Amazon.co.uk Review
XML is often treated as the next pop standard in mark-up, but seldom in depth as a set of software development specifications.
Essential XML digs deep into XML, examining its capabilities as an underlying data exchange format. This book is for serious software developers who are comfortable with technical terminology.
Right from the start, the book addresses XML as a data format and not a presentation mechanism. It is the belief of the authors that XML hand coding by humans will fade away as XML becomes increasingly a low-level standard for providing communication between applications. The entire book revolves around the XML Information Set (InfoSet), an XML specification that the authors feel is under-examined by most XML aficionados. The InfoSet defines XML documents in terms independent of syntax.
The opening section provides an overview to the InfoSet, albeit a very technical examination. There's little ramping up in this book--readers must be prepared to dig into the nitty-gritty right from the start. The text moves on to discuss programming XML via the DOM and SAX, as well as key topics like transformations and navigation.
One of the book's strongest points is its examination of XML as a messaging technology for the software development market of the future. In a discussion of XML as an improvement over standard component models, the authors proclaim, "as the software industry looks to XML as a solution to all problems short of world hunger, there is a tendency to reinvent the entire automobile and highway system in the process of reinventing the wheel".
Developers fluent in component programming and distributed object models will glean the most from this book. Casual XML implementers should look for a more introductory guide, but tool developers will find this title quite insightful in charting their XML course. --Stephen W. Plain, Amazon.com
Topics covered:
- XML Information Set (InfoSet)
- Simple API for XML Version 2 (SAX2)
- Document Object Model Level 2 (DOML2)
- Apache Xerces
- Microsoft XML
- Xpath
- Xpointer
- Xinclude
- Xbase
- XML Schemas
- XSLT
- XML as a software integration technology
Product Description
XML holds out the promise of a universal and standard means of object/component communication that vastly reduces the need for reliance on competing ORB standards such as Enterprise JavaBeans, COM, and CORBA. In this book, Don Box covers every key issue, technology, and technique involved in using XML as the "ultimate translator" between disparate software components and environments. Essential XML starts by contrasting the XML approach to software interoperability with pre-XML practices, technologies, and methodologies, including COM, CORBA, and EJB. Next, it examines XML-based approaches to metadata, declarative and procedural programming through transformation, and programmatic interfaces -- showing how XML's platform, language and vendor independence -- and its accessibility -- make it a far more effective solution for software interoperability than any alternative. The book also contains detailed coverage of the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), an XML/HTTP-based protocol for accessing services, objects and servers in a platform-independent manner.
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