Special Edition Using XML

Paperback: 864 pages
Publisher: Que; 2 edition (July 26, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 078972748X
ISBN-13: 978-0789727480
Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.2 x 1.8 inches







Special Edition Using XML, Second Edition gives developers a formal introduction to XML technology, starting with in-depth coverage of basic syntax and fundamental "pieces" of XML, including DTDs, Schemas, and Namespaces. The authors then cover various applications of XML, including transforming and displaying XML documents using CSS and XSL, locating data within XML documents using Xpath, Xlink and Xpointer, programming XML with SAX or DOM, including XML in Java or .NET applications, XML Scripting with Perl, XHTML and WML for presentation on traditional and hand-held Web browsers, and querying data or documents with Xquery. The final chapters cover technologies related to XML such as SVG, SMIL, and RDF, focusing on the practical features developers can put to use today.

User Review:
This book covers a wide breadth of topics in XML, without going thoroughly into the depths of any one topic. It often refers the reader to other materials for depth information. This is as it should be, but then the byline "The ONLY XML book you need" is somewhat dishonest marketing; they should remove it.

Second, _Using XML_ has quite a few typographical errors. So far I've found more than one per 10 pages, more than I'd expect for a Second Edition book.

Far worse, the book contains technical errors and is not clear on important points. As an example of the first grievance, p. 44 states that PCDATA cannot contain <, >, and / characters. In fact, it cannot contain "<" or "&"; ">" can legally appear, but should be escaped for compatibility with SGML, and "/" is just fine. An example on p. 94 puts comments before , yet the xml prolog must occur first in any document (even before whitespace). Mr. Gulbransen should know that. Page 91 uses an unparsed entity inline, violating Well-Formedness Constraint: Parsed Entity. And the example soc="123-00-1234" p. 83 violates Validity Constraint: ID, because a SSN is not a valid Name. Having found all these technical errors in the areas of XML I do know, how can I trust this book to correctly teach me things I don't know?

I also can't say the book is very clear in places where I want it to be. After pp. 130-133, I should know how to associate XML Schemas with XML documents. Instead, I can only blindly follow the example; I surely don't understand what is the role of each of the components, especially of the URI ending with "/contact".

Due to technical inaccuracies and occasional lack of clarity, I cannot recommend this book. I would like to find an XML reference which is similarly broad in scope, yet both clear and correct in its details.

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