Rating: 
Summary: No where near Don's earlier books.....
Review: I was one of the few people who brought the book first. And I am sorry to say that this was a big disappointment. I was not able to figure out what was the problem with this book. I was very surprised that it was no where Don Box's earlier books, which is in my shelf of classic books. I was not able to complete the first few chapter of this book(very boring). I really don't know what is the reason. If you want to know about XML dont by this book. You can refer to w3x.com, microsoft website to get more info. Or atleast XML by Example. May be DB was not able to deliver the killer book unlike the earlier ones because XML has not the critical mass like COM.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty dense...
Review: If you are looking to this book to give you the same knowledge about XML that Essential COM gave you about COM, you are likely to be dissappointed.Like Essential COM, this is an extremely dense book and there are rewards to be found for your efforts. However, the struggle is much harder in this book and the rewards are fewer. The prose is even more stilted and obscure. It is really a poorly written book. Still, if you like mining for insights you might find some in this book. The insights gained, however, will be more at the high level conceptual than the low-level usage area (unlike Essential COM). If you like spoon feeding you'd better stay away completely.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book for the Mensa crowd
Review: If you enjoy cuddling up with sentences such as: "Element information items are fairly adaptable to representing arbitrary data structures, as one simply needs to build an isomorphism between the "native" data structure and a tree-oriented graph of elements and character data" ... then you'll enjoy this book immensely. Me - I'm too stupid and life's too short.
Rating: 
Summary: Right next to Richter's book on the table next to my bed
Review: Its my opinion that the other reviews aren't accurate, as they assume that this is a book intended for an introductory or complete analysis of XML. Instead, this book presents XML from its core abstraction, the Infoset. This book is not large, but it is dense. Appreciating its contents often takes several re-reads. The authors leave many questions unanswered, especially in the chapter entitled, "Beyond Interface based programming." Rather than being a "cookbook" with concrete code examples, this book is much more important for how it makes you think about XML and its role in software.
Rating:
Summary: Superb!
Review: Just finished this book and I have to say it is a great book. I haven't run across any other books that are as focused towards the needs of application developers as opposed to web page designers. Finally, a book about XML that isn't chock full of HTML and JavaScript! The information in this book is exactly what I need to know, not dumbed down, and with no fluff. Superb! The book delivers on the promise of it's title. It's a book just about XML (not HTML, not JavaScript, not web servers), it teaches the essential XML technologies, and it treats XML as something that is useful beyond just markup (ie. XML is NOT JUST for web applications). I'm not doing web development, so books that look at the XML world with web biased tunnel vision don't appeal to me at all. The platform independent way this book is written is the right way to go. This book rightly recognizes that not everyone interested in XML is writing for only the web platform or only the Microsoft OS platforms. By not focusing on platform specific information, it serves a wider audience. There is some MSXML information and Xerces information in there, but that information is introduced only when necessary. The focus is on what's common across all platforms. Like the first chapter of Essential COM, the first chapter of Essential XML lays down the background theory you need to understand XML thoroughly. If you understand what XML is based on, you will better understand XML. It's as simple as that. This chapter also introduces the basics of serialized XML syntax. People that like to jump in and start coding without taking the time to develop a deeper understanding of what they are doing will not like this chapter. I guess that's why so many people are complaining about this chapter. Chapter two (titled Programming XML) contains the most thorough exposition of the DOM Level 2 and SAX2 APIs that I have seen to date. If you're going to be creating or interpreting XML using these APIs you need this book. The coverage here goes beyond the basics of just getting at the XML data, by getting into more advanced topics like reading/manipulating the XML metadata. I really appreciated the many easily digestible examples that made it clear what the code was doing in relation to the XML it was operating on. This chapter was the most applicable to my work. The rest of the book covers Navigation (XPath, XPointer), XML Schemas, and Transforms (XSLT). Coverage appears thorough (though I am no expert at these technologies yet) and again, many easily disgestible examples make things clear. The last chapter is sort of an essay on some ideas of how XML may impact component based development in the future and a little bit about how those are implemented in SOAP. Interesting, but not something I'm ready to jump into yet... I wasn't too interested in the first 2 appendices, but Appendix C (Example Gallery) gives some good, longer, more in-depth examples that would have broken up the flow of the book if they had been placed in their respective chapters. Overall, it's a superb effort at boiling down the essentials of XML for application developers.
Rating: 
Summary: Don Box , please stop!
Review: Like all the stuff Don Box wrote and published, this book is yet
another product he put out in a hurry. there are many many many
blunt errors which makes you doubt if Mr. Box understand
the topic at all. we have our copy of this book (bought by mistake) in the lunch room so that we can use its pages to clean
spilled food. the cover of the book is anoying too! Don, is that you getting out the shower?
in summary, what a piece of junk!
Rating:
Summary: This is not the best Don Box, sorry
Review: My impression is that Don Box is missing the mathematical bases to write this kind of ambitious books. There are big mistakes that show how he is missing a solid background on "graph theory" and mathematics. In my personal opinion he is a lot better writing about programming and should avoid this kind of topics.
Rating:
Summary: This is not the best Don Box, sorry
Review: My impression is that Don Box is missing the mathematical bases to write this kind of ambitious books. There are big mistakes that show how he is missing a solid background on "graph theory" and mathematics. In my personal opinion he is a lot better writing about programming and should avoid this kind of topics.
Rating:
Summary: Even Don Box Doesn't Like This Book!
Review: On the .NET mailing list Don Box wrote, "We both dislike the first chapter and need to rewrite chapters 4 and 6..." nuff said.
Rating:
Summary: It really is Essential
Review: Several years ago, I got into COM, via VB. I felt like I could do stuff, but not with the degree of understanding and elegance I thought I needed as a professional. "Inside COM" by Dale Rogerson and "Inside OLE" by Kraig Brockschmidt changed all that. "Essential XML" by Don Box, Aaron Skonnard and John Lam is exactly the same. "Essential XML" provides you with context, fundamentals and mechanics as well as the language that many evolving technologies speak, including SOAP. My library is a balance of "how-to" books with "context, fundamentals and mechanics" books, now including "Essential XML". If you want to take your understanding to the next level, get this book. BTW - XML is not about programming languages but, I'm a VB guy and found the Java examples a no-brainer. Just make sure you know that the examples are trying to help paint a picture.
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