By W. Scott Means, Elliotte Rusty Harold
First Edition
January 2001
Pages: 492
ISBN 10: 0-596-00058-8 |
ISBN 13: 9780596000585
(Average of 9 Customer Reviews)
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XML in a Nutshell is just what serious XML developers need in order to take full advantage of XML's incredible potential: a comprehensive, easy-to-access desktop reference to the fundamental rules that all XML documents and authors must adhere to. This book details the grammar that specifies where tags may be placed, what they must look like, which element names are legal, how attributes attach to elements, and much more.
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Book details
First Edition: January 2001
ISBN: 0-596-00058-8
Pages: 492
Average Customer Reviews: (Based on 9 Reviews)
Featured customer reviews
XML in a Nutshell Review, January 21 2002
This book is not atall useful for begineers. It is very confusing and moreover the examples used in the first chapter are referenced from some other later chapters in the book and from outside of the book which makes it really difficult to understand.
Surely this is not the book I would recommend to anyone.
XML in a Nutshell Review, October 11 2001
This book has all of the following bad attributes: arcane prose and sentences, crass semantic errors, funny orthographic errors, and inncompleteness (XML schema is missing).
I have had to buy another book to learn about XML.
XML in a Nutshell Review, August 02 2001
Some of the typos are egregious. This should not have happened
given ORAs other entries with XML information (such as webmaster
in a nutshell etc). I have been buying ora books
for years because it is much faster to open a dead tree than
to web search over and over for reference material. However,
problems such as found on page 35 of my printing (jan 2001) with the
operators ?,+,* render this book useless to me for commercial
development. And yes, I just printed out all the errata. And,
yes, I will likely try and return this book to Cody's for a refund
(I still have the receipt). And, since I have ended up running
stuff out of the laser printer anyway, I might as well just
print the spec directly from w3. It's a pita to carry around,
but I suspect it will be more reliable, and the price is right.
Again, this book is useless to me for commercial development.
I can't trust it and will have to cross check the information
with other sources. Furthermore, I could not in good faith
recommend it to anyone.
Whats more, I can no longer assume that the ORA offering in any
field will be "best-of-breed", and I will be reading reviews at
amazon and elsewhere before I purchase another ORA book.
Dave Doolin
XML in a Nutshell Review, June 23 2001
After reading a variety of XML books, I've found this one to be the most useful. For the price and size, you can't beat it.
As some people have pointed out, there are some ommissions, but given the developmental state of several XML standards, what can you expect?
BTW, my copy does include information about XML Schemas, although it doesn't have any dedicated chapters on it... check your index (pg 10,40,228) The information on XML Schemas is vague, but leaves the impression that they are more precise than DTDs.
XML in a Nutshell Review, June 07 2001
The more I use this book, the more I notice its errors and ommisions. Its really very difficult to do commercial work using this book as a guide. The XPath and XSL sections have brief, patchy and inaccurate coverage.
Suggests the authors were learing XML as they wrote the book.
XML in a Nutshell Review, April 30 2001
I was very impressed by chapters 6 and 7 (although HTML stuff isn't really accurate - for example, A&B isn't the same as A&B in SGML since an SGML parser will look for a B entity in the first case) but very disappointed by chapters 8, 9, 19 and 20 (at least ; chapters 10 to 13 aren't error-prone).
The author doesn't distinguish XPath expressions, used to select nodes, and XSLT patterns, used to match already selected nodes. Although both have a very similar syntax, they have completely different semantics. He also seems convinced that location paths are either totally abbreviated or unabbreviated whereas abbreviated syntax applies to location steps, so you may have abbreviated and unabbreviated location steps in the same location path. For all that he doesn't use unabbreviated steps in unabbreviated paths' predicates.
I'm the French translator for the second part of the book (and related reference chapters) and need to fix and tidy all th!
at mess, spending out a huge amount of time. At least French customers will have an accurate book.
I posted several serious errata and haven't received any acknowledgement or else, and all these errata have falled in the "unconfirmed" list whereas they're all confirmed by official documents. What are the authors doing?
For years, O'Reilly's books were synonymous of quality and technical accuracy. This feeling has changed during last month and I'll never buy an O'Reilly's book with my eyes shut any more.
XML in a Nutshell Review, March 28 2001
Overall, I found XML In a Nutshell a little dissapointing, although it does contain some very good XML reference material.
My principal complaint was that they had no coverage of XML Schema, despite the books publication date Jan 2001. The book conveyed the impression that the ageing and inadequate DTD was the one and only validation mechanism. IMO, this is a serious and misleading omission that detracts from the quality of the book.
