In Depth XML 

This book is not only about XML markup language, but much more. It’s divided ito five parts. The first part explains the XML markup, DTDs, writing valid and well-formed XML documents and XML Namespaces in a comprehensive manner such that a separate book on basics is not required. 

With the second part you get into coding–writing programs to parse XML documents. SAX and DOM API for parsing are discussed in depth. Most of the code is in Java. 

The third part titled ‘XML related technologies’ discusses XPath, XPointer and XLink (for linking within document or external documents), XSLT (for transforming XML data into other formats) and XML schema (for document definition). 

The fourth part is devoted to application of XML and explains Wirelss Markup Language (WML), WMLScript and touches upon VoiceXML. The application of XML in databases (how data in XML documents can be mapped to tables of RDBMS databases) and XML-RPC is showcased with code examples in Java. 

The book closes with putting all XML technologies in the previous chapters into practice where you go through developing a full-fledged bug tracking and knowledge management application. VoiceXML is explained in further depth here. 

Appendices at the end include XML syntax reference, specification, UML reference and DTDs of WML, XHTML and

SMIL.

The Bottom Line: Overall, it is one of the best books on the A to Z of XML. The CD which comes along with the book contains most of the software referred to in the book; else points to the Web URLs from where they can be downloaded. However, since most of the code examples are in Java, its expected that you know its basics.

Shekhar Govindarajan