XML Books

I purchased this guide (along with several others) to gain an understanding of the web programming job market.

This book contains just enough information so that you can get the
job in web programming, and start earning.

This book will help you land a job.

So, no, this is not a reference "bible" or web programming manual. Anyone
who purchases this book alone as a web programming refernce should
consider purchasing another book.

But if you want to learn about how to land the web progamming job, then
this is a good buy.

In short, this is a troubleshooting guide compiled by someone who has no knowledge of Web Programming. I think the text is copied from some technical forum or Blog...I am not sure how the manages to get published, but he has written similar books on many other topics, sold on Amazon. I think the author publishes his own books. Authors credentials are not mentioned anywhere in the book (just the name)....the book has no logical flow or content management. It is highly disorganized...actually after reading few pages you will even forget anything you know about Web Programming ....

While this book is clearly aimed at migration from HTML to XHTML, and does contain some good content (not many books mention that tfoot should come before tbody!), it's very incomplete, and the quickref manages to mention only tags - no attributes at all!

There are much better and more complete books for those who are faced with conversion to XHTML, such as 'Mastering XHTML' by Ed Tittel, Chelsea Valentine, Lucinda Dykes and Mary Burmeister (ISBN 0782128203).

As one of the authors of this book I feel that the previous reviewer has missed the point of the book. Its title "XHTML Essentials" should not lead one to expect a complete or bible-like work. It is designed to cover the essentials that everyone needs to know to move from HTML to XHTML. Yes, there are more complete books, but they will cover many things that many Web authors don't want or need to know.

This short reference is very technical, as is everything else by the W3C. It is a good reference to have if you don't prefer looking things up on their web site, otherwise it's redundant information. It's a consise text designed for seasoned XML users -- it's not designed for beginners. Though I refer to this manual periodically, it is written in very unfriendly terms and it is difficult to work with. I prefer other sites on the web for reference over this small text.

This book has got a decent content about XML. But, most pages have been added to technologies that aren't being used much and just adds bulk to the book. A little rhetoric and not always concise to the point; but can live with it. Over all a good reference book. 3 Stars.

This is a great book for HTML beginners, it outlines most of the basics in html and shows how to do some cool stuff with lists & tables. This is a good book to have on your shelf for referance, it's also great value for money. The one thing it did lack is extensive examples of posting forms to a file, creating scrollers, changing scrollbar attributes and making the page refresh. 3/5.

Reviewer: Budianto

This book is not ideal learning XML. it help you to learn how to develop web applicatin , and keeps many key skills in their own chapters,even if they would be needed together.

I have mixed feelings about this book.

On the one hand, it is easy to read, with a strong sense of humour throughout and a crisp layout.

Yet, on the other, it falls short, I believe, of its presumed goal of being a practical and invaluable reference for Web developers wanting to enhance sites with back-end databases.

The book kicks off with a detailed overview and explanation of XML, moving on through discussions of project management, data modelling, XML design, XML stylesheets, and developing database schemas. These chapters are easily accessible, largely due to the author's humour.

Yet, two concluding chapters are where, I feel, the book falls down - integrating XML with SQL Server 2000, and integrating XML with Java.

The depth of these chapters is visibly lacking, especially when contrasted to the earlier coverage of just what XML is. Indeed, these chapters weigh in at 29 and 19 pages respectively - rather puny when one considers that the title of the book is "XML and SQL".

I wouldn't want to make any unfair assumptions, but it seems to me the author is far more of an "XML guy" than, say, a "database guy" or a "programming guy". Indeed, the back cover credits say he is active on the Advisory Committee of the W3C, and it is clear from the text that he is knowledgeable about XML down to the fine detail of its mandated implementation.

However, there is nothing to give confidence that he is equally a master of SQL and the book is definitely unbalanced in its coverage.

Ultimately, I believe "XML and SQL" holds value as a good-humoured guide to XML and its implementation. It would even serve well as an academic textbook, if supplemented with practical exercises.

Unfortunately, though, I do not believe it serves professional programmers well.

I love this book but obviously it is not for novice.

I bought this book on impulse based on the title alone. Unfortunately this was the first book I bought from this particular publisher. God, I hope the others are not this badly organized.

As a professional Java programmer who has used all of the tachnologies in this book, I find that there are some good concepts here in terms of high-level OO design. Unfortunately, the organization of the book requires you to read through a lot of superfluous verbiage to get to the meat.

The criticisms mentioned in other reviews are valid and I won't repeat them here, except to reiterate that the author's academic roots do shine through on this book. The tone is written as if you were sitting in a lecture hall with all the time in world to discuss these concepts and the code examples are not written for performance or high volume traffic on a web site. As a Java professional who writes almost exclusively on the server-side, I found this iritating. There isn't enough time to wade through this book to get what you need when a project is due.

