XML is now the established standard for platform-neutral data storage and exchange, separating content from presentation. Its popularity is due to the flexibility of the language and the ability to reuse the data in a variety of ways. XSL is a key technology for working with XML, and is comprised of two parts: XSLT is the official language for transforming XML from one format to another, whether for restructuring/selectively processing the data or presenting the data for display; XSL-FO is a proposed vocabulary for incorporating information concerning how the document should be arranged for presentation. A related standard, XPath, is the language for addressing specific parts of an XML document.

I would not recommend this book to others.


Seriously lacking in example explanations   January 22, 2002
 7 out of 7 found this review helpful

To be fair, this is not an easy subject. However, they give a short chapter on XPath, and then thrust you into XSLT. That would not be bad IF, during their weak XSLT explanations they would also explain the XPath in their examples. Not only are the explanations weak, but the writing style of the authors is not clear and intuitive. Don't get me wrong, they do explain them, but not clearly.

I have been reading Wrox books for several years now, I have always learned a lot from them, but I have to say this is the absolute worst Wrox book I have ever read. I would suggest finding a different book.

Sorry Wrox, I normally very much enjoy your books.


This is book is a god-send!   December 14, 2001
 5 out of 5 found this review helpful

I'm a developer currently working on a large-scale multi-platform project, which uses XML and XSL extensively.
The book seems to cover all aspects of XSL in great depth, with plenty of code to illustrate how to apply the techniques the authors introduce.
As a programmer used to more traditional procedural languages, I hadn't realised the paradigm shift that working with XSL entails, but this book has kick-started my enthusiasm for XSL, and has shown me what it can really do. The stylesheets I'm writing now are going down very well at work, and one in particular completes its transformation almost 50 times quicker than the code we had previously (no exageration)!

I'd have to disagree with one of the previous reviewers who says it is concerned solely with MSXML!! Although it does cover this technology in one chapter, this isn't a surprise as the book tries cover all aspects of the XSL field. Most of the book is concerned with platform-agnostic tools and techniques, based on the current W3C standards. We use a lot of java in my company, especially as servlets, and this book was pretty indispensible when I was trying to get my stylesheet to work in tandem with servlets and JSP. The one gripe I have is that the book is rather skimpy on Formatting Objects, and if that's your thing you might be disappointed.
Nevertheless, I'd recommend this book to anyone seriously working with XSL, and although it's not a book for novices, it's an excellent reference that you'll keep coming back to.


wrong book name   August 26, 2001
 9 out of 15 found this review helpful

On page 122 the author say:"XSLT 1.1 changes recommends that the node-set() be deprecated" Then, the author begin to use node-set() to make some long examples to explain several important concept like "param", "variable", "include", "import"... I do not understand why. Many important( if not most ) examples are depends on "MSXML" own extensition. I would suggest the book should be named as "Professional MSXML". Of course it is a good book if you prefer "MSXML".