The Official XMLSPY Handbook will suit those with some knowledge of Extensible Markup language (XML) introducing you to XML and XMLSPY, which is one of the most popular tools for generating, editing, and analyzing XML documents.

Certain aspects of theory that you'd get from a standards-based XML book (XML in a Nutshell is one of the best) fail to appear in this practical guide for programmers, but then it's rare to win a contract because you know the standards documents exclusively.

Practical from page one, author Larry Kim begins with a quick introduction to the mechanics of XMLSPY 5 (which appears in 90-day full-featured demo form on the companion CD-ROM), then explores the software's features--which happen to coincide with XML's handiest capabilities--one by one.

Although the graphics are sometimes small and grainy, Kim does an admirable job of explaining how XML and its related technologies work, and especially how XMLSPY fits into the practical picture. The reader is left wanting only one significant feature: Information on how to design XML into applications, not just implement it. That's a big subject, though, and one that might best be left for Kim's next book. --David Wall, Amazon.com

Topics covered: Extensible Markup Language (XML), Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL), XSL Transformations (XSLT), Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), Web Services Definition Language (WSDL), and how all of these interact with Altova's XMLSPY development environment. You learn how to manipulate XML and its variations in XMLSPY, and get a bit of background on how each works.