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'Learning XML' of O'Reilly publications is a great title by
the author Erik T. Ray as it provides the Web developers with a
thorough introduction to XML and its capabilities along with plenty of
real-life projects and useful examples. The book goes along with its
title as for novice XML programmer it does a brilliant job illustrating
the core XML concepts and language syntaxes.
The book effectively covers the basics of XML and explains how
XML and XSL work together to create HTML, WAP etc. Some of the
eye-catching aspects of the book are the strong historical explanation
of XML giving its extensive background, the graphics and code samples
providing a clear picture of the concepts as well as the overviews of
the related specifications. Learning XML also discusses some of the
style sheets needed for viewing documents in the next generation of
browsers, databases, and other devices.
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The introductory chapter of Learning XML deals with some of
the basics of XML technology. It highlights some of the features as
well as goals of XML along with discussing issues like how to view and
test the XML documents. Transformation of a document from one form to
another had also been taken care of. The book also teaches some Markup
and Core Concepts where information regarding a well-formed document
had been given.
The book gives an in-depth coverage of Namespaces and
discusses the role of Entities as placeholders. Author had devoted
sufficient space for connection of resources with Links specifying
characteristics of a simple link, XPointer and its working along with
an Introduction to the XML Linking Language (XLinks). Apart from this
benefits of using XHTML over regular HTML had also been covered.
Keeping in view of the end product some Presentation features
had also been talked about. Style sheets, its importance, its cascading
aspects etc had been extensively discussed. The focus then moves on to
the document models. The author explains different ways to model a
document and also talks about the DTD Syntax, its designing,
customization as well as modularization issues in an interesting way.
Talking about transformation issues this book says much about
the repurposing of Documents. Author not only explains the need for
transformation but also talks about criteria for selecting and creating
nodes, generating numbers and text, and performing sorting
and looping operations through node sets. Keeping in view of the
increasing usage of markup languages the author stresses on the need
for Internationalization so as to provide a globally acceptable level
of markup.
Later part of the book deals with some programming issues for
XML along with XML parsing, different XML handling techniques and the
API for XML (SAX). Issues related to tree based representation of the
document and the document object model marks the ending of the book.
Overall ‘Learning XML’ is an excellent reference
which can serve both as a guided textbook for an introductory XML
course as well as prove to be a good help for advanced programmers.
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