Reviews (6)

Book cover torn apart
The book was probably "good as new" as they claimed until it was violently shoved into the package. The cover was almost torn apart, barely in one piece.

A tad bit disappointing
I bought this book being completely convinced that it was a complete reference on the basic XML technologies along with an introduction to XML, XML's history and development and so on. It shows up to my disappointment, that the book is largely influenced by a number of corporations using XML to make money, and is therefore *not* focussed very much on the actual technologies.
The One source you need to answer any question about XML
It took Charles Goldfarb, Paul Prescod and many others, sixty-seven chapters to explain all there is to know about XML and XML related technology.This book must be the most complete reference book when it comes to XML: any thing from history of XML in Chapter 1 to VoiceXML in Chapter 46 and everything in between.This book is filled, and each chapter is appropriately marked with, Introductory Discussions, Application Discussions, Tool Discussions, Case Studies and Friendly Tutorials.
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Subjects:  1. Computer Books: General    2. Computers    3. Computers - Languages / Programming    4. Electronic Commerce    5. General    6. Programming Languages - XML    7. XML (Document markup language)    8. Computers / Programming Languages / XML    9. XML   

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: Languages    2. Computers    3. Design    4. Internet - General    5. Internet - Web Site Design    6. Networking - Intranets & Extranets    7. Programming Languages - HTML    8. Web sites    9. XML (Document markup language)    10. Computers / Programming Languages / HTML, SGML, VRML, XML    11. HTML   

Reviews (9)

Matthew Reinbold on behalf of the Salt Lake City ColdFusion User's Group (SLCFUG)
-as read by Mike Tazelaar
Disapointed reader
My choice of this book was based on the reviews written here. After reading the book i wonder if the reviewers actually read the book. It is presented as book that should supply the reader with essential skills on programming stored procedures and using the ms sql 2000 server for XML output and .NET platform integration. But it is nothing more then a purely written book, that has more to say about visual inter Dev then visual studio.net ore visul studio 2003. Beside that it also describes avanced topics in general terms of no use to the developer, that wants to get the job done propperly. This is evident to everybody that actually read the book: As the subjects get more interesting - and complicated- the examples grows rapidly while the explainations scrimp to af few lines. The writter also left out basic commands as 'ref' and 'out' on parameters, which makes me wonder what else he left out. He also tries to give idees on how to develop in a distributed environment, but leaves out every important pitfall, that one has to be aware of in a multi processor environment. I cant imagine a distributed system where where every db runs on a server with only one processor - the system will be way to expensive, read your db lincences and you will know why. All togehter i got the impression that the writter pieced the book together from readings that didn't give him the sufficient knowledge to complete this book in a propper way. It is a waste of my time and money.
Lucid and thorough -- VERY worthwhile
It bothers me that many of the best books on the latest Microsoft technology (.Net, SQL Server) are written by non-native-English speakers.I am amazed by the quality of writing by Francesco Balena and Dino Esposito, and now I would add Dejan Sunderic to my list of favorite authors.Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: Database    2. Computers    3. Computers - Data Base Management    4. Database Management - General    5. Database Management - SQL Server    6. Programming Languages - HTML    7. Programming Languages - SQL    8. Programming Languages - XML    9. Relational Databases    10. Computers / Database Management / General    11. Database software    12. SQL    13. XML   

Reviews (16)

