Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing
Review: This book did not come up to the expectations that were set by some of the other reviewers and by O'Reilly themselves.
I bought Java & XML a couple of years ago. I diligently read the first couple of chapters, but then found it unhelpful and put it aside. To find out what SAX and DOM are you have to wade through lots of inconsequential information, only to discover that SAX allows you to parse an XML document on the fly, but doesn't retain it in memory; whereas DOM keeps the document in memory and allows you to manipulate it. Big deal. I could have worked this out by doing some Google searches.
I am writing this review because I have just picked up my (dusty) copy from the bookshelf in the hope of finding something interesting. I was surprised to see that the first example on SAX actually includes a JTree, even though McLaughlin says to ignore it, it is typical of the book to include something irrelevant and simply confusing. Why doesn't he just use a simple console example? What he doesn't say is that the JTree code is really there to make the example longer, so that there are more pages in the book that justify a higher price. You're not going to spend 45 dollars on a weedly little manual, are you? You want something chunky for your money.
When reading this sort of book, I get the feeling that O' Reilly, and similar technical publishers, put a lot of effort into inflating their publications into bigger manuals with lots of pages. McLaughlin is obviously an expert, but he is constrained by the O'Reilly house style, which is deliberately conversational and longwinded so that while you feel that it is easy reading, they are really just making it more difficult to learn simple concepts. As I said before they also pepper the pages with unnecessary sections of code.
In my opinion, another two examples are XSLT and XSLT "cooktop": both these O'Reilly manuals could have been condensed into one book by just cutting the waffle.
Don't get me wrong, I don't enjoy dry, academic journals but at the same time I just wish that these manuals would get to the point quicker .
Rating: 
Summary: A Helpful Book for Java and XML
Review: This book is great for getting up to speed with Java and XML, though I don't recommend it for learning XML. The book is of the high quality that I've come to expect from O'Reilly and all fourteen chapters are quite good. Some of the examples are a little contrived, but they definitely help in understanding the material. One complaint about the book is the focus on web sites. In my case, I'm working on a stand-alone Java application and wanted to use XML for my data files.If you are completely new to XML, I recommend picking up Learning XML by Erik T. Ray first, and then coming back to this book. Since the second edition is due out shortly, I would wait for it.
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