Rating:  - Not enough to the reputation of Deitel's
I like the way Deitel teaches. I always got much help from C, C++ and java from Deitels's How to Program series. But this one is not satifactoty. Even though this book's title is xml, contents about xml technoligies are not dealt with sufficiently. Some chapters contain the introduction to asp,cgi,perl and java. The introduction to those technologies are easy to get on internet and in other books. The authors should deal with core xml technologies.
The Deitel's series are of college-text- book-sytle.I guess xml is not for college course style. If you are new to xml from non programming experience or the other programming lanuguage. I recommend the XML in a nutshell by Rusy Harold.
Rating:  - A Big Waste
This book is a big waste of money. Besides being very expensive, most of the book covers other subjects other than XML, with little relevance to XML. Although there is some useful information on using XML with Java, there is way too much information on the Microsoft implementation of XML, (when the book actually gets around to mentioning XML) and the standardized W3 version of XML seems to be included as an afterthought. The reviewers who gave this book such a high rating probably didn't read the book very well, or are hired by the publisher. A much better book is the Liz Castro Quickstart guide to XML (for a fourth of the price of the Deitel!), although it is centered around the W3's standard for XML, and doesn't mention Microsoft's implementation. Castro text, however, is more suited to learning from the ground up. The Deitel text is a disaster and I wish that I had just kept my money.
Rating:  - Good, but a tad expensive...
Most of the stuff you get from Deitel & Deitel is pretty good. I recommend their books as a whole. Some people mention their credentials (like having a degree, etc, etc) like this somehow demonstrates that their review is less biased or more credible somehow. Yes, I do have a degree in computer science and I've been programming for DECADES. Does this mean anything? Not really, but read on...
This book costs $72.00. There aren't a lot of pages in it, when you consider the price. However, the pages are very glossy and very bright. This is some very high-quality paper. Is that worth the extra cost? Maybe not.
This is clearly a book that's situated for a beginner. You don't really get into the good stuff until Chapter 5, presuming you're fairly comfortable with HTML. Some other reviewers clearly took this to heart and quit the book early. It's not THAT bad. Once you're out of the history and background and review, it gets cooking, and there are about 27 chapters.
Everything about the book's presentation screams quality. Unfortunately, this is reflected in the price. This is the first XML book I've gotten, so I can't say how little or how much it covers, but I didn't feel "ripped off". The end of chapter sections are quite extensive; this would make the perfect textbook for an XML class that presumes no prior knowledge of HTML.
Rating: - Waste of money
I've been programming for a few years and have a computer science degree.
I'd heard all the hype around XML and XML related technologies, and while looking for a book on the subject, stumbled upon the XML Training course.
At the time there were no reviews for it so I took a chance.
It seemed to good to be true. All of the XML stuff was included, plus lots of stuff I don't need, like the first few chapters which cover HTML (this should have warned me) plus it includes a short primer on Java and some other stuff as well.
Well, to make a long story short, I stopped reading it in the middle.
It just seems to me that the authors just wanted to make a fast buck by getting out an XML book that tries to cover everything. The book isn't even all written by the authors !! In the acknowledgements, they list about 10 different people who contributed to various chapters!
The book reads like a dry reference manual (that's not even %100 complete) with a lot of examples thrown in.
The coverage is shallow and doesn't go into any reasoning or teach you how to USE XML technologies, it only teaches you how to WRITE for XML technologies.
The examples themselves are at the same level of "hello world" stuff.
I guess I'm "spoiled" from reading books like the O'Reilly series (most of them) or Thinking in Java.
I've read about 30 programming books over the past few years, and this one is the worst.
I'm sure you can learn more from better resources available freely on the web.
Rating: - XML: How to Program is Great
I was about to give up on finding a book on Java and XML. I had already purchased two in the past that lacked real-life programming examples and seemed to be a regurgitation of formal XML specification. But then I did a search on Amazon.com and found this book. Just by knowing the author, I knew it was going to be a great book. I've used Deitel's "C: How to Program" as a classroom textbook and "Internet and World Wide Web: How to Program" as a professional reference.
I can't say enough about the book. Numerous professional quality applications and examples; programming tips; concise, well-written prose; exercises at the end of each chapter. The authors are great teachers, not just great programmers dumping their vast technical knowledge into a book. The only thing I wished they'd done was to broaden the discussion on XML Entities. I found myself referring to another text to get a handle on their use (but, maybe that's just me!). However, I was able to apply other examples and bits of applications write out the book and retrofit into a Java/XML program I was developing at work.
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