Imperfect XML : Rants, Raves, Tips, and Tricks ... from an Insider

Rating:
Summary: good descriptions of XML disadvantages
Review: Ideally, you should already be using XML, to gain the most from this book. The author gives a guide to the huge overlayer of extensions and standards that have accrued atop XML, like barnacles on a ship. Unfortunately, threading this maze to understand what you might really need is not easy for many. So his viewpoint might help you.

Also, at the implementation level, he offers practical advice about such key usages as XML data. He gives advantages and disadvantages. The latter is the best part of the book. Because other books that might explain the topic to someone new to it often just talk about the syntax and the great things that you can accomplish. Rarely will such texts discuss any limitations that have been found through painful experience.

It's not just for XML data that he does this. For documents, networking, searching, performance and legacy information, he analyses the disadvantages.

Rating:
Summary: If only the title matched the content
Review: It's a little tough to review this book since in general this is a nice walkthrough of a variety of XML standards. The title, however, hints at a book that would discuss schema design and common XML issues. There is a need for that book, but this is not that book.

This book is a relatively short straightforward walkthrough of XML markup, data standards, searching, legacy conversions and performance. It's around 200 pages with around 20 pages. The tone is light but terse. Graphics are sparse and are used effectively.

I think this would be an ideal introductory work for someone just starting out with XML. Though I think there are other books that are as good or better.

If only this book had the content implied by it's title.