Comments about oreilly Java and XML, Third Edition:

I thought the second edition was fairly well written, even if it rambled a bit. That was mostly a consequence of XML still being in a state of flux, and the author made a good effort to at least mention and describe all the moving pieces.

I recommended this book to a friend, who picked up the current (third) edition. I began to study it in more detail because of some of the questions he was asking. The third edition lacks what cohesiveness the second edition had. I agree with the one poster's comments about code fragments - it is much more difficult to keep track of where you're at if you're trying to work through the examples. The second addition displayed classes in their entirety, highlighting the new code as they went - very easy to keep track of context and overall functionality. And if you're not trying to work through the examples, then you really have no idea if the author is doing a good job of explaining/teaching or not.

The second edition also provided an XML file to use so your results would match the book. I can't find anyplace in the third edition where an XML file is provided for input. I have no idea what you're supposed to use to try to get the results the author shows in the book. Major oversight.

It's too bad the second edition really is too far out of date to recommend - it's a far better written book. I would look elsewhere before I'd buy the third edition.

Comments about oreilly Java and XML, Third Edition:

I can't speak to the other commenter's difficulty with the examples as I've not really worked with them yet, but I can say for sure that the prose content has been invaluable to me in understanding both the XML landscape in general and the Java implementations in specific.

The five stars are intended to offset the one-star temper tantrum so that casual readers of this page won't see an overall one-star rating and move on, which would be an injustice. If not for that, I would probably knock off one star for the high price. But I get the content with my Safari subscription and physical copies are readily available from used-book vendors for much less, so I'm satisfied.

Thanks to Mr. McLaughlin & O'Reilly for this helpful resource.

Comments about oreilly Java and XML, Third Edition:

The folks at O Reilley should be ashamed to put out such junk.

It's as it this book has gone through three editions and the book refers to things that were probably in earlier editions of the book.

The same goes for the source code.

The book descends into a myriad of code fragments, the majority of which aren't housed in a class, so when you try and reconcile things to the book, examples are either missing or it's as if you've got a download for a completely different book.

To top this off Brett glibly refers to to an email address for OReilly for questions.

I've posted countless ones to him and the folks at O'Reilly and sent in fixes to buggy code.

Not once has either party responded or acknowledged this fact.

I'm so disgusted with the whole process I vow to never buy another book from O'Reilley ever.

There couldn't give a toss mentality sucks as does this book.