XML Unleashed

This book is not ideal to _start_ learning XML from scratch anget "quick and dirty" into writing your own; it is quitelike an encyclopedia, and keeps many key skills in their own chapters,even if they would be needed together.If you have already gonethrough an indroduction...then there is no better public resource(online, offline, and even many instructors) for learning so muchabout XML technologies and in so much detail. Mr. Morrison thinksahead of the times by covering ideas that are sure to evolve into themainstream (such as out-of-line links and contextual search engines)while rarely failing to mention the status of the technology with theW3C, supporting software, and links where to learn or download more.He covers existing and create-your-own markup languages to a muchgreater degree than the "XML Bible" which was the other bookI considered buying.The software on the CD-ROM is useful, but manyare demo downloads, and the CD-ROM could have had more examples and"Get started practices for each chapter.

I came into this book wanting to learn XML. I came out of it with a pretty good idea how to do it. Its not too difficult, but there are areas where I wish more was said. Other than that I am using XML every day, and this book helped me do it.

This comprehensive reference is targeted at sophisticated Web developers and details every possible use and aspect of XML, from creating Web documents and building advanced Web applications, to coverage of DTDs, XSL and X Pointers. XML Unleashed includes reference material on the SMIL language, and provides hundreds of real-world programming techniques and applications involving e-commerce, database access, Web management, real estate and health care. 992 pages, CD (1) Intermediate - Advanced

Although the user level as mentioned on the back cover is Intermediate-Advanced, I would say that this book would also serve as a nice introduction to XML since the content is well-formed, precise and accurate and the author explores each subject not only from the standard's point of view but also gives helpful advices on the most widely used tools and practices on the market.This title introduces the reader to a wide range of information about XML, such as the definition of the language, the many ways to manipulate data with it (databases, scripting, ASPs etc.) and the benefits/practices of XML on the web.Part VII was a particularly pleasant surprise. It featured information about many diverse XML applications like MathML, P3P, VML, VoxML etc.I feel that the choice I've made to order it before it was even published (in early December) was a good one.The only drawback was that because it covered so many different topics it lacked in-depth analysis in some of them. Of course that's nothing that the W3C site can't fix...