XML by Example: Building E-Commerce Applications [With Includes a Wide Range of Tools for XML Packages...]

by Sean McGrath

This is a hands-on guide to learning XML through building an XML-based commerce web server. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0139601627
• ISBN13: 9780139601620
• Release Date: January 1998
• Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR
• Length: 470 Pages
• Weight: 2.23 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 7.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

very kind and gentle intro to the subject

Excellent. I found XML technology very approachable by reading this book. i have completed part 1 now. It has given me a solid first view of XML. really great if you are new to XML. The author almost approaches all our questions and answers it in sequence.It is as if a live teacher is sitting before us and guiding through the subject. Yes - it is a one step by one step to the subject. CONGRATULATIONS,sean Mcgrath, you are a wonderful travel guide to the world of XML. you have brought me to the exciting world of XML.

Clear, Concise, Examples were great to reinforce concepts

I have been reading about XML for 6 months now. This is the best delivery of the subject matter I have seen yet. Real good if you are not a programmer, but need to know history plus how to write basic XML, DTD & XSL code.

Uniformly high quality content and lucid style

Thinking about using XML to deliver information from a database to a browser? Planning a Web-based commercial application where the customer connects via browser? Or just wondering what all the fuss over XML in Web-based commerce is about? XML is worth making a fuss about. It promises to become a kind of lingua franca for information interchange between applications, for communicating data among distributed components of applications, for delivery of data from databases to browsers, and for customizing sophisticated documents for readers with different points of view of the document. The book under review starts at a high level: an executive summary and a set of motivating examples of applications of XML. A system architect can get a strong feeling for how XML can contribute to Web-based applications. The second part goes into examples of applications that give the reader a deeper understanding of XML technology and its many uses. The third part drills down for a close look at XML and related standards. It is rare to find a book that can make this broad a survey of possibilities without turning into a lot of fluff. This one succeeds by living up to the "by example" part of its title. Examples have been chosen to illustrate the possibilities in a meaningful and compelling manner and described in enough detail to be convincing. The reader with a need for a broad architectural understanding of the uses of XML and its technical possibilities will come away with enough detail for a deep appreciation of its capabilities. The reader who intends to delve deeper-to actually plan and design applications of this technology-will get both the broad overview and a guided tour of the W3C Recommendations and Working Documents. The next step for that reader is to read the W3C documents. This book gives you the perspective you need to understand them. One warning: some of the related technology, especially the eXtensible Style Language (XSL) is in a state of flux, and the details in this book are out of date. This doesn't detract from the overall understanding of the capabilities of the technology that you will gain from McGrath's treatment of the subject, but you will have to start to follow the standards development process more directly if you need a working knowledge of the technology. This book is part of a series-the Charles F. Goldfarb Series on Open Information Management-with uniformly high quality content and lucid style, and slightly disappointing proofreading. With the rush to catch the XML wave, we can forgive a few typos if the thinking isn't slipshod. Here it isn't. Other books in this series cover SGML and XML from other vantage points, such as document publishing.

Excellent work, I learned a lot of XML From it. . .

A must have for all Web developers -- Learn the new Internet language! This book contain easy to follow instructions and examples which will teach you XML in about one week!

Enthusiastic yet deep introduction to XML

"XML by Example" is probably the best general XML book I've seen. I've already been able to enlighten several people on the subject of "what is this XML thing all about" by having them read the first 90 pages. The author's enthusiastic writing style is inspiring. I've certainly found the broad coverage of practical XML applications useful in planning my own use of XML, as well as in convincing others that XML actually works in the real world.The book shows particularly well the clear focus that a single highly expert author can bring to this kind of material. It is clear that a great deal of time and care went into the research and authorship of this work. There is a good balance between overview, example, and reference material, so that although the book deserves a thorough straight through read, it will also occupy valuable desk space as a reference as you "learn the ropes" developing your own applications, even if you just experiment with the supplied examples.This book makes a good partner to David Megginson's "Structuring XML Documents" (same publisher, same series), which covers DTD design for document use, a much more focussed interest. If you're looking for one book to get you up and running with XML, "XML by Example" is it. The included CDROM also has an excellent set of tools (including the Web Automation Toolkit free evaluation which is no longer available on the net.)