XML Pocket Consultant

I seldom award five stars but this book deserves it. If you can only buy one XML reference book, buy this one; if you have XML books that you're not satisfied with, buy this one: The XML Pocket Consultant is *the* XML "sleeper" title. In my mind, I've retitled the XML Pocket Consultant "The XML Comprehensive Quick Reference." The book presents every aspect of XML and related technologies in a clear, crisp, understandable style. The book's excellent content is augmented by a professionally crafted visual style (page layout, whitespace, typeface, headings, list construction, examples) that facilitates information access and transfer; I mention this because too many books of this type look like they were designed and produced using consumer-level desktop publishing software. I'm not normally this enthusiastic about a book, but The XML Pocket Consultant is truly a treasure: It's the single most useful, helpful, 5.5" x 8" x 1.2" compendium of XML information I've so far found.

"XML Pocket Consultant" is the best XML book on the market. It is really worth every penny. This book is packed with useful information. My biggest disappointment is that I had such a hard time find the book. For anyone wanting to learn XML, XSL, XPath this is the book I recommend.

I knew a little about XML before reading this book, but nothing in-depth. I've been a software developer for years however, so I didn't want a basics book, but something that covered the subject quickly and in depth. After reading the other reviews I bought this book and was not disappointed. I was particularly interested in XML Schema and XSLT, and this book does an excellent job with both. I'm not sure you can find a more thorough reference outside the standards documents themselves. Datatypes, restrictions, defining complex types--I use this book for XML Schema like I use K & R for C programming. Note that this book has almost no coverage of subjects outside the W3C standards, such as the different types of validating tools and parsers or other XML schema languages such as RELAXNG from Oasis. You will have to go elsewhere for a fuller understanding of the entire 'XML Universe'. The only real gripe I have with this book is its constant use of Microsoft in the examples, which grates on this long-time Linux user. Of course, its from Microsoft Press, so what can you expect. Fortunately XML itself is non-OS specific, so nothing in this book is really Microsoft-centric. All in all, a great reference.

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 DTDsXML SchemaXML NamespacesXML LinksXSL/XSLTXPathAnd 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.

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!