Java XML Programmer's Reference

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: Being a Java developer and wanting to learn how to use XML technologies with that language I had high hopes for this book coming in. I had read the editorial review, have a high opinion of Wrox books in general, and was looking for a book that covered the scope of topics this book claims to cover. I was disappointed.
For the most part the text covering the various technologies, e.g. XML, SAX, DOM, JDOM, JAXP, etc., is a reformat and JavaDoc of the specifications. Almost every chapter opens with something like this from chapter two, 'This chapter contains the same information as the SAX 2.0 API specification...', and indeed it does. At least they're up front about it. The saving grace of each chapter are the small utility code bits, written in Java, that demonstrate the syntax of doing things but there is little elaboration.
As a reference this book pulls together a lot of technology into one place and puts it at your fingertips. Of course, by the time you've learned a couple of these sections the rest of the technologies in the book will be out of date ;) so you might be better off just bookmarking the reference pages on the web.
The Wrox motto is 'Programmer to Programmer'. They must mean mouth-to-mouth resuscitation after you've tried to plow your way through a few chapters of this book.

Rating:
Summary: Just what I was looking for
Review: I found it to be a very comprehensive and complete book on XML. One of the biggest problems with XML related books in general is that i have to refer to 2-3 books to solve a 'business problem' as the books seem to be focused on one or two aspects of XML. With this book though the authors seems to have taken the approach of solving real life business problems with XML going into just the right level of details and providing great examples, I really liked the business case study and the Apache chapter. In short, it was just what i was looking for as a person who is learning xml and most importantly trying to use it to solve real world problems.

Rating:
Summary: The best book on the subject
Review: Java and XML are intricately related to each other and its importance is growing in building J2EE solutions. For any professional developer who is aspiring to build Enterprise Applications, knowledge of XML is a must. But more important than that is to be able to use the Java API's for XML. In a period when information about these is scattered and difficult to gather, this book has all you require to get started with Java XML in one place. The layout is perfect, the material is flawless and uptodate. The API's have been supplemented by useful examples where required which show exactly what can be done. Its a must buy for anyone. I never repented owning a copy. And my recommendation is - Go get it!

Rating:
Summary: Just what I was looking for
Review: This book is an excellent reference for the Java XML API's. It is up to date on SAX 2 and DOM/DOM extensions. It also gives a good intro to many recent developments like SOAP and IBM WebServices Tools. An advantage of reading such a book is that it makes you familiar with many of the good features of API's - which otherwise I would have never bothered to look up. The chapter on JAXP is particularly well presented. I liked the case study in Chapters 12-15 which highlight techniques for configuring, querying , storing and transmitting XML - these can be put to use straight away. On the flip side, I would have liked to see more examples in each chapter on the usage of API's. I would have also liked some more focus on XSLT. Ant has been used extensively - and at first I found this a little disconcerting as I had not used Ant earlier.