Helpful Resource on CSS
I found this book to be helpful in learning some of the basics of CSS.Perhaps, like you, I googled my way around online trying to find solutions to problems that I was encountering.I liked that this book had many of the solutions already written out in the book that I was having problems with.I have been familiar with HTML, but I was late in adding CSS to my websites.I know that there are large benefits with using CSS, and it makes your life eaiser, but I found learning CSS from scratch to be somewhat daunting.From the novice perspective I found this book to be exactly what I needed.There are larger books out there, but I really needed just the basics.
CSS Clearly Explained
I highly recommend this book. I am not a specialist in web design, but did have a certification in HTML/XHTML before reading it, so I had some background. Major topics are Web Typography, Page Elements, Links and Navigation, Lists, Forms, Tables, Page Layouts, Print-Friendly functions, Hacks/Workarounds and miscellaneous designing issues.
Good Reference for All Levels of CSS Developer
I've recently had the pleasure of reading CSS Cookbook by Christopher Schmitt, published by O'Reilly (the people who put animal pictures on their tech books - seems silly, but now you know exactly who I mean, don't you?). While I do not recommend it as a beginner's guide to CSS, I recommend it for the bookshelf of current CSS developers, or perhaps if you have a basic knowledge of CSS (maybe you use it control fonts and colors, and that's about it) and would like to implement even more of your design with CSS.
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Subjects:  1. Computer Books: Languages    2. Computers    3. Computers - Languages / Programming    4. Internet - Web Site Design    5. Programming Languages - HTML    6. Cascading Style Sheets, HTML, Web Design, CSS2, CSS 2.1, layout, XHTML    7. Computers / Internet / Web Site Design    8. Computers / Languages / Programming    9. Computers / Programming Languages / HTML, SGML, VRML, XML    10. Computers/Internet - Web Site Design    11. Internet   

Features

• Illustrated

Reviews (5)

Competent, but far from extraordinary
The book is a competent explainiation of XSL-FO, which is an XML-based language for describing the appearance of text, usually for the purposes of printing it. If you thoroughly read everything, you will understand how areas, blocks, spacing, and the various other technicalities interrelate to one another.
Not a book for the faint of heart
An interesting book covering a powerful but niche technology. Not a book for the faint of heart, get it only if you want to investigate this very specific topic or plan to do things like XML > PDF transformation. The author digs immediately into the technical details, condensing a relevant amount of info in less than 200 pages; the results are good, focused and well structured, but it's not an entertaining read. This is definitely not a beginner book. A decent understanding of XML, XSL and XPath is required; some knowledge of printing would be helpful too

Apparently, too large a topic for one book.
Armed with only the most rudimentary understanding of XSLT, I found this book a little overwhelming.It's not a "cookbook", though the examples are good.There are a few places where it seems to dwell on minutia, but mostly it moves along at a jog to brisk run pace.I got a better understanding of the topic and and am prepared to do more research, but this could not be my only reference. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: General    2. Computers    3. Computers - Languages / Programming    4. Data Processing - General    5. Programming - General    6. Programming Languages - HTML    7. Programming Languages - XML    8. Computers / Languages / Programming    9. Computers / Programming Languages / XML    10. Computers/Data Processing - General    11. Computers/Programming - General    12. Document markup languages    13. XML    14. XML (Document markup language)    15. XSL (Computer program language)    16. XSL, XSLT, XML   

Editorial Review

Say you know only a little bit about Extensible Markup Language (XML). You know what it is, generally, and some of the roles it plays in software. You don't, however, feel ready to do real work with it. Read more

Reviews (15)

Useful but not a great book
I just finished this book cover to cover. Interested in learning XML? I'd recommend this book.
This book shines light on the pillars of XML: XML, XSL, and XSD (schemas) with simple procedures to create and manipulate XML documents. The book is organized with each major technology in its own chapter, or basic and advanced features in 2 chapters (great for learning/mastering a particular aspect of XML, such as XSL stylesheets). Unacceptable resolution
Shipping a new CD is not an acceptable resolution. Why is there not an errata page on the Wiley web site along with downloads for the examples in the book? Why does the book not have its own URL? Why does it take at least three redirects and more than two minutes for the Wiley.com/compbooks web site to load?Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: General    2. Computer Networks    3. Computer Programming Languages    4. Computers    5. Computers - Languages / Programming    6. Internet - Web Site Design    7. Programming Languages - HTML    8. Programming Languages - XML    9. XML (Document markup language)    10. XMLSpy (Application development environment)    11. Computers / Internet / Web Site Design    12. XML   

Reviews (2)

Great Hands-On Approach!
This book will get you started on coding web pages using XHTML and CSS, using CSS for page layout, promoting web pages, introduce using Flash and Java applets, and give you an overview of e-commerce. A great book for a beginner web developer. We use this in a community college course for both online and face-to-face classes. The students really like the hands-on approach with exercises and case studies. There is a CD with extra tutorials and references, too.

