XML Reference Guide

Mar 14, 2003

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When our benevolent editors here at InformIT.com suggested that we guides should come up with a list of our favorite books, I'll admit that I did panic just a little bit. It's not that I don't read books. Far from it! I'm a book animal, especially when I'm learning something new. But I'm a generalist, as you can see from the wide range of topics I cover here in my little corner of the Reference Guide world. What's more, while I do own some physical books, I tend to lean more towards using Safari, which gives me instant access to the books I need, for as long as I need them, and then I clear them out.

All of that is my way of letting you know that if you're looking specifically for a list of good XML books, this isn't the place to find it. Check out the individual guide sections instead. No, here you'll find a wide spectrum of books that cover all different aspects of creating XML, web services, grid, and autonomic computing applications.

For example, I do have a few books on the basics of XML development, such as my own, XML Primer Plus. I'm biased, yes, but I like the fact that it tells me how to do what I need to in whatever language I happen to be using at the moment, covering Java, C++, Visual Basic.NET, Perl, and PHP. Not that I don't have books that are more specific, though, such as Processing XML with Java™: A Guide to SAX, DOM, JDOM, JAXP, and TrAX, and C++ XML.

I also tend to gravitate towards books that take a complicated specification and translate it into something a bit more readable, such as XML: The Annotated Specification, XQuery from the Experts: A Guide to the W3C XML Query Language and XPath: Navigating XML with XPath 1.0 and 2.0 Kick Start.

Also, I highly recommend Effective XML: 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your XML. It digs into those areas of the spec you probably glossed over, answering the question "when am I ever going to use that?" It also tackles some of the more common practical issues behind using XML.

I do have a couple of web services books, such as Understanding Web Services: XML, WSDL, SOAP, and UDDI, but here I've been mostly concentrating on the larger strategy issues, especially as the focus moves from "web services" to "service oriented architectures". To that end, I recommend books such as Developing Enterprise Web Services: An Architect's Guide or Service-Oriented Architecture: A Field Guide to Integrating XML and Web Services.

In fact, I can't stress enough the importance of strategy, and particularly design. After all, what good is an application that's technically correct, but badly designed? To that end, my bookshelf includes books on application design (Design Patterns, Patterns: Applying Pattern Approaches, UML Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modeling Language, Third Edition, Use Case Modeling) as well as more specfic design issues, such as XML Data Management: Native XML and XML-Enabled Database Systems and XML Distributed Systems Design.

When I do get into specific web services topics, though, I tend to concentrate on security, with books such as Secure XML: The New Syntax for Signatures and Encryption and Understanding Public-Key Infrastructure: Concepts, Standards, and Deployment Considerations (Yes, I know this is not a "web services" book. But it's about security, and that's what I'm focussed on right now.)

Of course, the time I'm most likely to try and pick up a book is when I'm working on something new, such as grid or autonomic computing. (If I'm lucky and there is a book, that is!) Here I've got Autonomic Computing, Grid Computing and The Grid 2: Blueprint for a New Computing Infrastructure. In preparing to do some grid work, I also picked up Oracle Application Server 10g Essentials, since OAS 10g has grid capabilities in it. I should also note that this last book also includes instructions for working with the XML and web services capabilities in the new Oracle products.

Much of that makes me philosophical, though, thinking about what else might be behind it. Autonomic computing makes me think of Minding the Machines: Preventing Technological Disasters. And some books aren't technical at all. For example, David Brin's novel, Earth, isn't a technical book at all, but it's view of a near-future world is a good harbinger of what is to come. Whether Brin was just extrapolating a world-wide information infrastructure and its social implications from then-present events or whether he provided a jumping-off-point many like me have chosen to use I can't say; I wasn't paying attention back then. Either way, it's turning out to be pretty accurate, in the overall sense, and it's a great read, and one of my favorite books of all time.

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