Eric, why don't you write a review for these products and send it to bookreviews@javaranch.com ? We just started a great new Book Reviews forum for featuring reader opinions about Java products. Your review may be really helpful for hundreds of people. Thanks!
------------------ Ajith Kallambella M. Sun Certified Programmer for the Java�2 Platform. IBM Certified Developer - XML and Related Technologies, V1.
Open Group Certified Distinguished IT Architect. Open Group Certified Master IT Architect. Sun Certified Architect (SCEA).
Package includes: Cdrom CBT of 10,000 lines + of code and 14 hours of audio: format HTML and MP3.How to program XML Book: 900 pages. CDROM with Apache webserver, Xalan, Xerces and cocoon for XML. *CBT: Computer based training on CDROM I purchased the Complete XML training course 2 days ago and all I can say it is the Best XML CBT/Book on the market ! The CBT is over 14 hours of audio that explains 10,000 lines code. The CBT is in HTML format with mp3 files embedded in the HTML pages. Just click examples on the menu and then click on an Icon of a BUG with a trumpet and you hear Deitel explain the code examples line by line for 27 chapters and 14 hours! There is over 10,000 lines of XML code in this book and CBT. Here is Table of contents for the book and CBT: ( The chapters are the same for book and CBT )
2 Introduction to HyperText Markup Language 4: Part I 3 Introduction to HyperText Markup Language 4: Part II 4 Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) 5 Creating Markup with XML 6 Document Type Definition (DTD) 7 Schemas 8 Document Object Model (DOM) 9 Simple API for XML (SAX) 10 Case Study: XmlMessenger Program 11 XML Path Language (XPath) 12 XSL: Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) 13 XSL: Extensible Stylesheet Language Formatting Objects 14 XLink, XPointer, XInclude and XBase 15 Case Study: Message Forum with Active Server Pages 16 Server-Side Java Programming 17 Perl and XML: A Web-based Message Forums Application 18 Accessibility 19 XHTML and XForms 20 Custom Markup Languages: Part I 21 Custom Markup Languages: Part II 22 XML Technologies and Applications 23 Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) and Microsoft BizTalk? 24 Bonus Chapter:Introduction to Scripting with VBScript� 25 Bonus Chapter: Introduction to Active Server Pages (ASP) 26 Bonus Chapter: Introduction to Perl Programming 27 Bonus Chapter: Introduction to Java 2 Programming Appendix A HTML Special Characters Appendix B HTML Colors Appendix C ASCII Character Set Appendix D Operator Precedence Charts Appendix E Number Systems Appendix F Career Resources Appendix G ActiveState Perl Appendix H Registering an ODBC Data Source Appendix I Installing a Web Server
If one needs to brush up on their HTML, the CBT has 2 chapters on HTML 4.01 and one should listen and learn since it is best to know HTML before learning XML. The most important chapters in this book are 5 through 14 and 18 through 23 which is the core of XML.
The book and CBT is not only written and explained in a clear way, but is also very Java Centric! The Soap chapter on the CBT has code examples on how to use SOAP with Java ! Not ASP or .NET or C sharp. The DOM and SAX chapters also are great because when you click on the example, you can see Dom and SAX examples traversing XML trees with the Java Virtual machine running ! (All of the DOM and SAX chapters use Java. ) And last the chapter on server-sided Java, explains e-commerce very well with XML, Extensible Server Pages (XSP) , Servlets, JDBC, with Shopping cart, database, login, logout examples. Since there is no chapter on Java message boards go here for free open source XML/Servlets/JSP messageboard called JIVE: www.coolservlets.com The Book and CBT cover ASP and Perl messageboards with XML. My only complaint is that the XML code is written for IE 5.0 and 5.5. Most of it should work with Netscape 6.01 > also the audio files are in mp3 format, So if you have linux or mac , you should be able to see the example code and listen to mp3's ( audio folder on cdrom ), with MAC and Linux it is possible that some of the code examples when Run may not work. The XML code examples with MAC and Linux you should see just fine when not Run.
Summary:
Overall this Training course CBT and Book 1-10 is a 9. It would be a 10 if the CBT could run on Linux and MAC the same way as Windows. To run them on Linux and MAC go to folder on cdrom audio and click each audio file for example listed: Chapter 5 example 5.3 audio file in Chap5 folder 05FIG03.mp3. It would have been better if the audio files where in wav format also since the music industry is going to ban mp3's so they will not work on harddrives or mediaplayers. ( I hope they fail ! since they are going to punish those who do not break the law ! end of rant.
If one does not know XML or just the basics or if one is an intermediate XML programmer who wants to brush up XML skills, then This book is for you. Also it helps to know Java, since many examples use Java in this book. The book and cdrom are very dense with information and have very little fluff or Marketing propaganda, the CBT is great to learn XML, the book since it is 900 pages is best for a reference. Anyway, this package is the best single source on XML and is worth the cost many times over. Review by: Erich Brant www.firewallfortress.com The site will be up soon !
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