Complete Idiot's Guide to XML (Complete Idiot's Guide)

Rating:
Summary: Can't even define EDI right
Review: Everything in this book could be reduced to 20 pages including examples. Every idea is repeated over and over. Someone gave this book a glowing review, and said they finished in four days. A book you can finish in four days is cotton candy. Although the author makes several claims to show "XML in the real world", there is not one actual example of how you could use an XML file (how would you display this file on the net, or import it into Word, or whatever). The only thing the book covers is the structure of an XML file, and that not very well. And while the book trumpets the XML Pro editor, it's just a trial version of a product that the author wants to sell you. You pay $25 to read an ad for a product that costs $150. How is this even legal? And despite the reviews, this editor has limited value. It can help show the structure of an existing file, and can be useful for creating the structure of a new file. But if you create a file with say 20 elements per item, and 50 instances of the item, you would spend the entire day creating a file that would take 20 minutes with a normal data entry system. If you really want to learn about XML, get a real book.

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Summary: The Name Says it All
Review: I found this book useful in getting started with XML, as it was the easiest to understand. It only covers XML and DTDs, not XSL, CSS, Xlink etc. Everything is spoon fed, and it assumes no programming knowledge. Still if you master the contents, you will have a reasonable basic knowledge of XML.

Rating:
Summary: world record for poor proof reading
Review: I have never read a book so littered with mistakes. To a neophyte this book must be so confusing as to be totally useless. Can you believe the author gives three different renderings of the acronym SGML within a few pages of each other. Many absolutely critical points are muffed by the most banal and obvious proof reading errors. The final straw is the tear out reference card which can't even get the rules for XML names correct. Really, it's just too, too bad.

Rating:
Summary: Good 1st book on XML
Review: I was looking for a quick & easy introduction to XML that would serve a basis for more advanced books. This was just the ticket. I finished the book in four days, reading a bit in the morning before work & a bit in the evening after work. Chapters are short & easily digested. The author gently leads the reader through the components of XML & how they all fit together followed by a similar path for DTDs. In the end the reader should be able not only to read & understand moderately complex XML documents & DTDs, but also design & write both DTDs & XML documents that conform to those DTDs. There is an appropriate amount of repetition to reinforce key points. There are a few misprints, sometimes glaring, for example, "Names may begin with integers," NOT! The included CD is a blatant commercial self-promotion for an XML editor that the author's company sells & little else of value. On the whole, I was quite happy with the book.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent coverage of all the basics and more!
Review: In a classic scene from the film The Graduate, a young college grad receives golden advice when his uncle whispers the direction of the future into his ear with one word: "Plastics." There's a new magic word in the technological horizon, a mere three letters, but we'll all be hearing lots about it in the future very near: "XML." XML -- eXtensible Markup Language -- could become the preferred method for delivering information in almost every field: business, science, entertainment, publishing, and publishing on the World Wide Web. There are many reasons to suppose that this will be so: not the least of these is the January 2000 W3C move to replace HTML with XHTML, a convenient and flexible hybrid of HTML and XML. In HTML, the elements are pre-defined: there are 40 important markup codes to memorize. Thus, for example, when you type in the markup characters for bold, the text you've marked for bold gets bolded. HTML is very simple. XML is very complex. There are no pre-defined codes: you need to invent them, then organize them in a meaningful way. When you use HTML you tell your documents what to look like: HTML is like applying make-up. When you use XML you define what each part of the document actually is: doing XML is like getting an X-ray then a major explanation of each one of your bones. HTML is a language; XML is called a "meta-language" -- a system that allows you -- even more: demands that you -- invent the languages anew. If you've never programmed a computer before, and never heard of SGML (XML's dad and mom), then the best way to begin learning about this subject is The Complete Idiot's Guide To XML. The book comes with a CD-ROM containing the software XML Pro: this excellent tool will be discussed in a separate review. The book covers all the basics about XML: What it is, what it does, what the building blocks are, and how to use them. You'll learn about elements, attributes, DTDs, well-formed documents, validation, entities, and much more. There's a glossary which translates computerese into plain English, and an Appendix which explains the valuable skill of how to read and comprehend the documentation about XML published on the website of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). If you're wondering whether or not you know enough to learn XML: the answer, thanks to this book, is almost certainly a yes. Gulbransen succeeds, I think, for two reasons. Firstly, there are many examples in the book, each one clearly explained, and often each line of the examples is explained. The second reason this book works for newbies has something to do with what I call "the suspension of comprehension." When learning something as intricate as XML, in order to move forward you need to take mental leaps: you need to proceed without understanding everything -- each small nuance -- of the process you are working with. Gulbransen gives us just the right amount of information to move us along, then gives the more complete picture in later chapters. There's a literary saying: "Easy reading is hard writing." Obviously, Gulbransen has worked very hard to make this subject clear for new users. Even if don't know your XML from Xlax, this book will get you started. Begin this book as an XML beginner, and by the end of the book you will be writing documents confidently in XML. Includes CD-ROM with XML Pro software, Level: Beginner to Intermediate

Michael Pastore Reviewer

Rating:
Summary: An excellent description of the structure of XML files
Review: In an industry where things shoot up and flame out at an amazing rate, the wise remain skeptical about the long-term viability of new technologies. However, skepticism should not lead to foolishness, and only that will prevent you from realizing that XML is a skill to be acquired. I just completed an article describing that Microsoft has announced that XML will be used to define the data in its Next-Generation Windows Services (NGWS) operation. Whatever the DOJ manages to do with the company, it is clear that this alone will drive the continued use of XML in computing.
If you have some experience in HTML and would like to learn the basics of XML and how XML files are constructed, then this book will get you started. The examples are generally well done, although I do believe that the author overstates the difficulty in understanding Document Type Definitions (DTDs). The emphasis is on the structure of XML and there is very little concerning how the data is extracted. It would have been a strong reinforcement of the entire concept if there had been something about how the data can be read and displayed by web pages. The back cover describes this as "The simple approach to web programming with XML." Without those examples, it is hard to see how that follows.
The author is the creator of the XML Pro development editor and a CD containing a full evaluation version of it is included. The package is fine, easy to understand, and is explained well. Code samples are also included on the CD, making further exploration a much easier task.
I found the book to be an excellent introduction to the structure of XML files and how data can be described using DTDs. In that sense it is worth reading. However, there is not enough material about how the data in an XML file is to be used, and without that, I am not sure that the true power of XML is accurately conveyed.

Rating:
Summary: world record for poor proof reading
Review: This is an easy to read and understand guide to desigining and writing XML documents. It doesn't cover the programming half of the problem at all, not even mentioning popular XML parsers for various programming languages. So it's not complete for learning how to build systems that use XML. As befits a "Complete Idiot's Guide", it has a lot of redundancy. Maybe that's so you can understand what's going on no matter where you start in the book. There are some proofreading problems (wrong fonts, missing letters and punctuation, wrong words in examples) which suggest it was rushed out the door.

Rating:
Summary: good for nonprogrammers
Review: This is an easy to read and understand guide to desigining and writing XML documents. It doesn't cover the programming half of the problem at all, not even mentioning popular XML parsers for various programming languages. So it's not complete for learning how to build systems that use XML. As befits a "Complete Idiot's Guide", it has a lot of redundancy. Maybe that's so you can understand what's going on no matter where you start in the book. There are some proofreading problems (wrong fonts, missing letters and punctuation, wrong words in examples) which suggest it was rushed out the door.