Reviews for Xml Bible, 3rd Edition

1. Buy it only if you're new to the area of IT/Programming

   Rated 3 out of 5 stars, March 12th, 2002

   I'm a third year student following a degree in I.T. I am well accustomed to programming as well as learning.

   I found the book to be very slow moving and repetitive at times. The same concept is presented about three times in different ways. While comprehensive, the book is too much verbose and you have to read a whole chapter to be able to grasp some basic concepts. I was not at all troubled with the fact that the author uses Baseball statistics as examples. The idea is that large ammounts of data need to be formatted (although I did get confused at times). Also, I was not put back by the massive size of the book(6cm/2.5in wide). Maybe that's because I'm used to massive books. I was put back by the MSWord-like font though (Times New Roman). It is readable but does not look professional to me. Moreover, by now the technology has changed a bit. The book was written in early 2001 (a year ago) and is based on late 1999 standards. It would be better to buy a more recent book since XML, XSL...have been moving fst lately.

   That's all I guess, my suggestion is:
   If you are a slow learner and new to the computing area this is a very good book for you. It is comprehensive and extensive, covering all the important XML technology in a relatively straight forward manner.
   On the other hand, if you are searching for a good book which will get you through XML/XSL... quickly and already have a prorgamming background do yourself a favour, do not buy this book...

2. too heavy to swallow

   Rated 3 out of 5 stars, August 12st, 2001

   This book is quite good for a none programmer. However, to much blah blah for people who have experienced programming,the examples are huge and most of them talk about baseball which I really start to hate since reading this book, but well explained though, you can tell by the size it. Well if you are a quick reader, that's the book for you and it has a lot of useful stuff but not for people who suffer from heart attack.

3. A Heavyweight colosus!

   Rated 3 out of 5 stars, November 12th, 2000

   This book is not for the beginner or the faint-hearted. WHilst it got me up and running with the ideas behind XML, you only have to look at the thickness of the book to be intimidated!

   It is not the sort of book to cuddle up to for a bed-time read. It is also not really recommended if you know nothing about XML. It is recommended if you need a reference book.

   It would seem to me that if you asked the author to write 10,000 words about the colour blue, he would be able to do it without breaking into a sweat.

   Every aspect is covered. The detail the author goes into can either be praised for being thorough or criticised for being too verbose. What happened to the idea of telling you what you need to know and leaving out the bits you don't need? The huge section about Unicode did for me. I read about one inch, every word, but when he started on Unicode, I found myself less and less enthusiastic to continue, to the point of putting the book down.

   Buy this book if you want a ference book. Don't buy it if you want an easy to follow step by step guide to XML. There's bound to be better books than this for doing that.