No nonsense introduction and reference
No Starch stands for no-nonsense with the book. The first part of the book is seven short chapters that introduce the API, and two more on integration and driver support. The second part of the book is a well designed reference section that isn't as graphically well presented as an O'Reilly book, but is as well organized.
The first seven chapters which walk you through the API from basic to advanced use are very well written. The code fragments are small and the illustrations are sparse but used effectively.
This is a solid piece of work. Highly recommended.
Good Intro into SAX
This book takes a single aspect of xml technology, SAX, and gives it a rather comprehensive coverage. The first portion of the book is a tutorial on Java programming for SAX. It helps the reader to understand the conceptual differences between processing xml using SAX as opposed to the DOM. A small application is developed in an iterative fashion to illustrate the programming issues with SAX. Some guidelines are given along the way to direct the reader in developing robust code. The examples are based in SAX 2.0. A chapter is devoted converting SAX 1.0 applications to SAX 2.0 Chapters 10 and 11 are devoted to the SAX 2.0 and SAX 1.0 APIs respectively. In these references, a real convenience is that the class names are printed on the page edge to form a thumb index. Each class or interface has a brief description of its use, the Visual Basic Equivalent, the Constructors, and Methods with coding examples and descriptions.
Since xml is increasing in importance to Java programmers, this book can be a very useful tool. However, it would be helpful if the authors gave updated information on the book web site about using the examples with Xerces 2.0 and Java 1.4. Technology moves on.
Quite Helpful
As a Java developer just getting my feet wet with SAX, I find The Book of SAX to be quite helpful and understandable. While I am not exactly a novice, I found this book to be very readable, instructive, and to comment on some other reviews I saw, original. It is difficult to find any programming text that does not read like an translated VCR manual - however, in this case, SAX is presented fluidly and intelligently.
Additionally, the sample code was practical and well-written. I was able to use many examples almost verbatim in completing one of my own projects.
I highly recommend. And I just bought another copy for a friend.
Is it worth the money?
I (marginally) do not feel ripped off. The first 9 chapters (62 pages) offer an accurate and concise intro to SAX -- the 3-star rating is for these pages... content could be improved. The API reference material (pages 63-284) is nearly worthless as content. I wish authors would stop putting detailed API documentation on books like this. For a few bucks, it's not a bad buy.
A rebuttal from the author.
As one of the authors of this book (and of two other books as well), until now I've never once replied to a customer review, no matter how badly I wanted to. But the negative review from "A Reader" in "an undisclosed location" contains such an inflammatory accusation that I felt that I had to reply. Not one sentence of the Book of SAX has been copied or plagarized from any source. We did _not_ include a "VERBATIM REPRINT OF THE SAX API DOCUMENTATION". If the author of this review had bothered to read the documentation, he would have seen that. And he would have also seen that we wrote original sample code to document every method and attribute of the org.xml.sax and org.xml.sax.helpers packages. If you find the tutorial "lackluster", that's fine. That's your opinion. But do not expect to make serious accusations against our integrity and belittle our efforts and get away with it.BTW, I rated this book with 3 stars. Unfortunately I had to pick something, or I would have abstained.
(7 reviews)
