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Title: Xml: A Primer by Simon St. Laurent, Simon st Laurent ISBN: 1-55828-592-X Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 1998 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.56 (27 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: this book is a perfect primer
Comment: It's not very often that you find a book that lines up with your level of experience and curiousity, but this Primer was a perfect match for me. As a webmaster with 5 years of scripting and markup experience, I appreciated that this book didn't waste any time with HTML. It is an excellent entry point to XML - I couldn't imagine there being a better one out there. It answers "what is XML?" and "how can I use it?" and gets immediately to these points. The author very effectively uses the book itself as an example of what an XML document looks like - i.e. he goes back and scripts an actual chapter in markup. It is very well written (I read 150 pages in one sitting two weeks ago.) Some people might complain that there is too much focus on creating documents and not enough detail about enabling e-commerce, but I think this aproach is necessary. I have since purchased other more detailed books on the particular facets of XML that I'm going to implement for e-commerce, but I wouldn't have gotten here so quickly if it wasn't for this primer. Very highly recommended if you are a webmaster and you don't need the HTTP and HTML background & want to jump directly into XML.
Rating: 5
Summary: Still the Best Place to Start
Comment: It's February 2001, and this book still does a better job of explaining what XML is all about than ones with a 2001 copyright date. St. Laurent's understanding of a Primer is right on target. Instead of having tons of code for the reader to cluelessly hammer out, he explains how XML works, and so when the reader does code the examples, he understands far better what's going on. The explanation of the Document Object Model is unmatched in any of the other books published on XML. Likewise, the crucial topic of Document Type Definitions (DTD) is handled far better and in intelligent detail than anything published since.
Unfortunately, XML is deceptively complex. While it doesn't take a rocket scientist to crank up an XML file, toss in some CSS and claim XML is yet another programming language one has conquered, understanding how the DTD works requires more than a couple of examples and a reassuring pat on the shoulder that the reader can do it in an afternoon. What St. Laurent does, and does well, is to prepare the serious developer/programmer for understanding XML. To be sure, the book represents a foundation for using XML and is not an entire treatise on all that XML can do. However, unlike some of the books I've seen on XML that contain code that will not validate (including on their CD ROMs), this book gets it right. If you want to get XML right, this book is the place to start.
Rating: 1
Summary: Not for curious folk!
Comment: I'm a web developer who knows both HTML and CSS. I bought this book wondering what the world of XML could be about. I was told that it was the "future" of the internet or something. I browsed some online tutorials, and found that this was not just some simple language you could learn in a couple weeks. As I opened the book, I started reading the introduction. The beginning of the book is very interesting because St. Laurent gets into much detail about where XML came from and the roots of practically every language it derived from (like C). But as I read on into the book, he was very wordy. this book needed a CD-ROM with it. The language itself is very simple. But there are many rules that you must follow. To a typical, experienced developer his language is probably most understandable. As I was reading about DTDs n such (i had to read it over a bzillion times) I got even more confused. Finally, I just decided to put it down. His explanations were NOT in layman's terms so the curious user could understand. True, he did give lengthy explanations, but it could be because I read it all during school in small snippets. I never tried out his onlione stuff he has pasted all over the book. What I'm saying is I don't think this book is for curious new users. Maybe users thatr understand all the basic stuff, then just wanna use it as a reference or be told why exactly something does something. A user said earlier that he doesn't leave the reader guessing random code. Well, if you flip thru the back, you can see that the lengthy code pages offer tiny explanations. The IS a ton of code pages. Just thought I'd point that out. I would not recommend this book to anyone. The cheapest is not always the best.
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Title: XML in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition by Elliotte Rusty Harold, W. Scott Means ISBN: 0596002920 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: 15 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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Title: Learning XML, Second Edition by Erik T. Ray ISBN: 0596004206 Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates Pub. Date: 01 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $39.95 |
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