Rating:  - Pretty well rounded, missing some specifics
Excellent book to get the basics in many different areas of using XSLT. My focus is converting XML to HTML so naturally I was mostly intent on reading those chapters; the rest of them had academic value to me.
The problem I find with this book is that it doesn't focus on XSL tools and how to write snippets of code for them (I am using XSLmaker and didn't find anything on it). Maybe the book was not totally up to date. In any case, modern XSL development is driven by visual tools like XSLmaker that let you code Xpath filters or define XSL code for visual HTML fields - and that sort of integration was what I expected.
Still, I gleamed few useful tricks that saved me some time, so the book was worth it after all.
Rating:  - learn from examples
I needed something quick that had lots of examples of transorming text in one format to other text in another format. Had to tabulate on a text file with rows and columns of fixed length some data elements found in a XML file. This book showed me how. The $35 alone saved me several hours of my time. Sure, you could search the web, and maybe you would could find exactly what you need. But why hurt your eyes, when the price is low enough to have this simple and efficient tool called "book", at your desk, anytime you need to transform a xml file again.
Rating:  - Most Excellent!
I really wish all my computer books were this easy to read when confronted with a difficult subject matter. Chapter after chapter of good reading, which aids in the development of a skill on a subject matter that is often written by other writers in a manner that is terse and verbose. Sal got this one down pretty good. Caveat emptor, come to this book prepared with the basics.
Rating: - Wow! What a great XSLT book!
The O'Reilly Cookbook series is a great place to find answers to really hard problems. I like the series because I can go to the "cookbook" subject I'm having trouble with, leaf through a few pages, and see an answer to a problem that is similar to my own. The XSLT Cookbook is very similar in structure to the other "cookbooks", but with an XSLT flavor.
After going through the various recipes in this book, I can honestly say that I am amazed at the kind of things you can do with just XSLT. You can do more than just reformat XML to look nice on an HTML page-you can even use it to calculate statistical functions! Even if you're not planning on calculating a combinatoric, just looking through some of these patterns will make you a better XSLT programmer.
One nice thing this book provides beyond the recipes is a discussion on how to extend XSLT via SAXON or Java. There is also discussion on how to use XSLT via Perl or Java.
I was very impressed by the amount of time and thought that was put into the creation of many of these recipes-not only are many of them really, really hard to do, but they're also things I've seen a real need for in the real world. XSLT programmers, do yourself a favor and take a look through this book before you hurt your brain with your next assignment.
Rating: - Down to earth advice
This book is invaluable as an adjunct to some of the reference works, such as O'Reilly's XSLT book. This book provides practical examples of how to solve common problems you face when you develop with XSLT. The chapters on querying and selecting and traversing are worth the price alone.
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