Using XML with Legacy Business Applications

by Michael C. Rawlins

A practical toolkit on using XML to do business more efficiently internally and with resellers and suppliers, complete with C++ and Java code. The book intends to bridge the gap between the beginner's... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0321154940
• ISBN13: 9780321154941
• Release Date: August 2003
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
• Length: 624 Pages
• Weight: 2.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 7.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

The most usable book I read in ages

A lot of IT people are busy making different applications running on different platforms "talk" to each other. XML was invented as the "Esperanto" of the IT world to get these systems to understand each other. In practice however it just isn't that simple, as most of these applications don't talk XML yet, until this book.This book is a real do itbook. It does not teach you XML or XSLT but shows you how to use it. What I especially liked is that he discusses his design considerations, he wants you to understand the whys. Once he thinks you know the basics he goes back to his basic design and improves it to make it make it fully reusable and modular, making it even beter.Mr. Rawlins gives you toolbox of utilities, with the source code, that can become the building blocks for your own application integration system.I have not come across a book with as much usable code in my IT career. We have already redesigned quite a few of our systems because of it. If you are into connectivityyou cant be without this book.Ps. The word Legacy in the title does not imply big mainframes.

Unpretentious and Useful

Easy to read, in a refreshing unpretentious style, Rawlins explains numerous complicated concepts associated with using XML. Especially useful are the chapters covering the conversion of EDI formatted data into and out of XML and the converting of one XML format to another XML format. The inclusion of Java and C++ considerations in appropriate chapters provides excellent practical advice.

Step-by-step, covers the details well

Mike Rawlin's book deals with the reality that legacy business applications are not readily converted to processing XML-formatted information. While XML works fine as the interchange format, you need to convert between that interchange format and the format your applications understand. Mike covers all of the minor nuances that you need to consider, presents a wealth of knowledge in an easily-understood format, and provides examples to boot.

Should be on every EDI professional's desk

I have just this past week had the pleasure of reading briefly through Mike Rawlin's book on this topic. Mike has done an outstanding job of taking a technical topic and addressing it in a very clear, succinct writing style that makes even the most obscure EDI/XML concept accessible to the reader. I believe this book should be on the desk of every EDI professional challenged with not only continuing to support current EDI environments, but trying to understand how to use XML in that environment.Great job Mike! Congratulations on a job very well done! I stand in awe of the effort and discipline coupled with your knowledge and experience that resulted in this book! Hats off!

Excellent book for business application developers

This book is very unique. The aim of this book is not to develop a new XML application from scratch. Instead, this book gives us many practical ideas to make existing business non-XML applications gXML-awareh. Though XML has become a first class data format in the world, this book is very useful for many business application developers who are still working with legacy applications with proprietary input and output. This book provides good design principles and methodologies for working with various existing data format such as CSV files, flat files, and EDI (X12) transactions. It also covers XSLT, XML Schema and other standard technologies. You can see rich pseudo code (I like it after I understood the syntax) and its implementation using Java and C++ are included.