Books in Brief

Peter G. Aitken's XML-The Microsoft Way is an introductory work that's aimed primarily at VB programmers. It provides a broad survey of both the W3C's XML standards and Microsoft's XML technologies such as MSXML, SOAP, and XDR.


May 01, 2002
URL:http://www.drdobbs.com/books-in-brief/184416438

May 2002/Books in Brief

XML—The Microsoft Way
Peter G. Aitken
560 Pages
Addison Wesley Professional, Dec 2001
$39.99
ISBN:0201748525
http://cseng.aw.com/book/

XML is an important technology at the core of many new tools and methods of communication. While the language itself is relatively simple, there is complexity in picking the right technologies to rollout your XML-based application: parsers, APIs, protocols, and so on. Aitken’s “XML — The Microsoft Way” gives you a broad survey of both W3C’s XML standards and Microsoft’s XML bearing technologies such as MSXML, SOAP (Simplified Object Access Protocol), and XDR. My last census of Amazon.com showed more than 300 XML books in print, roughly half of which are targeted at novices. Aitken’s latest book fits in this introductory level.

Aitken makes no apologies for being primarily a Visual Basic developer, thus most of the code examples center around VB. There are about 18 VB listings spread throughout five of the twenty chapters (DOM, SAX, and SOAP). In the preface, the author concedes the demise of Visual J++ as the reason for neglecting the Java platform. For other languages such as C# and C++, a small chapter showing off the particulars of their own interfaces must suffice. If you already have in mind your implementation platform of choice and its something other than VB, you might consider another book to address your needs more specifically. All the code, sample XMLs, and errata sheet are downloadable from the author’s own site.

The first half of the book is relatively agnostic with respect to the XML toolset. Although the only toolset mentioned is MSXML, these citations deal exclusively with Microsoft’s compliance level to XML instead of taking a proprietary viewpoint. XML involves a lot of specialized terminology and acronoymns, which Aitken takes pains to describe. The author starts with the simplest possible XML examples and adds more detail and rigor with each additional example. This helps you understand the main points early while avoiding the quagmire of detail present in a fully realized XML document. Even so, the first four chapters immerse you in the details of three data modeling metalanguages: classic DTDs (Document Type Definition), Microsoft’s XDR( XML Data-Reduced), and W3C’s XSD (XML Schema Definition). Of course, much of this type of material is also readily available on the Internet; e.g., www.w3schools.com.

Aitken devotes a chapter to the basics of CSS v1 (Cascading Style Sheets) before diving into the XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language). The ostensible purpose of XSL is merely to provide XSLT(XSL Transformations) to convert XML documents into renderable HTML via XSL FOs (Formatting Objects). However, the possibilities for XSLT to perform cross-application data transfer increase its scope and therefore its importance. The author concedes that XSL deserves book-length treatment to achieve a substantive description of it. (Indeed dozens have already appeared.) The XSLT and FO coverage here primarily just gives you an idea of the expressiveness of XSL.

The second half of the book emphasizes how XML relates to API technologies. The DOM (Document Object Model) and SAX (Simple API for XML) tutorials appear in small chapters with short VB snippets interspersed. The Microsoft SOAP Toolkit chapter covers the basic concepts with perhaps the simplest SOAP VB demo program possible. The .Net chapter features C# and ASP.Net code to expose the methods of the System.XML assembly. Remaining chapters cover a variety of short topics including XHTML (eXtensible Hypertext Markup Language), DHTML with IE, and using XML from ASP.

“XML—The Microsoft Way” employs a broad brush to paint a map of more than a dozen XML standards and technologies. For the most part, MSXML 4.0 and Visual Basic constitute the “Microsoft” part of the book. If this is your first foray into XML, as a developer or manager, Aitken will point you towards the emerging tools and technologies to start your journey.


Victor R. Volkman received a BS in Computer Science from Michigan Technological University. He has been a frequent contributor to Windows Developer Magazine since 1990. He is the author of C/C++ Treasure Chest, which includes 300 products on CD-ROM. He can be reached by email at [email protected] or through http://www.HAL9K.com.

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