After reading through this book, I was not sure if this book is focused on Java programming or XML or Servlets and JSP programming, although it claims to be about how to integrate all these technologies together. The book overall is not very well organized and it is tough sometimes to really make out what the authors are trying to convey. As for the example code, it is not difficult to make out that the authors are from academia and certainly are not developers who hack it out in the real world.

I am a professional programmer with a background in C++ Windows programming who started learning JAVA a year ago. I bought this book with the intention of learning how to leverage XML in JAVA apps and servlets. I made it through the first chapter just fine and then all heck broke loose. I could not get the examples to work, the text became as clear as mud and I had to put the book down in disgust because every other chapter in the book lynchpins on knowledge from the previous one. This would not be a good buy in my humble opinion.

I think this isn't a very good obok. First, it's not written in a very clear way, I simply didn't understand everything in the book. However, the biggest reason not to buy this book, YOU HAVE TO READ ALL/MOST OF THE CHAPTERS TO UNDERSTAND PARTS. Why is that bad? Many people, including me, like to read only relevant chapters. For example, if you already know some of the stuff, you skip directly to the right chapter and read from there. You can't really do it here, since the authors create lots of classes they constantly use in later chapters. Thus, it makes the book terribly inconvenient. Maybe this is only my impression, I didn't read all of the book, but after a few chapters that I found myself reading stuff I *DIDN'T WANT TO READ*, I just abandoned this book and moved to another one.

I have read books about HTML, JavaScript, C++ and honestly THIS BOOK IS THE WORST that I have ever read! I wanted to learn some XML from this book, it starts talking about its capabilities, use, implementation, functionality, examples, examples, blah, blah, blah... zzzzz.
If you want to learn how to use XML take my advice, do not consider this book. However, if you know XML this book has examples of how can XML be implemented, though I think it is not worth its price.

Definitely this book is for those who dont wanna know XML, it contains nothing.

You'll spend most of your time waiting for something to happen. There is essentially no connection between the CD-ROM and the text.

Others have already said it better than I, so I'll keep this short:

* not enough information to be useful

* poor presentation of the details

* it only babbles on and on about how great XML is, without telling you anything about any pitfalls or, for example, the shortcomings of DTDs.

Charles Goldfarb should actually look at these books, before lending his name to them.

If you want the real deal, go with the Wrox Press book: Professional XML. Sure, it's big, weighs a ton, and you'll probably never need to look at more than a third of it, but I swear even just the first 4 chapters are worth the price of the entire book!

I was greatly disappointed with the contents of this book and above all after learning that the editor is the one who invented SGML(Mother of XML)...they should think a hundred times before writing this kinda books. Please stop circulating this book in the market. Why are you people giving wrong information to people???

I usually don't participate in these reviews, except to read them, and I wish I'd read some before buying this book. As a hardcore C++ programmer and moderately accomplished Java programmer, the title lead me to believe I would be getting something along the lines of what Myers and Sutter did for C++. I was sadly dissapointed. While there are a few nuggets in the text, it is also filled with errors and bad advice. Proposing not using anonymous inner classes because they're "not mainstream" and "hard to read", and more telling "not object oriented", tells me the author needs to do a more thorough research before writing his next book. Any technique, when abused or misused can produce bad code, however anonymous inner classes is an elegant solution to a particular problem set, and should be encouraged in those areas, not broadly poo-poo'd. Educate to the right uses, not discourage because "I find it hard to read". This was the diatribe in the book that pushed me to write a review. If you get this book for free, and have a high tolerance level, there are one or two things to be taken from it, however if you are a novice Java programmer, seek input from someone senior before buying into many of the bad pieces of software engineering advice offered by this book.

The book's title is misleading. The book delves into some not-so-well-known aspects of Java. Unfortunately, the author's arrogant tone is distracting. I also don't agree with the word hardcore in the title. All in all, if you've only been working with Java for a few years, then this book will open your eyes.

With all the criticism and found errors being correct, junior Java developer absolutely should not ignore this book.

Book is filled up with the good practical techniques and rules of the thumb described in a simple and effective manner. Some techniques, for example use of readResolve method in constant serialization, are explained better and in more practical manner than "Effective Java" does.

Real book's name should be "Practical Java development for beginners"

No need to read this book if you already have some experience with Java in a moderate sized project. I could not find any exceptional knowledge and is a little advanced than an entry level book. Book does not live up to its promise.

This book disappointed me. The title raised so high expectations. I started very enthusiastically to read the book and ended in wading through quite a mess.

The level of the book is intermediate, certainly not advanced.

The topics and treatment in this book are quite mixed in level and style. A little about the language itself (so I learned happily about the existence of labels in Java), a lot about the API (here I appreciated most the dynamic proxy and the reference package discussion) and even an entire chapter on design (which I did not like at all).

If you want to learn a little more about Java and have already read the top notch "Effective Java", then this book is full of useful suggestions of areas for further exploration.