Book Review

Book Review
By Richard Mateosian

XML Handbook, 4th edition
by Charles Goldfarb & Paul Prescod
Prentice-Hall PTR, Upper Saddle River NJ, 2002, 1164pp plus 2 CDs, ISBN 0-13-065198-2, $49.99
Prentice-Hall produces a series of XML books under the title The Charles F. Goldfarb Definitive XML Series, and this book is the flagship of that series. Some books in the series are pro forma attempts to describe logically necessary pieces of the XML world. They leave me unsatisfied, wondering "where's the meat?". This book, however, contains an overwhelming amount of meat.

On his Website, the senior author, Charles Goldfarb, lists and comments on hundreds of XML books, including 15 that he personally recommends. This one is first on his list. Here is what he says about it:

Everyone involved with the Web needs to know about XML: content creators, Website developers, programmers, and—most of all if you want your projects funded—managers. What reviewers have praised most about The XML Handbook is its ability to reach all these people, while still maintaining the accuracy and completeness that its technical readers require. So much has happened in the XML world since the last edition was published that we've prepared a revised and enhanced fourth edition with over 1200 pages and two CD-ROMs.

This may seem like shameless self promotion, but it's accurate. Goldfarb is essentially the father of XML. His deep involvement and many contacts make it possible for him to understand, make sense of, and explain the many application areas that have embraced XML.

Many industries and application areas have turned to XML to help them standardize their information structures and business interactions. This has led to an alphabet soup with an oversupply of Xs. This book helps to sort out and demystify the new standards and terminology.

The accompanying CDs are a strong point of this book, because there are so many XML-related tools. It's hard to know which ones address the problems you're trying to solve, and of those, which are efficient and reliable. By collecting a large number of excellent free tools and explaining what they do, the authors have performed a service that you would have to spend a large amount of time to duplicate.

With all of this, XML is still a daunting area. Reading a book of nearly 1200 pages and exploring the contents of two CDs requires a large commitment. There's no royal road, but when you make that sort of commitment, it's nice to know you're not heading down the wrong path.