Technically, Linux is the name for the operating system kernel at the heart of "Linux" distributions such as RedHat and Debian. When most people "use" Linux, they are in fact using the shell, the web server, or any other of the zillions of open source programs that (1) are available for, (2) are distributed with, or (3) can run atop the Linux kernel.

It used to be that there were only a few things you could do with a Linux box (namely run a Unix box as a web server) but the open source community has come a long way in providing (1) applications and (2) hardware support, so that you can now do a lot of things w/ your Linux box that used to only be doable on a Windoze box.

Schwarz et al have put together a smorgasbord of things you can do with your Linux box. These projects range from things you would tend to do on a Unix box (eg IP Masquerade, SSH, system security, even a chapter on writing Apache modules!) to stuff you would expect to need to do on a Windoze box (eg burning CDRs, syncing with Palm devices, and audio/MIDI/image/video processing).

The level of detail in the chapters (as well as the required level of Linux familiarity on the part of the reader) varies considerably -- a hazard of multiple authors and the breadth of the topics covered -- but each chapter starts off with a "Difficult-o-Meter" which more or less accurately states the level of Linux proficiency required.

That said, there are some real gems to be found in this book. There are some pretty hefty howto-like treatments in this book of topics such as system security, "undernets" (collaborative web sites), and setting up a web/IMAP/mail server.

There's a chapter on "Tools You Should Know", which lists the tools a typical Unix hacker should know: regular expressions, vi, dd, sed, diff, etc. Like some other parts of the book, this chapter doesn't give you a lot of information on these individual tools, but it brings them to your attention, so you at least know what to look for.

This book by itself won't turn a newbie into a Linux ninja after one reading, but it is a good overview of many different things that can be done with open source tools on a Linux box. I would highly encourage the prospective reader to take a look at the Table of Contents of this book. If you see a topic you're interested in, then this is a worthwhile book to buy. (I suspect that most folks running Linux at home at a beginner to intermediate level will find several bits of interest in this book.)

I've been curious about Linux for some time now. But, the only books that I could find, are all on installing, administering, configuring. Every one rehashing what the other said. None of them sold me on diving in.

When I discovered this book, I was apprehensive, but I went for it and purchased it. All I have to say is WOW! I never realised how flexible Linux is, or how much you could do.

I was thouroughly impressed on the variety of this book. I've finally been inspired to dive right in to Linux.

Are you a new Linux user, and want to learn more?

Are you an experienced Linux user, but are wondering what other interesting things you can do?

This book will teach you fun things. This book will teach you useful things. This book takes you on a tour you can't help but enjoy. At the end of the day, you'll find yourself not only entertained, but more knowledgeable about what you can do with Linux. It's probably more than you think!

This book helped me discover new interests and new possibilities, all in easy to read and entertaining prose. With that in mind, I'm giving this book the highest rating possible.

I found this book very informative on a series of thanks that fascinates me. It offers some new pictures, diagrams and data that Ive never seen before and thats always a welcome thing to have. The book itself is well written and takes a stage-by-stage look at the evolution of Soviet tank designs with the Land Battleships and how the Finish War saw the enterance of these vehicles. The only minus side that I could think of was the book seems to centre itself around the KV-1 and neglect the KV-2 a little. Apart from that fact, its a brilliant buy (for price & quality) so if anyone is interested in these tanks, id reccomend this book!

The book studies the development and use of heavy tanks by the USSR during WW2. The main tank used was the KV-1 and its numerous derivatives, a machine which the Germans found impossible to destroy during the early years of the war. The KV series were replaced by the JS series of heavy tanks and this is also indicated in Mr Zaloga's book.I found the book interesting because it gave some insight into Soviet defence planning during wartime. There are also photographs of prototype tanks which have never been usedand never published before.This is no doubt the result of the changed international environment. I found this book interesting and full of facts and the colour plates, photograghs and line drawings good illustrations of the subject of the book.

Caveat Emptor!

This eBook has NO flexibility built into it. What does this mean?
> you cannot print the eBook
> you cannot copy any text from the eBook
> you are required to download Adobe's eBook Reader (not to be confused with Acrobat. I was.)

