Developing XML Solutions (DV-MPS General)

Rating:
Summary: A very bad book!
Review: Hmmm, how can I sum this up? Oh, how about...Crapity, crap, crap, crap.

What a waste of time. I got the book last year, thumbed through it and thought it was a solid book on the surface. Now that I'm actually using XML on the job, I can see this book is useless. I have the electronic CD version installed yet I have a bunch of MSDN printouts that are my main source of USEFUL information. BizTalk - who cares? SOAP - MSDN again. This book had ONE entry for getElementsByTagName from the MSXML DOM functions. And that one entry was just as part of a long blind list of all the DOM methods. Want a solid generic XML book? - maybe Wrox or Oriley. Want MS specific MSXML real world information? - use MSDN. I agree with another reader - I don't believe this author wrote a single real app before he started to write this book. I think with more practice the author could make a better product, but the whole book team failed on this one. I think the editors came from the BizTalk marketing group.

Rating:
Summary: Slow going
Review: Microsoft Press publish some excellent, this is an exception.

I do not believe that the author had tried to develop a serious XML solution before he wrote this book. The editors also did a poor job---allowing Jake to waffle and create multipage examples to make simple points.

It is too heavily biased toward microsoft for a cross platform technology.

The coverage is so superficial I found it hard to glean any useful info from it. I found myself continually turning to the specs for clarification!

I was looking for information about best practice and the trade-offs of modelling model data in different ways (eg designing for extensibility). They should have assumed that if you are developing a solution you have some clue about the technology, instead of providing a long winded rambling review (nearly 200 pages).

Thanks to bookpool.com I did not waste to much cash.

A better title would be: Introduction to Microsoft XML Devlopment Tools.

Better books are Professional XML and the XML Bible

Jake, please do a better job next time!

Rating:
Summary: This is by far the worse book I ever read. REAL SHAME!
Review: More and more books are written lately by poor visual basic programmers that have nothing to do with computer programming or computer science in general. This is one of them; a real shame for Microsoft Press...

Rating:
Summary: Lack of direction; very dry and boring read.
Review: Not only did this book fail to provide me with any succinct information with regard to the problems I'm attempting to solve, it was also a very dry and boring read. The author did not present concepts in the order in which one would regularly learn them. Given this, it is highly unlikely that the author has real world development experience.

In summary, painful book; purchase at risk to your own mental health. Oh yes, THANKS JAKE STURM.

Rating:
Summary: There has got to be a better XML book
Review: This book has no direction at all. The author inserts bits and pieces of info that he has collected about varying topics. Buy this book if you want to learn nothing about alot of XML topics from a MS perspective.

I was wading my way through the book skimming the extremely long and irrelavent examples hoping the Windows DNA chapters at the end would make it all worth the pain. Nope - I don't think this guy has ever written an application that used Windows DNA architecture in his life.

The best thing about this book is that I didn't have to pay for it. Don't buy it, I am sure Wrox or someone else has a much better XML book.

Rating:
Summary: This is by far the worse book I ever read. REAL SHAME!
Review: This book is nothing more than a whirlwind of Microsoft marketing terms and hype. It starts off by laying groundwork for understanding XML: defines XML documents, explains well-formedness and validity, and details schemas and DTDs. The fact of the matter is the subject of validity, schemas, and DTDs is pretty pointless for those of us who aren't deeply involved in B2B transactions. Nevertheless, it is essential to giving a general overview of XML and XML related technologies. Definately, this part is also the most tedious and boring part. After laying the groundwork the book immediately jumps into a chapter by chapter introduction to the various Microsoft initiatives, most of which have not even been released yet and may be radically altered by the advent of Microsoft.NET. These include a cursory examination of SOAP(Simple Object Access Protocol) followed by a lighting fast touching upon XML DOM, and finally, a scanty introduction to XSLT. After reading this book I've concluded that the nature of XML is such that it doesn't require a book to learn. If you have access to the Internet then you have access to all you need as far as Microsoft development goes at MSDN online. It boils down to this. XML is a type of document, XML DOM is a bunch of functions, XML schemas and DTDs are also a type of document with rather simplistic content that you shouldn't have to read a book to understand. The conceptual details don't go much deeper than that. The last great book I read was "Developing Distributed Applications Using COM+ and VB 6". I wouldn't recommend that book if you are looking toward moving to MS.NET in the near future but I now see that your money will go farther if you focus on general infrastructure books that explain things such as COM+ and .NET. The rest is just technology that is used within a framework and can be picked up quite easily. If you want to find out something about developing XML solutions in the Microsoft environment then just save your money and go to msdn. microsoft. com and jump right in. Save your money for assistance in understanding difficult concepts rather than being bombarded by reference details and marketing hype.

Rating:
Summary: I liked it
Review: Well written with good examples. Through enough but still missing here or there a few examples. For instance I would have loved to see some about schemas.

It is a good book to learn about XML unless if you plan to use this book as a reference as well. Then you probably want to use a different book.

If you need a good understanding of the DOM again consider reading msdn that should be enough. However if you into developing distributed apps in with Microsoft tools I would recommend spending the money.