Rating: 

For the longest time, I had heard about XML and all it could do, but never what it was. I had many misconceptions about what it did and how it worked. My little head thought that for all of the hype, it must be some super complex programming language, not something as simple as a formatted document looking very similar to HTML. When I finally figured out what XML was, I started looking online at the various sources that attempted to explain what XML was, but then they got into XPaths, XSLT, SAX and DOM, but with little to no explainations. I almost gave up on XML because I figured out how to form an XML document, but how the heck was I to get that information and make it useful?

Enter O'Reilly's Learning XML. In very clear, organized language (a common trait of almost all O'Reilly books) XML and all of it's basics were laid out before me. XSLT, XPath, XPointer, Schemas and more are all covered. The first three chapters are probably the most important to read straight through because they give you the basics of XML structure. Each subsequent chapter is organized so that you can reference them as needed to do what you need to do. The book assumes that you know nothing of XML and builds from there at a good pace. It wasn't so slow that I got bored, nor was it so fast that I felt lost.

Learning XML, Second Edition met my needs for successfully teaching me the fundamentals of XML in a non-language/platform specific manner. I would recommend to anyone with little or no knowledge of XML. From reading this book, I now feel confident incorporating XML into some of my future projects.