in mind that readers are expected to have a good grasp of XML; the book is a .NET book.

If you'd like to program or create sites with mapping tools, this book will really help.

Short and direct chapters. Easy to read and learn.

The book is interesting and has many good ideas and some valuable information. Be aware, however, that the advanced hacks (those dealing with calling the API from your own code) are based on a now obsolete version of the API. So, for example, Hack 62 that tells you how to find that longitude and latitude of an address doesn't tell you that you can accomplish the task via Google now. Hack 58 (Find the right zoom level) has one (of three) technique that uses an undocumented API that has, apparently, gone away. And, of course, it doesn't provide the easy way to do it using the current API.

I'm not faulting the authors for not seeing into the future. The book is well written and engaging. Just be aware that parts of it are already out of date.

The collection of apps here are fascinating. But I looked for a tutorial telling me "this is how you embed a map, select several points of interest, and label them.". It was not visible.

Google Maps Hacks: Tips & Tools for Geographic Searching and Remixing (Hacks) (Paperback)

Are you a Google application developer? If you are, then this book is for you! Authors Rich Gibson and Schuyler Erle, have done an outstanding job of writing a book that shows you how to take full advantage of the mapping capabilities in Google Local.

Gibson and Erle, begin by showing you how to look up locations, get driving directions, look at satellite pictures, share links to maps in e-mails and on web pages, generate links to maps from a spreadsheet, and use del.icio.us. Then, the authors show you how to put a map on your page, capture user clicks, create a slideshow connected with a map, create custom icons, and measure distances. Next, they cover a variety of mashups, from mapping the news, to seeing where criminals "work," to weather maps, to answering the question: where is the Space Telescope right now. The authors then help you find the cheapest gas near you, load driving directions into your GPS to take with you, look at your GPS track logs, explore hiking trails, figure out why your cell phone doesn't work at home, and even beat a traffic ticket. They continue by showing you how to geocode your photos on Flickr, set up a blog that knows about place, geocode literature, and examine the choices that go into which satellite images are included. Then, the authors show you how to tweak and extend the Google map. Finally, they show you how to use a clustering algorithm so that your own points fit properly on a map, create your own map tiles, connect to a database, use web standards to display other data on your maps, an even figure out if your kids are likely to barf.

This most excellent book will show you how to make the most of Google Maps. More importantly, you'll find the tools and inspiration you need right in this book!

I've read both this and the ExtremeTech "Hacking Google Maps," and both have their place, but I found this one to be much more valuable.

It doesn't contain any introductory information to the API, which some may be looking for, but it's not something that I would expect to see in a Hacks book anyway. With the v2 release of the API in April 2006, Google's own documentation has gotten a lot better, and it's the best place to go for a tutorial.

The book contains a great collection of hacks from all perspectives: users looking to get the most out of Google Maps, power users looking to push the functionality in new ways, and developers using the API. There's also a good overview of some popular mashups from the mashups' developers perspectives, and extensions to the API (e.g. TLabel, TPhoto).

Because there are so many contributors, you'll notice a change in tone and writing style throughout the book; and different coding practices are easy to spot, e.g. one code sample might use a standard, documented JS call, while another uses a homegrown function to accomplish the same thing. Another drawback is that the book is written to v1 of the API, which was replaced months ago, although is backwards compatible. This doesn't affect readability or value, but several of the undocumented features in the book are in fact documented in v2!

Great book, filled with useful information.

Una GRAN pequeña guía de referencia. A lo mejor se echan en falta algunas palabras reservadas pero por lo general es una maravilla poder consultar de forma rápida y ordenada la duda que buscas.

The product got there 2 days earlier than other items I ordered the same day. The condition was good.

After I figured out there structure of displaying information, this tool has become a valuable asset. Definately recommend.

What kind of a reference book doesn't have an index? Sure, the tag reference is in alphabetical order, but that only helps if you remember what the tag is. Also, I had a brain fart this morning and couldn't remember the exact syntax for a comment (I work with way too many languages)- couldn't find it. That's what a pocket reference is supposed to be for, the little things you can't remember!

This is an excellent text and well illustrated. I am sure an updated edition will come out soon.