My other concern was the seeming overlap between the reference and tutorial material for each topic, which are separately packaged in different ends of the book, but seem somewhat similar and not particularly complimentary. More annotated examples in the tutorial sections would have helped.
XML in a Nutshell Review, March 24 2001
This book shows, again, what O'Reilly has been doing so well for years: it is concise, correct, and complete. Very easy to read and the best presentation of the XML concepts I have seen so far. If you want a desk reference, this book will suit you fine. If you are new to the whole idea of XML/XSLT/XPaths/etc. this book will walk you through the maze.
XML in a Nutshell Review, February 25 2001
XML in a Nutshell is a very good book for the beginner wanting to learn about XML. I picked up this book, read it in two days, and now feel very confident about my knowledge of XML. It is very concise and has "to the point" examples. It doesn't contain all the jabber that isn't needed.
It is also a very handy reference. With "XML in a Nutshell" and "Java and XML" by your side you can be using XML in no time!
The only downside to the book is the text errors. However, the errata picks them up nicely.
Media reviews
Best of 2001: Customers' Picks, amazon.com
"this book is the one you won't want to let out of your sight." --IT Training, August, 2001
"A solid and useful reference for XML developers The value of XML in a Nutshell should be readily apparent to XML developers. The material is well-organized and concise. It's a quintessential Nutshell book, upholding a tradition of utility and quality. Readers who've already been exposed to the presented material will likely keep this book close at hand." --chromatic, slashdot.com, September 13, 2001
"These (Learning XML and XML in a Nutshell) are the most accessible books on XML that I have come across and I would certainly use Learning XML as a recommended text for any course on it that I gave. I you work with XML or are going to then you probably ought to have both these books" - Lindsay Marshall, news@UK, June 2001
"an indispensable desktop companion to anyone who labors in Web page design or construction. It's a well-organized compendium of XML coding commands and rules." -Michael W. Dominowski, Staten Island Advance, June 20, 2001
"Not just a reference...a remarkable comprehensive book.. Harold and Means' book offers two advantages over the others: It's clearer than previous books by a small margin; and it's the most recent, and hence up-to-date book currently on the market." --Eugene Eric Kim, Web Techniques, July 2001
"Concise, accurate and sharply focused, XML in a Nutshell is a complete introduction to the essentials of the XML standard... XML in a Nutshell is a masterpiece of compression, laying the foundations for an excellent understanding of XML and finding space for example code and apt comments along the way." --Tim Anderson, amazon.co.uk
"XML in a Nutshell provides just the kind of concise coverage of its subject that you would expect from an O'Reilly Nutshell book. At under 500 pages, it's still small enough to be genuinely portable, yet thorough enough to serve well as a single source for general XML conceptual and reference information." --Michael Smith, xmlhack.com, Feb 2001
"If you're using XML on a regular basis, then you should have this reference book on your desk. There is a lot to know about XML, but with this excellent reference manual, you don't have to know it, just where to look it up. Once you're comfortable with XML, you will want this book as part of your library.." --Jennifer Kyrnin, Focus on HTML/XML
"XML in a Nutshell is not the only book on XML you should have, but it is definitely one that no XML coder should be without." --Stephen W. Plain, amazon.com, April 2001
"Concise, accurate and sharply focused, XML in a Nutshell is a complete introduction to the essentials of the XML standard. It aims to give software developers a full understanding of how XML works, and also provides a handy reference to the version 1.0 recommendation from the W3C (Word Wide Web Consortium). XML in a Nutshell is a masterpiece of compression, laying the foundations for an excellent understanding of XML and finding space for example code and apt comments along the way." --Tim Anderson, amazon.uk, May 2001
"...solid basic guide for developers who want to move into the XML area...the diligent reader should gain enough knowledge to do some decent coding." --Freelance Informer, Feb 23, 2001
"a very thorough explanation of what's required in extensible markup language...there is the usual thoroughness one associates with O'Reilly publications. The coverage is totally comprehensive, and all the data is displayed in an attractive and consistent format." --Roy Johnson, www.mantex.co.uk, Feb 2001
"Just the kind of concise coverage of its subject that you would expect from an O'Reilly Nutshell book. At under 500 pages, it's still small enough to be genuinely portable, yet thorough enough to serve well as a single source for general XML conceptual and reference informationIf you're looking for one concise guide for general conceptual and reference information about XML, it's a very good choice."-Michael Smith, XMLhack.com, Feb 2001
"a comprehensive, easy-to-access reference...the resource that Internet-savvy customers will rely on to quickly and correctly format fields and data structures for XML documents." --Academia January 2001
