Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: XML How to Program (1st Edition) by Harvey M. Deitel, Paul J. Deitel, T. R. Nieto, Ted Lin, Praveen Sadhu ISBN: 0-13-028417-3 Publisher: Prentice Hall Pub. Date: 21 December, 2000 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $88.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.6 (15 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Finally, some clarity!
Comment: I have a pile of XML books on my desk. They all seem to assume too much or assume to little. Those written at my level appear to be written with the "stream of consciousness" approach to technical authoring. This book is a breath of fresh air. As a novice with only a basic understanding of XML, I jumped right into the chapter on schemas and felt I had a very strong grasp of it in just an evening. Every topic was explained with clarity, and, yet it did not seem too slow or dull. The code samples included line-by-line explanations. If I got it just by looking at the sample, I could move on. Otherwise, the explanations were there to illuminate the sample for me. The review and exercises at the end of each chapter follow the collegiate textbook formula. Why is it a formula? Because it works! What a sense of accomplishment to get to the end and be able to answer the questions and perform the suggested exercises.
Rating: 2
Summary: Not suitable for self-teaching, barely good for classroom
Comment: I recently took an XML class at my university, and Deitel's "XML How to Program" was our textbook.
I have to say, it's one of my least-favorite XML books--nay, one of my least-favorite *computer* books overall.
Sure, it's thick and heavy, something many geeks like in a book (myself included). But within the covers are sometimes rambling discussions about a particular topic that leave you still wondering what you were supposed to learn, while other sections get cut short just when things are getting interesting.
My biggest beef: You won't be able to complete some of the exercises without the use of outside resources. Of course, multiple sources are great for any project, but you should certainly be able to answer a book's exercises with just that book! (Specifically, one exercise was within the XSLT chapter, and deals with a number-type element.)
When I was assigned to write an essay on a topic, XML Topic Maps, I first consulted the book. Only a couple of paragraphs as I recall. RDF, an up-and-coming XML technology, gets nary a page.
Mind you, there is a bit of good in the book, mainly with the introductory material. It's a bit Java-centric, but that's to be expected, and there is a decent Java primer in the back of the book. I also appreciate the code samples on both the CD-ROM and Deitel's Web site.
I wanted to like the book, but I found it useless for most of the projects I was working on. In a different class, we used Marchal's "XML by Example, 2/e", and I vastly prefer that book over this one. Especially with the price of the Deitel book, I can't recommend this one to anyone.
Rating: 4
Summary: Very clear, good learning book - not perfect though.
Comment: I much enjoyed this book as the presentation of complex topics is made very clear. I feel that this book helped me to understand several topics that I never fully understood before (for instance XLink).
Generally the approach in this book is to give a clear and concise coverage of each important topics. This is the best approach to learn but reader should be aware that the coverage is not exhaustive enough for the book to serve as reference. In fact I would have prefered that the author added complete reference on several topics (XML DOM, XPath, XSLT, XSLFO) instead of the 'bonus programming chapter'.
The book is catered for programmers. As a result the table of content will satisfy programmers (unlike many beginning XML books it gives ample coverage of XML APIs) but examples are sometimes non-trivial and written in high-level programming languages. Although generally, it must be said that effort has been made to use various programming languages (i.e. Perl, Java, ASP, etc) so that everybody should find some useful examples.
I would have prefered additional coverage of XML services, SOAP, etc. Also, I found that several chapters (Programming java, programming Perl, etc.), while not useless, were clearly off topic and added to fill-in pages. Only other criticism is that the book is really quite expensive. However, it is one of the best book to LEARN xml (even though you may require additional reference to use it).
One last thing: do not buy the CD ROM training kit of the book. The CD ROM included is very disappointing.
Edit: I wrote this review a while back. Since then, I revisited the book and I must say that it does appear dated. In particular the coverage of schema (an important topic) fails to suitably cover the W3C Schema recommendation and focusses mostly on Microsoft's version of schema which are now hardly used. For this reason, I would recommend another book instead (for instance, Beginning XML from Wrox) until the publisher comes with an updated edition.
 |
Title: C# How to Program by Harvey M. Deitel, Paul J. Dietel, Jeffrey A. Listfield, Tem R. Nieto, Cheryl H. Yaeger, Marina Zlatkina ISBN: 0130622214 Publisher: Prentice Hall Pub. Date: 14 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $88.00 |
 |
Title: Visual Basic.NET How to Program, Second Edition by Harvey M. Deitel, Paul J. Deitel, Tem R. Nieto ISBN: 0130293636 Publisher: Prentice Hall Pub. Date: 11 December, 2001 List Price(USD): $88.00 |
 |
Title: Advanced Java 2 Platform: How to Program (With CD-ROM) by Harvey M. Deitel, Paul J. Deitel, Harvey M. Deitel ISBN: 0130895601 Publisher: Prentice Hall Pub. Date: 28 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $88.00 |
 |
Title: Java How to Program, Fifth Edition by Harvey M. Deitel, Paul J. Deitel ISBN: 0131016210 Publisher: Prentice Hall Pub. Date: 16 December, 2002 List Price(USD): $88.00 |
 |
Title: Wireless Internet and Mobile Business How to Program by Harvey M. Deitel, Paul J. Deitel, Tem R. Nieto, Kate Steinbuhler ISBN: 0130092886 Publisher: Prentice Hall Pub. Date: December, 2001 List Price(USD): $88.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
