XML: The Annotated Specifications

by Bob DuCharme

Exploring XML, XLL, and XSL, this title contains the complete final standards, annotated by one of the world's leading XML experts. Extensive figures and diagrams help clarify complex relationships... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0130826766
• ISBN13: 9780130826763
• Release Date: December 1998
• Publisher: Prentice Hall
• Length: 339 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.1" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

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".

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.

Straightest Line to Learning XML

This book is aimed at technically sophisticated readers who want to understand XML in its purest form. The book deconstructs the XML specification line by line, expanding the spec's terse 32 pages into a complete exposition, with examples and background information that provide useful context for XML's features and design. The only thing missing is an appendix with the full (unannotated) spec so that you could read straight through it, however, since the spec is readily available at the W3C web site, this is a very minor nit.To really understand what XML is all about, there is no better source than the specification, and DuCharme does a great job illuminating it. Highly recommended.

A very economical and insightful view of XML. A must-buy.

I know this book is touted as the second book one should buy to discover XML, but I found Bob's explanations excellent for understanding how and why this standard was created.In the preface, Goldfarb describes the XML Recommendation document as being expressed in "rigorous, elegant (in the mathematical sense...), formal, and concise language." The same can be said for this book's style of writing. What could have been a very nerdy examination of the technical language used in a W3C document, is more literate and even includes passages from Eliot's "The Waste Land."

The best second book for an in depth understanding of XML

The author and publisher have found a new and extremely useful format. The detailed explanation of the specification and the thinking behind the specification provide the best means I have seen to gain a deeper understanding of the XML - and to spot the fiddly details. The examples are clear and make the meaning of the formal specification clear.Probably not the first book to read on XML unless you have some background, but a must as the second book to understand what it is really all about. Belongs on everybody's shelf who has to teach or work with XML.Goldfarb and Prentice Hall should be encouraged to bring out other books in the same format for other parts of the growing web standards such as XSL, RDF and XData when they are final.