Lives up to Title
I too found it difficult to find an XML book dealing with Specifically .NET. This book does a good job in alot of respects, but falls short and wanders off the subject a bit in some chapters (this of course can be skipped over.) The author does give alot of real world examples through out the book, which is always a plus. Overall highlights in what I learned:
Serializing / Deserializing XML in .NET
.NET XML Base classes and their Implementations
SQL Server 2000 interaction with .NET & XML
ASP.NET Web Services (you create a public Address book Web Service)
It even has a decent reference section at the end dealing with XSLT that I find I use frequently.
This book represents (at this time) a great bargain!
Not even remotely decipherable to a beginner
This book reads like a medical journal, point-by-point layout out the facts and presenting very narrow-minded interpretations of what ASP.NET and XML are designed to do. For one thing, the authors exude an opinion in their writing that ASP.NET is useless without XML, and that XML is the greatest thing to come along since the transistor. I disagree with the sentiments, but that's beside the point. This book doesn't accomplish anything in the end but to confuse the reader. It's as if the authors are trying to impress you with how many acronyms they can spit out in a single page (I counted over 30 on one particular page). This is not writing, this is not teaching, it is shooting facts at the reader with a shotgun.In retrospect, I read this book a year ago when I was new to ASP.NET (but not to XML). I find it useful for storing read-only data in XML to be used in ASP.NET web sites. However, it's still one of the dryest books you will ever find.
An exercise in frustration
More about XML than "XML and ASP.NET." I have already read a lot on XML and this book just confused me about what I already knew. It is full of definitions that don't really define anything and is lacking in good examples. I have read many, many books on programming and on the .Net framework specifically and this is by far one of the worst. After I know XML well I am sure that I will come back to this book and understand it completely. I am very sorry that I wasted my money on this book.
Best Book on .net and XML yet
This book is by far the best information out there on xml in the .net framework that I have seen yet. (And trust me, I've looked.)This book is well-organized and jam-packed full of useful information on a very wide variety of subjects. More than just your run-of-the mill red covered book that regurgitates the documentation.
As for other reviews, I suspect it's like many newbies in programming. Laziness is clouding their judgements.
tough to get through
This book (in my opinion) is for those more interested in XML alone than its use with ASP.NET. I was looking for a book that combined the two effectively, but found this one to be very difficult to read, with topics discussed without definitions (only references to chapters ahead of the current one), and little introduction to .NET or ASP.NET. There are very few examples, and even fewer pictures to display the effectiveness of the examples. Maybe I need to spend more time digesting the material, but there is little use of ASP.NET in this book... and even less integration of the two technologies. This is not for anyone interested in eCommerce or strictly internet programming.
(15 reviews)