Mastering
XML
ISBN:
0-7821-2266-3
Authors:
- Ann
Navarro. Ms. Navarro is the founder of
WebGeek Communications, a Web development and
consulting firm. She is also the author
of Effective Web Design: Master the
Essentials. Ms. Navarro serves as a
Director of Online Education for HTML Writers
Guild and participates in W3C's HTML working
group. She currently is working to
produce the XMTML Recommendation.
- Chuck
White. Mr. White is a communications
professional who has done extensive work for
numerous Fortune 500 companies. He is
the Creative Director at Advance Recruitment
Advertising, Inc. He is the author of Internet
Explorer 5 Developer's Guide.
- Linda
Burman. Ms. Burman is President of
L.A. Burman Associates. She is a
respected XML industry analyst and
consultant. Ms. Burman chairs the PRISM
Working Group and teaches XML at the
University of Toronto.
Pages:
882
Intended
Audience:
Mastering
XML was written to serve three distinct
audiences. I believe the book is of
most value to implementors and
developers. The book also has introductory
material that is useful for both users and
managers. The case studies contained in the
book provide valuable insights for all three
audiences.
Summary
Let
me begin by saying that this book contains the
most complete, up-to-date material on the market
today. If I need an answer quickly, I know I
can find it in Mastering XML. While
the book is intended to provide background
information for users and managers as well as be a
"how to" book with tips and techniques
for implementers, I believe that the book will
outlive it's initial use by serving as an
excellent reference as well. This text is
quite lengthy--a whopping 882 pages,, divided into 8
parts consisting of 30 chapters and two
appendices. Also included is a CD-ROM filled
with XML tools to help you with parsing, editing
and viewing XML.
NOTE:
As I review each part of this book, I will
identify the audience this section serves. U
will indicate that this part is great for the XML
user. M will indicate
that this part is great for managers. I
will indicate that this part is great for the XML
implementors.
Part I of the book is Getting Started with
XML. I
, U , M
Aptly titled, it provides us
with a historical introduction to XML as well as a
visual familiarity. This part of the book is
great for users and managers,
but may be rather elementry for implementers.
Part
II is titled The Building Blocks of XML
Document Creation. I
, U
In this part of the book we are
provided with a general understanding of how to
write an XML document and an understanding of
elements, attributes and entities.
This
part is designed for use by implementers. However, it is written in a non-technical fashion
and will be useful to users as well.
Part
III is Designing Your Data. I
In this part of the book we explore the principles behind
an XML design as well as how to formalize your
design with both a DTD and an XML Schema.
With these chapters we move into a more technical
realm. The code examples introduced in this
part continue throughout the technical chapters of
the book. They are excellent and the wealth
of examples help to account for the unusually high
page count for the overall book. This part
is definitely
designed for implementers.
Part
IV, Putting It All Together is also
designed for implementers. I
In this part of the book, we investigate some of
the other W3C standards that are required to make
XML work! In addition to good coverage of
parsing and namespaces, the chapters show us the
mechanisms behind XML linking as well as how to
apply
style using both CSS and XSL.
Part
V, Converting to XML is also for
implementers. I , (U
?, M ?)
The title of this part and the chapters within it
may be a bit misleading. Here the emphasis
is on converting Web pages from HTML to XML, not
from other formats into XML. The chapter
advises us about why we might want to make this
move and then shows us what is involved.
XHTML (a modular, XML version of HTML) is
introduced here. While this part of the book
is
very useful for implementers, the parts that
explain why we would move from HTML to XML are
useful across the board.
Part
VI, The XML Toolbox, is once again aimed at
implementers. I
Chapters in this part cleanly divide tools into
development tools, browsers, and servers.
The use of Java and JavaScript with XML are
explored. As far as I can tell, the inclusion of
tools in the book was not vendor-funded as it is
in other popular texts about XML tools. Here
we can rely on the opinion of the authors alone.
Part
VII, XML Applications, is useful for all
audiences. I , U
, M
In this part the authors introduce the reader to
the W3C standards and how they are
developed. We also learn the difference
between a standard, an application and a
vocabulary. Channel Definition Format (CDF)
is highlighted as a common XML implementation that
we wee on
the Web today.
Part
VIII is titled Using XML to Solve Real Business
Problems. (I ?) , U
, M
This part of the book offers some real-life
applications for XML. Some are related to
eBusiness and the Web, while others show how XML
is used in other equally important ways.
This part is designed for the manager. It
may be of interest to an XML user as well.
It could also provide guidance for the
implementer.
In
addition to the 8 parts of Mastering XML, there
are two appendices. The first provides us
with the formatting properties to be used with XSL.
The second appendix provides the semantic modules
defined for XHTML. These are useful
resources for the implementer.
Let
me conclude by repeating "this book contains
the most complete, up-to-date material on the
market today." I especially liked the
chapters that provide the details of XSL.
The Java and JavaScript chapters were also quite
useful. Mastering XML is an excellent
text for all audiences. However, I think its
greatest value is for the implementer as part of a
good reference library.
Dianne
Kennedy
Editor,
XML Files
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