Product Description

• Updated and better than ever, this more focused revision provides comprehensive coverage of XML to anyone with a basic understanding of HTML and Web servers
• Featuring all–new examples, this book contains everything readers need to know to incorporate XML in their Web site plans, designs, and implementations
• Continues expert Elliotte Rusty Harold′s well–known track record for delivering the best XML guidance available
• Includes coverage of the most recent XML 1.1 specification and the latest trends in XML Web publishing
• Companion Web site includes additional examples and reference material found in previous editions that readers may find useful

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #509554 in Books
• Published on: 2004-02-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1054 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The emergence of XML is having an enormous impact on Web development and scaling the learning curve of this new technology is a priority for many developers. The XML Bible offers a superb introduction to the subject and the groundwork to understand XML's future developments.

Author Elliotte Rusty Harold uses a patient, step-by-step discussion that clearly points out the potential of XML without boring his readership with tons of SGML spec-speak. Harold opens quickly with a "Hello Worl d" example to get the reader coding early, and follows that with a simple but powerful example of XML's data management benefits--presenting baseball statistics. Once you've coded your first XML documents, you'll be hooked on the technology and motivated to learn about the more sophisticated topics.

Style sheet languages are covered comprehensively to illustrate the presentation possibilities and pitfalls. An unusually long list of real-life XML applications also shows how XML is already being used, and there is in-depth coverage of the Resource Description Framework, Channel Definition Format and Vector Markup Language. The book wraps up with a section that helps you design your own XML application from scratch.

Putting the word bible in a title is a bold move, but this engaging and informative guide rightly claims that declaration. --Stephen W. Plain, Amazon.com

Topics covered: XML background, example XML applications, type definitions (DTDs), style languages, Xlinks, Xpointers, Namespaces, application planning, and XML 1.0 specification.

From the Back Cover
If XML can do it, you can do it too ...

If you’re a Web developer, you’ve seen XML rocket to first place as the preferred data format for everything from stock trades to graphic design. In this tightly focused, fully updated guidebook, a top XML authority gives you a complete education in the technology. You’ll learn to write documents in XML, validate them against DTDs and schemas, format them with CSS and XSL style sheets, and take advantage of their versatility. This book helps you to create top–flight Web sites without becoming a professional programmer.

Inside, you’ll find complete coverage of XML

• Discover how semantic tagging makes XML documents easier to maintain and develop than their HTML counterparts
• Post XML documents on Web servers in a form all users can read
• Use style sheets to convert XML to HTML for legacy browsers
• Include international characters in your documents, and merge different XML vocabularies with namespaces
• Build large documents from smaller parts using entities and Xinclude, and connect documents with XLinks and XPointers
• Gain a complete understanding of both CSS and XSL and how each is used with XML
• Explore practical applications of XML in Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), XHTML, RDDL, and the new application developed for genealogical data

About the Author
Elliotte Rusty Harold is an internationally respected writer, programmer, and educator, both on the Internet and off. He got his start writing FAQ lists for the Macintosh newsgroups on Usenet and has since branched out into books, Web sites, and newsletters. He’s an adjunct professor of computer science at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, New York. His Cafe con Leche Web site at http://www.cafeconleche.org/ has become one of the most popular independent XML sites on the Internet.
Elliotte is originally from New Orleans, to which he returns periodically in search of a decent bowl of gumbo. However, he currently resides in the Prospect Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn with his wife Beth, and his cats Charm (named after the quark) and Marjorie (named after his mother–in–law). When not writing books, he enjoys working on genealogy, mathematics, free software, and quantum mechanics. His previous books include The Java Developer’s Resource, Java Network Programming, Java Secrets, JavaBeans, Java I/O, XML: Extensible Markup Language, XML in a Nutshell, Processing XML with Java, and Effective XML.

Customer Reviews

A Heavyweight colosus!
This book is not for the beginner or the faint-hearted. WHilst it got me up and running with the ideas behind XML, you only have to look at the thickness of the book to be intimidated!

It is not the sort of book to cuddle up to for a bed-time read. It is also not really recommended if you know nothing about XML. It is recommended if you need a reference book.

It would seem to me that if you asked the author to write 10,000 words about the colour blue, he would be able to do it without breaking into a sweat.

Every aspect is covered. The detail the author goes into can either be praised for being thorough or criticised for being too verbose. What happened to the idea of telling you what you need to know and leaving out the bits you don't need? The huge section about Unicode did for me. I read about one inch, every word, but when he started on Unicode, I found myself less and less enthusiastic to continue, to the point of putting the book down.

Buy this book if you want a ference book. Don't buy it if you want an easy to follow step by step guide to XML. There's bound to be better books than this for doing that.

Buy it only if you're new to the area of IT/Programming
I'm a third year student following a degree in I.T. I am well accustomed to programming as well as learning.

I found the book to be very slow moving and repetitive at times. The same concept is presented about three times in different ways. While comprehensive, the book is too much verbose and you have to read a whole chapter to be able to grasp some basic concepts. I was not at all troubled with the fact that the author uses Baseball statistics as examples. The idea is that large ammounts of data need to be formatted (although I did get confused at times). Also, I was not put back by the massive size of the book(6cm/2.5in wide). Maybe that's because I'm used to massive books. I was put back by the MSWord-like font though (Times New Roman). It is readable but does not look professional to me. Moreover, by now the technology has changed a bit. The book was written in early 2001 (a year ago) and is based on late 1999 standards. It would be better to buy a more recent book since XML, XSL...have been moving fst lately.

That's all I guess, my suggestion is:
If you are a slow learner and new to the computing area this is a very good book for you. It is comprehensive and extensive, covering all the important XML technology in a relatively straight forward manner.
On the other hand, if you are searching for a good book which will get you through XML/XSL... quickly and already have a prorgamming background do yourself a favour, do not buy this book...

too heavy to swallow
This book is quite good for a none programmer. However, to much blah blah for people who have experienced programming,the examples are huge and most of them talk about baseball which I really start to hate since reading this book, but well explained though, you can tell by the size it. Well if you are a quick reader, that's the book for you and it has a lot of useful stuff but not for people who suffer from heart attack.