Great coverage of webaccessibility standards!

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Subjects:  1. Computer - Internet    2. Computer Books: Web Programming    3. Computers    4. Internet - Web Site Design    5. Computers / Internet / Web Site Design    6. HTML    7. Internet   

Reviews (13)

Great starting point
I didn't know any significant HTML prior to using this book. This book is a great starting point and will give anyone enough background to put up a pretty good page. I feel like I have gotten a good grasp of HTML from this book and now feel like I should branch out into Javascript to develop my pages further.
Great book.
I have been using a canned program to manage my company's web site, but I wasn't always able to do fine tune the pages the way I wished. So I decided to teach myself HTML. Working through this book, I was able to learn step by step how to design pages and manipulate the images and text. The book is very clear and concise and the exercises the author gives at the end of every chapter are extremely useful.

Up-To-Date Now - Thank you.
Having been out of web Development for a couple years, I needed confidence that my basic understanding was up to speed.This book HTML and XHTML in 24 hours, brought me up to date rather quickly.It provided the foundation that I needed both to build some basic web application prototypes, and to be able to begin reading more specialized books on Web Development.Specifically books on CSS. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: General    2. Computer Networks    3. Computer Programming Languages    4. Computers    5. Computers - Languages / Programming    6. HTML (Document markup language)    7. HTML (Document markup lanugage)    8. Internet - General    9. Programming - General    10. Programming Languages - HTML    11. XHTML (Document markup language)    12. Computers / Programming Languages / HTML, SGML, VRML, XML    13. HTML    14. XML   

Reviews (3)

Confusing and rehash of documentation.
The book is very confusing. Not clear and concise. Several of the chapters seems to be rehash of documentation meant to increase the size of the book.

Worst book on .net web services ever
This is a total disaster. The authors don't know how to present material for readers to understand. Examples are half cooked and mixed up between soap 1.1 and soap 1.2.

Cluttered and unhelpful
This book claims to take a reader with a solid .NET and web background into a deeper grasp of web services. Unfortunately, that's just what it doesn't do. Instead, it's a hodgepodge of complicated details about this or that about SOAP and WSDL and XSD. I've worked a fair bit with XSD, and nothing in that chapter would have helped me grasp its essence, or how to use it effectively, if I were trying to learn about it by reading this book.It *sounds* like the authors know what they're talking about, but what good is that if it doesn't help the *reader* know what they're talking about?Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: Web Programming    2. Computers    3. Computers - Languages / Programming    4. Internet - Web Site Design    5. Internet programming    6. Microcomputer Application Software    7. Microsoft .NET    8. Programming - General    9. Programming Languages - HTML    10. Programming Languages - XML    11. XML (Document markup language)    12. Computers / General    13. XML   

Reviews (1)

Concise, yet comprehensive
While most books on this subject target Web services in internet based commercial applications, this book targets the most quickly growing developer audience for XML Web services - the corporate solution developer.Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: Web Programming    2. Computer programming    3. Computers    4. Computers - Languages / Programming    5. Internet - Web Site Design    6. Internet - World Wide Web    7. Internet programming    8. Programming - General    9. Programming Languages - HTML    10. Programming Languages - XML    11. XML (Document markup language)    12. Computers / General    13. XML   

Reviews (16)

