Rating: 
Summary: thery ... too much of it...
Review: I've always enjoyed reading O'Reilly books specially those related to Linux/Unix and the open source community. I have the learning perl book and it's a great book but since some time now the O'Reilly books I'm buying are really deceiving me... and this is one of them... I'm starting to learn XML and beleive me I'm a computer freak but with this book I was relly lost... too few complete examples I mean they could at least show you after the first 50 pages a small complete example but nothing... just theroy and bla bla bla... ZZZzzz.... So I stoped reading this one and bought the "beginning XML" from wrox today and after reading the first 25 pages I understand much more about XML and what it can do for me so... hey it's your money do what you want with it... I'm going to read my book... happy new year ! ;)
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent XML Book
Review: If you are just getting into XML, this book is an excellent starter for bringing you up to speed. There have been some updates since this release but that's just the way of technology, but you should definitely buy this book and keep it on your bookshelf.
Rating:
Summary: You really can learn XML with this book.
Review: In the world of web design there are certain things you need to know, HTML is the basic foundation of all web pages. As you advance in the design arena the more complicated languages you learn the further you can go. Learning XML is a 350 page book that will take you from the basics of the XML code to the stage where you will be able to design and code pages with the very best. This book is a great example of how others lend their knowledge so you can benefit. Starting off with the basics and origins of XML you will quickly move to the building of XML documents. Then from there you learn the ways to link and program within XML to enhance the documents you create. Finally there is a section on transforming the documents to XML and the author has made sure that you have the code examples to learn from as you go. Overall this is one excellent book for beginners to intermediate level web designers.
Rating:
Summary: An astonishing Book!!!
Review: It gives us the best look in a glance of what XML is all about and teaches us great good things. A Tricki but very well acomplished book with great examples. A must Buy!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Good overview
Review: Learning XML provides a relatively useful overview of the topic, though it doesn't go that much in depth. I'm giving 4 rather than 5 stars because I found the discussion of entities and notations somewhat confusing.
Rating:
Summary: Good transition book from HTML, CSS --> XML
Review: SHORT: I highly recommend this book if you know HTML and have some exposure to CSS; it's a good intro book to XML, which is what it's intended to be. The end result is that you'll know enough to get started with more technical books, and where to go for available web resources. LONGER: The reasons that other people have given for not liking this book are some of the same reasons that I find it useful. I'm pretty well-versed in HTML and have some basic understanding of JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets. This book goes into detail about both and gives comparisons and evolutions that involve XML. I'm about halfway through it at the moment, and it's giving me a clear, not-to-technical view of XML. The other books I have go straight into the code, telling me HOW but not really explaining the WHY of everything. That's what makes this book great to me. The first half deals with explanation and presentation, while the last half is more code-heavy. The two other books I have strive to be highly technical, but proved to be a bit overwhelming for me as a complete newbie to the subject of XML.
Rating:
Summary: A Good Introduction for XML Authors
Review: The book "Learning XML" by Eric T. Ray is a basic introduction to XML. It covers the markup elements, links, presentation, data type definition, transformations and programming for XML. The book is truly for the novice. The very basic concepts are introduced and illustrated in great detail. The text is written quite well, and the illustrations do help to understand the presented concepts and examples. The first chapters on the core concepts, the markup elements, links and presentation in XML describe all syntax elements using a graphical syntax illustration. The components of syntax elements are clearly labeled and referred to in the text. The application of all elements is further illustrated with simple examples that concentrate on the essence of the different markup elements. The chapter on DTDs is equally well written and DTD concepts and syntax elements are introduced in the same careful way as the markup elements in the first chapters. I would have expected more than 4 pages on XML schema. Yes, it's still a draft, but the basic behavior and structure are pretty well defined by now, and parsers accepting XML schema are available. The text has a couple of chapters and sections that disappointed me. The chapter on transformations isn't structured as well as the rest of the book and contains a 20 page long, undocumented and uncommented example of an XSLT transformation program. This example has not been written by the author, and that might be reason it is not explained in detail, but at least a few comments would have been nice. The last chapter on programming for XML is the most disappointing one. The elements of an XML processor are only introduced very briefly. The chapter does contain a Perl example of a XML syntax checker but I don't think that developing such low level functionality is the most important aspect of programming for XML. A more detailed coverage of the APIs SAX and DOM would probably have been more important. Overall, this is a good introduction or XML authors. The basic concepts are presented out nicely and the illustrations are very helpful. The book is not a great reference if you plan to learn how to write programs for XML.
Rating: 
Summary: not for developers
Review: The first few chapters of this book on the basics of XML are good, but stay away if you're a software developer wanting to learn about XML in depth. Even if you're an XML author, you will find this book lacking in the latter chapters. Almost all the discussion is extremely general and theoretical. Occasionally the author sprinkles in a few fucntional XML snippets, but they are not nearly enough. Furthermore, there are only about a dozen complete examples of functional XML available in the tar/zip file available online at O'Reilly. The paucity of examples was particularly frustrating in the XSLT chapter. By its very nature, XSLT screams out for illustrative examples showing 'before' and 'after' transformations, but the author provides very few such examples. Another thing that really irked me was the condescending writing style of the author. Here's an example from Ch. 4 on CSS: "A CSS stylesheet is a collection of rules... An analogy for this process is painting-by-numbers. In this activity, you purchase a painting kit that comes with paints..." Really now! This style of writing is not necessary and is frankly offensive. XML inherently is not a beginner's topic; a reader who picks up this book is most likely an IT manager or a developer and does not need to be talked-down upon. If you're a java developer, I suggest you take a look at "Processing XML with Java" by Harold.
Rating:
Summary: get this along with another book.
Review: This book straddles the fine line between "for developers", and "for executives" - it does the Jack of All Trades things well, it Masters none however. If you're a developer: get this book, read it, and then after figuring out what XML-based tools you need, get another book that goes into more detail - you're not gonna find that in this book. If you're an executive: get this book, and read the introductions to each chapter - the code is relatively easy to understand, but certainly unnecessary if you're looking for a definition what what things are in the *ML world
Rating:
Summary: Understandable, clear and to the point
Review: This books has a conversational tone to it. I found it relaxing trying to learn a subject which, though easy, has so many parts to it that you can get confused.
You learn how XML works and how it works with all the other modules. It's not a "kit" for putting things together for you. Using this book, you can write XML pages which work and you'll understand why it does.
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