Rating: 
Summary: Suggested New Title: Anatomy of XML
Review: By page 177 I realized that I was never going to touch a keyboard while reading this book. I can't speak for everyone, but when I pick up a book expecting to learn the topic, I need theory, reference, examples and structured "assignments". This title offers the first three, but I never get to apply what I am learning hands-on in a graduated fashion. When I am finished, I have little more than the ability to recognize the components of XML. Just because you can recognize all the foods in a grocery store, and know the origins of all the spices on your spice rack, doesn't mean you can cook; the same principal applies here. I am fully aware that XML is comprised of many different elements, and many of the XML development environments are very expensive, but many are free and could have been used to teach the concept clearer.The title also has many errors, so the errata list on the publisher's web site is important. The book does not include any of the source code, so if you want that, you have to download it. Even then, it is not complete and file titles in the book do not always match the provided code file names. If you are looking for a hands-on book to learn XML, this isn't the title. If you know XML and are looking for a reference, again - not for you. However, if you are interested in it from more of an administrative overview position, then the title is worth the read. It can provide many answers and give a good base of information without the need to actually write any XML on your own.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent book for programmers using XML
Review: I am a C, Unix Shell, and Perl programmer. This means that I have a lot of interaction with XML. I'm not really interested in sitting down and learning XML because I wouldnt actually go and write it myself. There are plenty of perl modules (XML::Parser, XML::Twig, and so on) that will do that for me. However, I wanted to have some understanding of what XML actually was, and how to read it if I were presented in it. This book started very slow and very easily, and moved into some more advanced (if a little more dry) subject matter. The author uses witty, enjoyable examples, and is very clear at all times about what is being explained. I would recommend this to most programmers who want to just "know what XML is all about," as it isnt particularly technical (if you are just skimming), and its technical enough for people to get into if need be. It also covers most topics very thoroughly. Another gem from OReilly.
Rating: 
Summary: Subpar
Review: I bought this book based on uniformly good experience with the publisher, but I will have to revise my standards in the future. I still find it hard to believe that O'Reilly would put out such a half-baked book. The book has three major problems, not all the author's fault. First, it attempts to cover a large number of topics at an overview level. Unfortunately, it doesn't give quite enough information about anything to be usable without extra information. It is difficult to imagine doing anything in XML based on the material in this book. For example, it devotes quite a few pages to XPath, but it doesn't describe a usable subset of XPath in a complete enough manner to start using XPath in your own documents. Second, it is missing essential current topics. This is not the author's fault as XML is rapidly evolving, but it is difficult to recommend an introduction to XML that virtually ignores schemas while spending a tremendous number of pages on DTDs. Finally, and most importantly, the book is badly written. Terms are used before they are defined. Some XML-specific technical terms are used without being defined at all. This is particularly bad in the discussion of XPath, where quite a bit of XPath terminology is used as if the reader knew what it meant without ever being defined. Ditto with XSLT. I have rarely seen a less useful set of examples. The examples consist mainly of repetitive XML files taken from the net with little annotation. Although the examples are long, they typically repeat similar code again and again without illustrating many new ideas.
Rating:
Summary: A kind of boring...
Review: I bought this book to have some knowledge of XML, but his book is so boring....This is my third week and I am in chapter 2, and believe me I am pushing myself to read it. I think I will buy another XML book or just go straight to a XHTML book. I understand that without theory you cannot explain anything, but this is too much...to much theory.
Rating: 
Summary: A good book for people interested in learning XML...
Review: I consider Learning XML by Erik T. Ray to be a first-rate book. I thought it was easy to read and full of useful information. This is an excellent book for people interested in learning about XML, not a book for experience XML users. This book introduces the basic XML concepts very well and has excellent examples to reinforce these concepts. It introduces the more complex concepts involved with XML but does not elaborate fully on them. Again, this is an introductory book.
Rating:
Summary: the first step in a long journey
Review: I found "Learning XML" to be a very good introduction to what has been often portrayed as the highly complex subject of XML. Erik has put together a logical flow of concepts, building from basic structure to more involved examples and uses of XML, including DocBook, XSL, XHTML, and the like. I would recommend this book to those wanting 100-level course material: it is a fine first step on the road to the likely heavily-populated land of XML in the future.
Rating: 
Summary: Confusion, when it comes to XSLT
Review: I have to say that the first 5 chapters, served as a good introduction to XML. It was much much better than any Dummies book of the subject. Actually I found them to be treating the subject at some depth.
But then came the most important chapters on XSLT & Programming Tools. It was completely confusing not because the subject was a tough one, but because the treatment was bad.
I would have given 1 star had it been not for the first chapters.
Rating:
Summary: Nice way to kickstart learning XML
Review: I needed a quick, well-structured intro to XML for a consulting assignment. This book serves that purpose well. It covers many of the important and relevant XML technologies, and provides enough depth to get started in each. The sections on XPath and XSLT are particularly helpful. The book looses a review star, however, for its poor XML Programming section. DOM is barely mentioned, and SAX is demonstrated using Perl. Perl is great for some things, but I think it's a poor choice here. Java is far more mainstream and easier to read for XML programming, and should have been used instead. Brett Mclaughlin's book, Java and XML, provides a much better choice for introductions to SAX and DOM.
Rating:
Summary: Learning XML a review
Review: I purchased this book because (1) I want to learn XML, (2) I have a great many other O'reilly books and generally they are extremly informative. However, overall I was very disapointed with this book, I must say that I am still reading through it, but so far.. too much woffle, not nearly enough examples and those that are present dont appear to work correctly. Nothing is more fustrating than typing in both XML and an accompanying stylesheet, to find that either the XML will not validate because of unrecognised atributes, or that the page will not render sanely. I admit I am using Internet Explorer.. version 5.5 but the XML non-validations using a registered copy of XMLWriter are most fustrating. The ftp site examples also fail to validate or execute correctly. In addition.. am I the only person who has yet to see a practical example of XML in action?? ...All in All.. learning XML is a disapointment.
Rating:
Summary: Describes XML, doesn't teach you to write XML
Review: I was hoping for more, but this book does a good job describing all of the elements of XML. Not a book on writing XML.
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