Worthwhile reference
This contains the XML specification with annotation by the author. Text from the specification is printed on shaded background so there is no confusing the specification and the author's annotation. One of the design goals of the XML working group was: "The design of XML shall be formal and concise." The PDF version of the specification runs to thirty-two pages. So, an annotated version of the specification is welcome. Annotation consists of illustration, clarification, background and examples. While the blurb on the back cover says that the book includes over 170 "real-world" examples, that is a stretch. The author frequently uses intuitively meaningful element and attribute names in meaningless combinations. For example, this is offered as an example of an attribute declaration with a default value (p. 111): . In a similar vein, the author provides illustrations of element content models with no apparent use. For example, . Real "real-world" examples facilitate not only our formal understanding of XML, but also its proper use. Having said all that, I should add that I do think the book worthwhile. Note that this is on the recommended reading list for IBM's XML certification test.
I bought two copies!
If you need to get up to speed on the XML recommendation for serious application development, this book is a very informative explanation of W3C's results. It's an excellent reference work. It provides thoughtful insights into some fairly complicated subjects. Colleagues wanted to read my first copy so much that I bought another one. It is not a tutorial, not a hands-on code walk-through, and not for the casual user. It's precisely what it says it is -- the "annotated specification".
Very Confusing and Unorganized
This book is an example of disorganizaiton. I am learning XML, and this book have given me hard time underestanding what is it all about. for example, it talks about stuff in chapter 2 that won't be discussed until chapter 4, so you won't be able to underestand anything since all chapters of the book follow the same rythm. In addition to that, there was no comprehensive examples that will help giving more or better underestanding. Bad Bad XML book.
Wish more specs had companion commentaries
Despite some problems relating to clarity, I gave this book 4 stars because it fills a dire need: it provides annotation and rationale to an otherwise tedious, opaque specification. (I don't mean to single out the XML spec here; it's better than most. Specifications, by their very nature [i.e., formal] are difficult to read.)The book has been very useful to me, not as an introduction to XML, but as a reference.
Essential Reference for XML Developers
I am a director in the Financial Services practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers. DuCharme's book is an essential part of our syllabus for XML training. The book is a brilliant reference work and review of the XML language. It is not a tutorial on XML application development, but that is not it's purpose. A great part of its attraction, is that it is a concise, readable and generalized reference text for the XML language, on par with other well known referenes for other languages, such as Lippman's C++ Primer.
