The first half of the book covers XML, DTD, Schema, parsing with SAX, DOM and JDOM, transformation, and traversal of XML data, and the second half covers some applications of XML; document and web site styling; remote procedure calls, configurations and a bit about integrating XML with other technologies such as perl. In general this book has good, solid coverage of most of the important aspects of XML and Java. The sensible sections on XML Schema, JDOM and JAXP, elevate it above many others, but you may need a more detailed book if you plan heavy use of DTD. The examples have just enough detail to be usable without swamping the text, which approaches nutshell-like conciseness. The later sections sometimes read a bit like a how-to guide for the authors favourite products from the Apache range - configuration and use of Xerces, Xalan, Cocoon and the non-standard XSP is covered in detail, but other, equivalent products are mostly ignored. XML technology is developing extremely fast, and some aspects of this book are already getting old. A few of the quoted URLs lead nowhere, and mention of newer standards such as the JAXP transformation API, XML data binding and Messaging APIs is a must for the next version. The JDOM examples may also be incorrect soon if the proposed package changes take place. Keep this book on your desk if you are developing XML with Java, and you won't go far wrong. (Frank Carver - sheriff, June 2001) More info at Amazon.com More info at Amazon.co.uk More info at FatBrain.com [This message has been edited by Johannes de Jong (edited July 14, 2001).]
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