Had I known the above, I would NEVER have downloaded it, but rather simply bought the book by mail!

"Simplicity Marketing" rings particularly true in the most developed economies around the world. Businesses and consumers are often overwhelmed with the complexity of choosing goods and services available to them, many products are full of functions and features that only a small minority of users will ever utilize. To end the prevalent brand complexity, clutter, and confusion denounced above, Steven M. Cristol and Peter Sealey offer their audience four strategies called the 4 R's: Replace, Repackage, Reposition, and Replenish. Cristol and Sealey apply each of the 4R's to a multitude of situations in which the life of businesses and consumers can be made it easier at the profit of marketers cognizant of the importance of stress reduction, simplicity, and convenience. Cristol and Sealey correctly point out that only few companies are ultimately insulated from the 4 R's imperative. Cristol and Sealey also rightly draw the attention of their readers to the fact that the 4R's must be integrated into the brand and product strategy so that the product offered is perceived as part of the solution to the growing complexity of people's lives.

Even if you don't agree with the conclusions of the authors, this book is a 'must-read'! The authors lay out a very convincing argument for the validity of their 'Simplicity' approach to marketing, and the recommendations they make to encorporate the simplicity message in your own marketing, (or otherwise) plans are straightforward and well thought out. I have found the material to be compelling and easy to read, with just enough graphics to add value without clutter. (It seems that even while writing the book, the authors to care to embody the message through the medium!) The materials in the book can be applied to a number of areas in both business and personal life to increase your 'value', and I highly recommend this!

