XML
I was very disappointed with this purchase. I notified the seller and he never responded to my email.
Not bad, but too many errors
This is a relatively good cookbook approach. It gets you started quickly with hands-on exercise development as you read the text. The review exercises and case problems are good, because they step you through a little at a time and in some cases show what you should be getting as a result. However, the type-in code and the text itself have lots of errors throughtout the book, so if you're unsure what to do, and can't discern where the text is wrong, that could be a show-stopper. For such an expensive book it should have been better edited.
Also, Patrick Carey does very little to explain why things are the way they are. It's just, "Do this, then that. See the result?"
You'll need another book to have the "aha" moments that give you insight into XML. I highly recommend "XML Companion" by Neil Bradley.
Perspectives on XML
JUST CORRECT THE ERRORS IN THE TEXT AND ATTACHED FILES!!!!
Excellent book for learning XML on your own
This is one of the best books that I have read on XML. It is an excellent book for teaching yourself XML. The author creates fictional application scenarios in each chapter so you learn XML within the context of the application. The exercises are challenging but not too difficult. The topics covered range from DTD, XML schema, XSL, XPath and DOM. The author doesn't try and cram too much in the book. He is very thorough in what he covers so topics like SOAP, SQL support within XML are not addressed.