Too high-level and dated to be very useful
The book throws around all of the right buzzwords: ontologies, XML, KIF, taxonomies, metadata, etc. However, it never even properly defines these terms or organizes the information. If you already understand what the semantic web is, the book makes perfect sense but you don't learn anything new. If you don't already understand what the semantic web is, you won't be able to make sense of the author's high level descriptions and diagrams and you won't learn anything either. You can go to Wikipedia and probably get better explanations of most of the terminology. For example the Wikipedia definition of ontology from a computer science perspective is : "In computer science, an ontology is a data model that represents a domain and is used to reason about the objects in that domain and the relations between them." Why can't the author just SAY that??? Instead he wanders all over the map with a kind of philosophical musing about ontologies, and then proceeds to dissect a human resources ontology without ever properly defining why this model is useful in terms of the semantic web and what makes this model an ontology in the first place. The whole book is like this.
Good from a management point of view, lacking on the technical side
This book can be a good general introduction to semantic web technologies, to get an idea about how they can be useful inside your organization. The starting and ending chapters are rather good in this respect.
low signal to noise
Painstakingly, in a literal sense, read from cover to cover without learning much about semantic description and search (more pedestrian XML technologies, eg, XPath were covered well).Some of it, eg, on Topic Maps, is impenetrable.Very light on interesting and compelling usage and how-to of the more ambitious, semantic technologies that are the reason most would buy a book of this title.
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Subjects:  1. Computer Bks - Languages / Programming    2. Computer Books And Software    3. Computer Networks    4. Computers    5. Computers - Languages / Programming    6. Internet - Web Site Design    7. Internet - World Wide Web    8. Knowledge management    9. Programming - Software Development    10. Programming Language Semantics    11. Programming Languages - General    12. Programming Languages - XML    13. Semantic Web    14. Web site development    15. XML (Document markup language)    16. Computer Programming    17. Computers / Programming / Software Development    18. Internet   

Reviews (21)

Defines Metadata Well
Tannenbaum clearly knows the data storage and mining industry. She has produced a book that brings together a comprehensive view of metadata and of its parent, meta-metadata. Perfect
If you need to get something done check this book out. not just about metadata but also about where it is and how to use it. A good spot to check possible architectures or product designs and it has lots of actual cases

THe facts about fixing metadata problems
It's about time that I found this book. I am responsible for dealing with a metadata mess in my agency and nothing out there seemed to get me clear on what the real problems are.This book not only explained what should have been done but also how to fix things.Highly recommended for those that need to do something ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: General    2. Computers    3. Computers - Data Base Management    4. Database Management - Data Warehousing    5. Database Management - General    6. Information technology    7. Metadata    8. Computers / Database Management / Data Warehousing    9. Databases & data structures   

Reviews (10)

Not worth the time, not worth the money
I bought this book based on the 4.5 stars that the original reviews had given it.It must have the author's friends.None of the examples work and could never work no matter what platform.It is obvious that the author never actually worked through these issues although it looks good enough that it faked me out.Examples: he uses virtual base classes as if they were implementation classes (DOMImplementation class), he uses methods that dont exist (System.out.null()), he fails to declare or instantiate items that he uses in the examples, ..., ..., ...It took me a month to work my own way through the 2nd chapter.Not worth the time, not worth the money.

disappointing
The book isn't really for beginners. I don't think Java beginners can make sense of the Reflection or servlet code. The XML/XSLT part is hard to follow even after you've already read other books on the subject. The site [url] doesn't seem to exist (I tried on Oct 12 and Oct 13, 2002), so there's no source code available to download. If you're serious about Web Services I recommend you look at Jesse Liberty's books on C# and .Net instead.

Out of Date?
This book is full of good information about XML and Java, and almost any developer using XML for the first time would find it useful. However, I think it is a little out of date. A lot of the "extension" packages it talks about have actually been encorportated into the Java platform in one way or another, and there are a few new XML-Java initiatives that it does not cover. Also, some of the examples in the book are a bit contrived, and not very practical for real world applications. But on the whole, I think this is a very good introduction to the subject. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Application software    2. Computer Books: Languages    3. Computer Networks    4. Computer Programming Languages    5. Computers    6. Computers - Languages / Programming    7. Development    8. Java (Computer program languag    9. Java (Computer program language)    10. Programming - General    11. Programming Languages - HTML    12. Programming Languages - Java    13. Programming Languages - XML    14. Web site development    15. XML (Document markup language)    16. Computers / Programming Languages / Java    17. Java & variants   

Reviews (2)