Several colleagues have recently adopted, or plan to adopt the new textbook by JUDD, W. S., CAMPBELL, C. S., KELLOGG, E. A. & STEVENS, P. F. 1999. Plant systematics, a phylogenetic approach. ISBN 0-87893-404-9, for teaching vascular plant taxonomy. The book has some very useful introductory chapters on modern tools, which provide students with an insight on the applications of phytochemistry, mollecular biology and confection of cladograms.
Surely plant (and other) systematics bear on a traditional use of systems which have inherent flaws, given the tremendous diversity os species (or whatever you can call the final taxa) they deal with. The limitations of a patchy fossil record render phylogenetic approaches, however tempting their confection may be for a plant scientist in his search of a broader understanding, a kind of Nirvana that can never be completely conquered. We can know with some accuracy how long ago currently fossilized plants lived, but anyone familiar with the concept of convergence can hardly attribute affinities to a leaf imprint not attached to a flower or vice versa. Oddly enough, some of these concerns are addressed in Chapter 1 of the book, which is not consistent with the classification system proposed [since a large number of smaller but very important families was left out].
On p. 3 the book addresses the theory-neutral approach and clearly states it's intent to go further - into Phylogenetic interpretations. Conversely the most exhaustive numeric study of all species in a single extant genus, using all characters one can securely split into states, will shed light on their similarities, providing just another elegant and often valuable way to organize data, such as a cladogram. Distinguishing similarities reflecting true affinities from those brought about by convergence remains a cumbersome task which shall always rely on traditional methods.
The comment on p. 6 says: "We do not know the actual phylogeny of any nontrivial group of organisms [what would a trivial one be?], but instead must infer phylogenies from the data available to us." I have trouble agreeing with this point of view, since available data is admittedly patchy and often inconsistent. Paths in the true cladogram of evolution can not be retraced based on assumptions. We only have access to the dense upper surface of the crown, while the gross remainder of the tree's branches and trunk are obstructed from view. No matter from which angle one looks at it, Phylogeny draws on a generous dose of guesswork. On the practical purpose of classification, I cannot but paraphrase CRONQUIST (1988:12), one of the traditional taxonomists excommunicated in this book: "In taxonomy, consistency must always be secondary to the primary objective of recognizing natural groups on the basis of all available information".
Fitting the entire universe of traditional knowledge and current advances of plant systematics into a comprehensive book for students at any level poses obvious problems: How does one cope with limited space to organize the maelstrom of data? Our minds need to create categories in order to control storage and retreival of information. Obviously some omitting is inevitable, but at least the general idea of diversity must come across. In that sense I am especially intrigued by the comment by Michael Donoghue in the foreword "Students will readily appreciate the desirability of abandoning ranks altogether."
Following one of the modern trends, some groups of plants in the book's system, (for ex. used for Orchids in Dahlgren's treatment) are named using formal taxonomic rank, while other are not. If a group is recognized as separate, why not give it a rank? One inherent function of ranks is providing a common language - the only method of sharing knowledge currently used by humans. It must be recognized that the way in which ranks are currently applied is not problem-free: why must there be a defined number of them, let's say, between family and species? Rather than eliminating ranks, we should create new ways to apply them and see them.
No matter how deeply modern views have shifted, we can never entirely erase nor replace the results presented in old publications. Students need to know and understand important footsteps in 2 centuries of botanical investigation, which have paved the way toward current advances. We can now add new characters from an arsenal of chemical and mollecular data, ecological observations and a substantially improved matrix of geographic data. Regardless of academic rank, we are all students with a mission to discover and organize information and convey knowledge, not to ignore, misplace or ommit data. How can a student fit families like the Acanthochlamydaceae, Acoraceae, Boryaceae, Burmanniaceae, Corsiaceae, Costaceae, Didieraceae, Epacridaceae, Lemnaceae, Velloziaceae or Xyridaceae into such a system, when they are not even in the alphabetical index?
A good system must account for every component as best it can. Misplacing taxa (implicitly considered the most common flaw of traditional classifications) is still better than making-believe that odd parts don't exist. The argument of producing a textbook for undergraduate courses does not justify the omission of important plant families. Students deserve to start out at least with a complete set of families and the tools to recognize them. Even a great job of organizing a mere subset of information has very limited practical value, especially if Phylogeny is one of its main goals. Some of the smaller families which were left out are very important from both the taxonomic and the phytogeographic perspectives. Despite some hardships such as dichotomic keys starting with presence or absence of betalains, Cronquist's system remains the most recent comprehensive reference guide to the diversity of flowering plant families, simple enough to be used at the undergraduate level.
Though data from modern sources, such as molecular and chemical, are used in the introductory chapters, it is not quite clear how this data was usen in confecting the classification by JUDD et al., and there is no way of knowing whether the new system proposed shall hold its consistency after all omitted families of vascular plants are included in the data.

The second edition (2002) has been much expanded (from 464 to 576 pages) and has been adjusted to keep up with the (headlong) developments in this field. It also includes more descriptions of families.

In some ways the book has not changed. It very much looks the same since the same illustrations were used. It still has only limited usefulness as a systembook in that coverage is far from complete. The appendix on "Botanical nomenclature" is still a soft spot. Not only is the (badly) erroneous bit on the naming of cultivated plants still there, but the slanted view of the ICBN has worsened (the ICBN even being called "Linnaean" in a bit of blatant forgery of history) and the PhyloCode is plugged.

Nevertheless the times they are achanging, and those desiring to change with the times will find the second edition a work they need to be familiar with.

The book of W. Judd is essential to all Botany student and studious of Systematics and General Botanical. For the ones that still feel difficulties in the comprehension of the concepts of Phylogenetic Systematics, the clear text and explanative allows a very clear vision of the whole process. The approach of the initial chapters, mostly of the chapter 2 is too much elucidative, allowing to the reader if involve with the study themes, learning simultaneously all vision of the phylogenetic systematic current. It is a book that can't miss in shelf of any botanist or studous of plants.

watch the movie its a lot easier and no brain power is needed

This is amazingly well crafted for a movie novelization. Explains all the background details that the movie skips over...reading the book made the movie comprehensible. Best novelization I've ever read.

I loved this book. I would strongly recommend it to anyone. I thought that all of the personal info on Ethan really helps you get to know him. This book is a page-turner and a must-read!

