Product Description

If you're a developer working with XML, you know there's a lot to know about XML, and the XML space is evolving almost moment by moment. But you don't need to commit every XML syntax, API, or XSLT transformation to memory; you only need to know where to find it. And if it's a detail that has to do with XML or its companion standards, you'll find it--clear, concise, useful, and well-organized--in the updated third edition of XML in a Nutshell.

With XML in a Nutshell beside your keyboard, you'll be able to:
Quick-reference syntax rules and usage examples for the core
XML technologies, including XML, DTDs, Xpath, XSLT, SAX, and DOM
Develop an understanding of well-formed XML, DTDs, namespaces, Unicode, and W3C XML Schema
Gain a working knowledge of key technologies used for narrative XML documents such as web pages, books, and articles technologies like XSLT, Xpath, Xlink, Xpointer, CSS, and XSL-FO
Build data-intensive XML applications
Understand the tools and APIs necessary to build data-intensive XML applications and process XML documents, including the event-based Simple API for XML (SAX2) and the tree-oriented Document Object Model (DOM)

This powerful new edition is the comprehensive XML reference. Serious users of XML will find coverage on just about everything they need, from fundamental syntax rules, to details of DTD and XML Schema creation, to XSLT transformations, to APIs used for processing XML documents. XML in a Nutshell also covers XML 1.1, as well as updates to SAX2 and DOM Level 3 coverage. If you need explanation of how a technology works, or just need to quickly find the precise syntax for a particular piece, XML in a Nutshell puts the information at your fingertips.

Simply put, XML in a Nutshell is the critical, must-have reference for any XML developer.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #107129 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09
• Released on: 2004-09-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 600 pages

About the Author
Elliotte Rusty Harold is a noted writer and programmer, both on and off the Internet. He started by writing FAQ lists for the Macintosh newsgroups on Usenet, and has since branched out into books, web sites, and newsletters. He's currently fascinated by Java, which is beginning to consume his life. His Cafe Au Lait web site at http://sunsite.unc.edu/javafaq/ is a frequently visited Java site. Elliotte resides in New York City with his wife Beth and cat Possum. When not writing about Java, he enjoys genealogy, mathematics, and quantum mechanics, and has been known to try to incorporate these subjects into his computer books (when he can slip them past his editors). So far he hasn't been able to, but he suspects that a short, last-minute biography might not be inspected as closely as the rest of a manuscript. His previous book is Java Developer's Resource from Prentice Hall. W. Scott Means has been a professional software developer since 1988, when he joined Microsoft Corporation at the age of 17. He was one of the original developers of OS/2 1.1 and Windows NT, and did some of the early work on the Microsoft Network for the Advanced Technology and Business Development group. Most recently, he served as the CEO of Enterprise Web Machines, a South Carolina based Internet infrastructure venture. He is currently writing full-time and consulting on XML and Internet topics.

Customer Reviews

Covers almost every major XML standard
This is a combination field guide and terse standards reference for XML. It covers an amazing variety of XML standards. From the fundamentals of XML, through the document standards, and into transformation technologies like XSLT. Standards include; XML, XPath, XLink, XSLT, XSL-FO, XML Schema, DTDs, among others. The book also cover some standards that use XML, like SAX and DOM.

The book is fairly high level. It assumes that you know the basics and need a complete reference for the technologies. This is that case with all of the Nutshell books, but given the amount of technologies this books cover, the coverage is fairly terse.

The organization of the book is great. There are only a few illustrations and they are used effectively. A solid reference for anyone who works with XML technologies on a daily basis. Highly recommended.

A reference useful for a limited audience among those who already know XML basics
O'Reilly's XML IN A NUTSHELL is, like all entries in the Nutshell series, a desktop quick reference. It provides concise information about nearly all matters of XML, and is split into roughly four parts. The first introduces XML, the concept of tags, well-formedness, Unicode, DTD's and schemas, namespaces, and so forth. The second provides an overview for the many formats that are built upon XML, such as XHTML, XSL:FO, Docbook, etc., and technologies that plug-in into XML, namely XSLT, XPath, XLinks, XPointers, XInclude, and CSS. The fourth covers DOM and SAX, the APIs for dealing with XML. Finally, the book ends with a "Reference section" for various technologies covered earlier in the book, structured much like O'Reilly's pocket guides. I found the Reference section somewhat inconvenient, it causes flipping back and forth when each section could have been simply integrated with the previous discussion of the relevant technology earlier in the book. Furthermore, the book ends with a long series of Unicode character tables, which are of limited utility, as they cover only a portion of Unicode, which has already expanded in the time since, and these tables simply bloat the book a little.

This third edition is especially admirable for its advocation of schemas, whereas many other XHTML publications would mention only DTDs.

XML IN A NUTSHELL is emphatically not a tutorial for XML, in spite of the friendly introduction to the markup language that opens the book. For each of the technologies mentioned herein, you'll want a separate book. For XPath especially, O'Reilly's XPATH AND XPOINTER is worth getting. XML IN A NUTSHELL instead provides only a quick reference for matters the reader is already acquainted with. Now, much of this quick reference information can be freely had on the Web. I'd recommend the book only to those who are fortunate enough to have someone else cover their book expenses, or can get it from their library, or those who simply adore print documentation.

Loaded with info but needs better editing/organization
They might as well take out the first half of the book at trying to teach beginners XML. The reason being that the writing style is confusing, full of long run-on sentences, with few to no examples for demonstration. As a reference book, this is probably a flawless companion. And it does say that it's intended for experienced developers. The tutorial chapters serve well as reviews and tips if the person already knows some XML. Also, make sure you check the book's web site, it has a long errata list, so get ready to correct those errors. If you're a beginner to XML, this isn't the book to start out with. I recommend "Beginning XML - 3rd Edition" by Wrox Press as your first XML book.