Book Review: XML For ASP.NET Developers

In July of 2000 I got my hands on the alpha .NET bits. I started messing with the alpha bits and began reading any and all articles/books I could find (there weren't many!). I quickly realized that XML was going to be much more of an integral part of my development toolbox. XML was created and available long before ASP.NET came about. But, with ASP.NET, it has never been really easy to consume and manipulate XML.

So, a couple months passed and there were still no XML book available. It became clear to me that I was going to have to wait close to a year before a publisher was going to publish an XML/ASP.NET book. I routinely checked at (http://www.dotnetbooks.com) and finally a XML/ASP.NET book appeared on the 'Future Titles' section of the site. The XML/ASP.NET book was published in August 2001 and is called "XML For ASP.NET Developers".

I like to read book reviews and I know what types of things I want to know about a book. I will try to address the key pieces of information that I think will make deciding if "XML For ASP.NET Developers" is the book for you, an easy question.

Author: Dan Wahlin
Publisher: SAMS
Pages: 484
Chapters: 10

Chapter 1: XML and ASP.NET Development
Chapter 2: XML for ASP.NET Basics
Chapter 3: XPath, XPointer, and XLink
Chapter 4: Understanding DTDs and XML Schemas
Chapter 5: Using the XmlTextReader and XmlTextWriter Classes in ASP.NET
Chapter 6: Programming the Document Object Model (DOM) with ASP.NET
Chapter 7: Transforming XML with XSLT and ASP.NET
Chapter 8: Leveraging ADO.NET's XML Features Using ASP.NET
Chapter 9: SQL Server 2000, XML, and ASP.NET
Chapter 10: Working with ASP.NET, XML, SOAP, and Web Services
Index

While there is a chapter to introduce you to some XML basics, you will probably want to have read an XML book to get the most out "XML For ASP.NET Developers". In my opinion, XML beginners will have a very difficult time and mid-level XML developers will struggle through the book with some success. As for the ASP.NET covered, you can get by quite easily with a medium level of ASP.NET knowledge. So, you should be more of an advanced XML developer and a medium to advanced ASP.NET developer to get the most out of this book.

One bad part of my "experience" with this book had nothing to do with the book, per se, it had to do with my lack of XML knowledge. I didn't understand what XSLT was, let alone how to use it. I fully understand what the DOM was. I could go on but the point is, you need to understand these fundamental parts of the XML "puzzle" so to speak.

The second bad thing about this book is that the sample code is presented only in C#. I believe you can download VB.NET code but that doesn't help those of us who like to read when we are not in front of our computer.

The third and final bad thing about this book is it's excessive use of Response.Write. You should avoid excessive use of Response.Write in favor of concatenation using either the & sign (VB.NET)/+ sign (C#) or the StringBuilder class. The StringBuilder class should be used when you intend to perform 5 or more concatenations for maximum performance.

Dan covers the most important pieces of the XML/ASP.NET/ADO.NET puzzle for developers. Things like rendering XML documents using ASP.NET, creating/editing/saving XML documents, interrogating the DataSet to save/retrieve XML, using XSLT to really leverage your XML data, and much more. I took away as much as I could with my limited XML background. I am now in the process of reading XML book. When I'm finished, I will go back and revisit many of the topics that I didn't quite "get" the first time. I can safely say that someone with a better understanding of XML would love this book.

Got you Interested eh? =) Well, then you should read Chapter 7: Transforming XML With XSLT and ASP.NET.

For the appropriate audience, I would rate this book an 8.5 out of 10.

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