The description of the book has more meat than the book itself. This disappointing book is a 15 short chapter breeze through a multitude of subjects, and does not linger long on any single subject. There are some nice diagrams and ten thousand foot views crammed into 374 total pages (the page count vs. chapter count alone should indicate how superficial this book is). An example is the 21 pages devoted to weighty subjects encompassing project management tasks, configuration management, verification and validation, quality assurance, decisions and risks. Any one of the topics would have merited at least 20 page in a serious book on systems engineering. Useful to sales and marketing types who are selling systems engineering services, and executive management who might like a quick overview of systems engineering. This book is useless for technical professionals.

This book is a great introduction to the system engineering process. It might be lightweight for a practicing system engineer, but for an IT professional whose background is service delivery, production support and data center operations this book opened a whole new world.

An example of how this book opened my eyes is the way configuration management is explained, and how it fits within the system engineering process. IT professionals with my background are subject matter experts in change control; however, few of us (certainly myself) realize that change control is a subset of a much larger picture. Every part of system engineering it covered in sufficient detail to understand the basics. This understanding created, in my case, a desire to further research some areas in greater detail. Overall, seeing the process from a high-level view provided some unique insights about what is missing in IT management that can be filled by borrowing from our system engineering brothers and sisters.

I found this book valuable because I did not have to wade through a dry manual and sort out the details in order to get a big picture of system engineering. The brief, succinct chapters and excellent illustrations provided me with a coherent approach to my own job. In fact, I personally believe that applying system engineering principles to IT service delivery and operations management will significantly improve the IT profession. As such I highly recommend this book to my peers and anyone else who needs to see the big picture of the system engineering and how its principles can be related to their job.

Stevens' Systems Engineering looks at the place ofrequirements in a world which consists of complex systems in a highlycompetitive marketplace. This may be the commercial world or equally the military-industrial world in which systems must literally do battle with their rivals.

Stevens and his co-authors (two of them from the UK's Defence Evaluation and Research Agency) know that in this environment, many systems fail, very often because they were inadequately thought out, and often also because their development projects were poorly managed. Chapter 1 begins "The world is currently gripped by changes more intense and rapid than those triggered by the ndustrial revolution..." : we are at once swept into the rich, complex, and dangerous life of real system development.

For Stevens, the problem in systems engineering is complexity, and its mastery is, as the subtitle implies, the key to success. The design of complex systems demands hierarchy - of organisations, of projects, of contracts, of documents. Hierarchy implies interfaces: if you split a system into three, you probably create three interfaces between the component subsystems. Interfaces in turn imply specialisation: someone develops the hardware; someone else, the software. Similarly, someone (the customer) writes the requirements specification, while someone else (the developer) tries to meet those requirements. This, like the prime contractor - subcontractor relationship, consists of a customer and a supplier: the marketplace reaches right into the core of system engineering.

The book therefore covers a startling breadth of subjects, but always with the same practical vision and with the same conceptual tools. The first few chapters broadly follow the European Space Agency's now-classical PSS-05 software engineering standard life-cycle phases: user requirements, system requirements, architectural design, integration (of subsystems) and verification, management.

(Requirements are involved in every one of these phases.) Once the reader is grounded in the basics, the next chapter discusses how to tailor the simple life-cycle just presented. A tell-tale section entitled 'smaller systems' gives the game away: the systems in the authors' minds are a great deal larger than the PC 'systems' beloved of advertising copywriters.

The second part of the book (chapter 8 onwards) starts by looking at more realistic life-cycles, based on the management of risk: when is it sensible to go ahead with something? The answer is, when success can be assured even if the bad risks materialize. That can only be guaranteed if the risks have been quantified. Concepts of requirement priority and benefit, risk, and cost loom much larger in the marketplace than technical issues.

The remaining chapters examine management in multi-level projects (hierarchy again), software and systems, prototyping (to control risk), information modeling, projects and the enterprise, a chapter on how to improve and a summary.

