Great guide to XML!
Every administrator, developer or user working with XML should buy this book or at least browse through its pages to see what a book on XML should be like. I can't tell you how many bad XML books I went through to get to this one book that I find truly useful. Now, not only is the book useful, it is also the only book that I've found (and I've bought 11 XML books) that is as accurate as it is good. One key reason could be that the author went through the trouble of refering to the XML specifications during the writing and ensuring coverage of the final versions of these specifications. In many other books I have, the authors claim to have used the specifications but you can clearly tell that they either did and didn't understand the spec (which I can't point fault at as the specs are gibberish to me) or they meant to and just never bothered to follow through. Either way, those types of authors should never have written a book on XML.The XML Pocket book covers:
XML
XML DTDs
XML Schema
XML Namespaces
XML Links
XSL/XSLT
XPath
And as in Stanek's other Pocket Consultant's the book manages to do in 400 pages what no other books I've seen can: it provides comprehensive, clearly detailed, useful information. Someone should speak to Stanek's publisher. They could have sold this as two books. One covering XML, DTDs and XML Schemas and another covering namespaces, XSL/XSLT, XLink and XPath. These two books at 200 pages would still have more information than the other bloated books on the market and could have been priced the same as the current volume for 2x the money--I would have paid it. Heck, I paid nearly 2x the current cover price for O'Reilly's poorly done book on XSLT.
In closing, I think you should buy the pocket consultant because it's a no nonsense, clear, detailed, easy to use resource. I'm very happy with my book.
Best XML reference book
This book will give you a good foundation to build on as it does an excellent job in tackling the basics of XML and its related technologies. This is by far one of the best XML books I have read because it is straight to the point and it also provides step by step procedures for each topic. This is really all you need.
Shove the rest of those XML XSLT books off the desk!
In all the time I've worked with XML I haven't found a book this useful. The book is the most up to date I've found. The detailed coverage of XML, XSLT, XPath and more is extremely thorough. The step-by-step instructions are truely helpful. I would have to agree that this book alone is better than any book that covers XML or XSLT separately. Now that I've started using this book I rarely look at the other XML books on my desk. In fact I've put most of them away. Thank you Mr. Stanek for writing a book those of us who really want to learn and use XML!
