If..Else Log

You'd be hard-pressed to come up with a longer title than that of Sas Jacob's new book. Fortunately, such verbosity is restricted to the cover as the book takes us on a exploratory tour of the world of XML. Starting with an introduction to XML, Sas walks us through some web vocabularies, XSLT and client-side scripting (including the aforementioned use of AJAX as well as Flash) before looking at using XML on the server-side.

Getting a taste

As mentioned earlier, one of the good things about Sas' book is how she has avoided the temptation for verbosity that often accompanies books on XML. Books on programming are bought and written on the premise that the information contained within would be an aid to support development but it's surprising how many books on XML allow themselves get needlessly sidetracked or over-complicate what is a relatively straightforward subject matter. Fortunately, that isn't the case here and the introduction on XML is succint and concise. Whilst perhaps lacking the commentary on the use of XML (such as the perennial argument over when to use attributes vs elements), as a brief introduction to the subject, it works well.

Likewise, whilst the chapters on web vocabularies, AJAX and Flash are perhaps best described as subject tasters, within the context of a beginners book, it makes sense. It provides enough information to serve as a stepping stone for self-exploration.

Taking a bite

Where the book runs aground is when it delves into the manipulation and usage of XML. To state the obvious, XML is a meta-language for marking up data; by itself, it's largely meaningless without a means to to process, produce, manipulate or transport it. The problem is that the book sets itself up as a book on XML and not XML with PHP or XML with C#. Hence, it has the dilemma of not going into too much detail on any given implementation whilst still providing enough information to be a valuable resource. To stay within the 416 pages of content, the book veers to much towards the former; whilst brevity was appreciated with the introduction to XML, in the case of server side XML and XSLT, there is an unfortunate tendancy towards stuntness rather than conciseness.

As a book on the subject, it is, unfortunately, somewhat lightweight. To a certain extent, it's the title that's perhaps at fault. Not being tied to a given language is more of a hinderance than a help; also, the use of a AJAX in the title is a slight misnomer given that it spends as much time on other matters as it does on AJAX.

The beginning and not the end

And yet, to decry it as being too beginner is almost missing the point. It's an introduction to XML and within that narrow scope, it works. If it's considered as part of a group of resources for development (to accompany more in-depth books on client-side scripting, XSLT and XML with server-side language), then it's perfectly fine. However, if you're considering this to be a sole resource, you may find that you will very quickly outgrow it.

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