Rating: 
Summary: Difficult to make it through the first 75 pages
Review: I bought the book because of Don Box's name, but found it to be very dry. I returned the book within the first 30 days.
Rating: 
Summary: Painfully Pretentious
Review: I checked this book out of the library before investing in it, and am glad I did. I assumed that it was an introductory book to XML. The author begins with an unbelievably pretentious introduction to XML that sounds like a programmer talking shop with other programmers in a contest to sound self-knowledgable and important. Box takes a reasonably understandable subject and makes it unbelievably complex, vague and abstract, in an unnecessarily stuffy and overblown prose style. He writes as if the reader already understands the entire subject, and the reader will have to in order to follow Boxes' inaccessible style. I think this word pretty fairly sums up this book; books should make a subject accessible, and this book makes it inaccessible, if not incomprehensible. Not for beginners or even experienced programmers not familiar with XML.
Rating:
Summary: Poorly written, lacks clear examples
Review: I found this book to be a BIG disappointment. The examples weren't clear or practical.
Rating: 
Summary: A classic text
Review: I know WROX books. I have WROX books. This is *NOT* a WROX book, and thank heavens for that. WROX is a good source for the simple regurgitation of the reference manual with some straightforward examples, and they sure do get to press quickly. But they lack substance, they lack theory. Where does the real programmer go for that? To the Classic Text, and this is one. I won't repeat the other positive reviews, but I would emphasize the second half of the title: "Beyond Markup". It suggests that this text will illuminate the value of XML beyond simple document markup, and it does that like no other book on XML.The Classic Text is one that gets a permanent place on your bookshelf; comes with you when you move; gets ratty and dog-eared from use; gets passed around to colleagues. Actually I do not pass my copy around, I ask my colleagues to order their own! I have a dozen or so XML texts, but the only one I recommend these days is "Essential XML". And if you are really looking to be offended by Don Box's arrogance, don't rely on this book for that. You really need to go hear him talk in person! He is snide, arrogant -- and the future of computing.
Rating: 
Summary: A good second book on XML
Review: I must agree with many of the reviewers. The writing style is unbelievably pretentious. But heck, look at the "Gang of Four" patterns book, or Fowler's UML Distilled. They have the same pompous, turgid style. Unfortunately, whacking through that kind of verbiage is just one survival skill that a software developer needs. Much of the information is freely available on the web, especially the W3C site. But that material isn't easy to read either. The book is not a tutorial "How do I parse/generate an XML file?" . The usual suspects at Sams and Wrox have written entire books on that subject. The book does contain lots of information on good XML development rules, and the discussion of the more advanced features is concise and to the point. I liked the data-centric (as opposed to markup-centric) approach. Overall, I think this is a good second book on XML, once you get past the "we're smarter than you" writing style. Then again, if all developers voted with their wallet, maybe authors would have to start writing books that are easy to read.
Rating:
Summary: What a let-down!
Review: I ordered this book without even thumbing through it - that's how much faith I had in Don Box after reading his other books in this series. What a disappointment! This book is poorly organized, rife with errors and doesn't seem to have any discernable target audience. There are no good books on this subject (although there's no shortage of them) and someone really needs to step-up and write the definitive work in this area. I was expecting that someone to be Don Box. If you're considering buying this book, I urge you to go to the bookstore (or borrow it from a friend) and read the chapter on "Schemas". If that strikes you as remotely clear..., then go ahead and purchase with my blessing.
Rating:
Summary: High Level, Technical, Dry, Too Little Effort to Explain
Review: I read Don Box's "Essential COM" a fantastically good book. Reading this book I was really disappointed. Yes it is still up to the high level of expertise of the author. Yes it is about an important subject. No the author does not try to guide the reader well through the subject. No the basis is not explained at all. No SOAP is not explained nearly well enough. Still I am looking forward to his next book. I hope it covers SOAP well. I would be happy about a good .Net book from him too. But please write it well and don't forget your readers.
Rating:
Summary: XML Letdown
Review: I returned this book. This book, Essential XML, opened far too many questions that it did not answer. In addition, it was difficult to understand exactly what the others point was in various sections. The text would meandor through a series of interface eleborations, never quite showing you what you were supposed to be learning from the discussion. It presented lots of 'statements of fact' with little insight from the author as to how all of this knowledge can be harnessed at shaped into something functional. Read the reviews carefully before possibly wasting you time on this one.
Rating:
Summary: Box bombs again.
Review: I thought the follow on to the Essential COM (which is OK) called "Effective COM" was cheesy and a rip-off ... until I got this book! Waste of mindspace - XML is changing and morphing too fast for this type of diatribe - save it for MSDN Magazine so we can skip the nonsense and get onto meaningful information. I hope DevelopMentor isn't using this for it's $2395.00 course - yikes!
Rating:
Summary: The Most Important XML Book Ever Written
Review: I used to think XML was about exciting as ASCII. After all, it's just another syntax, right? After reading this book, I have a whole new appreciation for XML, thanks to Don Box and company. Using the Infoset model, they show how all the standards (XPath for Navigation, XML Schema for Metadata, XSLT for Transformation) define a very rich data model. That's right, XML is really a data model, one that may even rival SQL and the relational model of data. Admittedly, this is not a book for beginners, nor for those wishing to quickly implement some simple XML functionality in their applications. But for those willing to brave the dense and verbose text, you'll soon gain an understanding of the depth and richness of XML.
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