The First Step to Learn about Web Design
If you want to learn about web design, the first step is learning HTML and XHTML. The last official version of HTML (4.1) was released in 1999. In January, 2000, the W3C release XHTML. HTML and XHTML are very similar; XHTML uses the stricter syntax of XML.
I absolutely love this book!
Using this book is the way all aspiring web designers or web developers should begin their journey.
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Subjects:  1. Computer Books: Languages    2. Computers    3. Computers - Languages / Programming    4. HTML (Document markup language)    5. Programming Languages - HTML    6. XHTML (Document markup language)    7. Computers / Programming / General   

Subjects:  1. Computer - Internet    2. Computer Books: Internet General    3. Computers    4. Internet - General    5. Computers / Internet / General    6. Databases & data structures   

Editorial Review

Two hot topics come together in this developer's guide from BrettMcLaughlin, Read more

Reviews (59)

Disappointing
This book did not come up to the expectations that were set by some of the other reviewers and by O'Reilly themselves.
Pretty much a waste of time
Now, after having had this book for about 1 year, and having looked at other sources which explain XML and using XML with Java, do I realize how much of my time this book has wasted. Best book on Java and XML
One of the first and best books that really showed how to use XML within a Java development context. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: Languages    2. Computers    3. Computers - Languages / Programming    4. Programming Languages - Java    5. Programming Languages - XML    6. Computers / Languages / Programming    7. Computers / Programming Languages / Java    8. Computers/Programming Languages - XML    9. Java & variants    10. java, xml, dom, sax, jdom, schema, relaxng, jaxp, jaxb, dom4j, web services, rss, soap   

Reviews (6)

How to Do Everything with HTML & XHTML
Very nicely written. Had no problem following the material. Very easy to understand.

Excellent book!!!
For a first book on this topic I found the depth of coverage and pace to be perfect. Very easy painless coverage of topic.
for beginners?
i think this book is not detailed enough, as compared with its titile"how to do everything with html&xhtml".After i finishedreading this book, i started to build my web site. But, the problem is i don't know what attributes and values i can use within style sheets. and the effort to understand all that stuff is really frustrating.And i am confused about whether the attribute is from html or xhtml, can i use them? the book don't provide a list of all the stuff with its usage and possible values, attributes as a reference, and the pdf file i downloaded from the author's web site is useless because most of them is listed in the book and they are just not detailed enough, it is just a book for beginners and it should be marked as level 1. ... Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: Web Programming    2. Computers    3. Computers - Languages / Programming    4. HTML (Document markup language    5. HTML (Document markup language)    6. Internet - General    7. Programming - General    8. Programming Languages - HTML    9. XHTML (Document markup languag    10. XHTML (Document markup language)    11. Computers / Programming Languages / HTML, SGML, VRML, XML    12. HTML    13. XML   

Reviews (2)

Well overview of available products and strategies
I think it is a very good book. It describes several actors in the XML data storage world. It also points out several strategies to deal with XML in relational databases.
Precisely what we needed
At our company, we write Java applications. Soon, we got to the point that we needed a more formal way to read/write data than merely an ad hoc approach. We use XML. The obvious approach is to use a well tested relational database, like those supplied by IBM, Oracle or Microsoft. A problem was getting detailed, objective explanations of what would be involved with each choice. Each vendor is perfectly willing to be our "friend" and supply us with reams of documentation. But still...Read more

Subjects:  1. Computer Books: General    2. Computers    3. Computers - Languages / Programming    4. Data Processing - General    5. Database Management - General    6. Database management    7. Programming Languages - XML    8. XML (Document markup language)    9. Computers / Database Management / General    10. Database software    11. Databases & data structures    12. XML   

Reviews (2)

Good introduction to XSL-FO concepts
Before I jump into an overview of the book, I wanted to make a quick observation first. I personally can't understand why XSL-FO hasn't caught on as fast as XSLT, XML and its ultra popular variant HTML. XSL-FO is the third spec of the original big three specs provided by the W3C and it was supposed to provide a markup language suited specifically to printing documents. XSL-FO is to the printed page what HTML is to the browser.