Each chapter consists of a double-page title/table of contents, overlaid on some crisp pencil artwork on the theme of engineering progress (from Leonardo's hang-glider to an agile jet). The text is broken up by plenty of simple flow diagrams illustrating life-cycles, trade-offs, business processes and information models, as well as short summaries of what the most important system documents should contain. Key points are highlighted or bulleted within the text. The chapters end with a page or two of realistically tricky exercises: the answers cannot be coded in C.

The helpful appendices include a list of websites: Systems Engineering comes with its own website which contains pointers to several related sites, and itself includes 'proposed' answers to the exercises which end each chapter. Students will find the glossary helpful and comprehensive. There is an extensive list of very varied references, and a detailed index. This book is a carefully worked out description of the process of developing any large, complex, and risky system. The book can also be read as a polemic: an impassioned plea for the discipline to graduate from its narrow roots, whether in academia or in quality control. The concluding paragraphs make it clear that system engineering is a human process, a 'game' in which there are losers as well as winners, something that can be played well, and that absolutely must be played better to limit the risks and losses that are still all too common....

The book will be of interest to several quite different communities: in particular development managers, clients having large systems developed, and students of system and software engineering will all find much that is of interest here. The book may also be a useful supplement (or perhaps an antidote) to the academic perspective on RE. Everyone should have access to a copy.

Steinglass' work is an excellent example of how Murray Bowen's family systems theory can be applied to the need to understand how alcohol becomes the central organizing princple in a family. The volume is written more for those who assist families and those in recovery, rather than the patients and family members themselves, that is, for any person in the helping professions who has a working knowledge of system's theory. Well-written, well-researched and quickly understood, it would be a good resource for anyone who deals with alcoholics, their families and adult children's issues. Again,the only drawback is that it is not for the general public but for helping agents and that is not a drawback as long as one is aware of that up front.

This is a book written about the history of the Secret Service. The author covers from the beginning of the agency to current day. The problem with this book is that it was many inaccuracies.

For example: The book lists individuals who are or were at one time receiving protection from the Secret Service. It incorrectly states that the Secret Service protected Tom Daschle and other congressional leader after September 11, 2001. The author also doesn't seem to be aware that the Secret Service is still protecting LadyBird Johnson. The book also incorrectly states that Hillary Clinton's code name is "eagle". Chapter 7, which is about the internal setup of the Secret Service, is completely inaccurate. The author states in a footnote that some information may be outdated and that the Secret Service would not respond to the author's queries. So he still goes ahead and just makes up how he thinks the agency is set up based on interviewing agents that worked in the 70s and 80s. If you are going to read this book, skip chapter 7. It's more wrong than right. The book also gives the number of agents assigned to the Presidential Protective Detail that is not anywhere near the truth. The book talks about what the author calls, "the Secret Service's Watch List and Watch Office. Disregard this information too. There are many, many more inaccuracies.

The problem with the book is that the reader does not know what is accurate and what is not. The author was too busy writing about unsubstantiated gossip instead of fact. He could have saved himself a lot of time and found out legally, what is the authority of the Secret Service and where does it come from. The author covers that for the Secret Service back in the 1860s, but he never mentioned it for today's Service.

The book also covers a lot of time second guessing incidents from the past. Although hindsight is 20/20, I don't have a problem the second-guessing. But I do have a problem with him not understanding laws and individual's rights. The author doesn't seem to understand that law enforcement cannot detain nor can they search anyone without cause.

In summary, I found the overall history of the Secret Service interesting. But inaccuracies, typos and the author's misguided opinions ruin this book. Lucky to get 2 stars.

I found this book to be very informative as to the history and structure of the modern USSS. There are somethings that could have been done better.First, it could have been about 100 pages shorter. The authors tend to repeat information over and over as if the info were going to be on a test or something.Second, the relationships wth other agencies. The authors seem to cast the USSS in a better light while making it seem that other agencies are staffed with a bunch of under-trained clowns. Federal law enforcement is full of specialties. USSS agents on protection detail are never asked to investigate gun crimes, customs violations, illegal entry of immigrants or organized crime. Agents of other agencies however are frequently detailed to the USSS.For a good read on the USSS try Dennis McCarthy's "Protecting the President" or George Rush's "Confessions of an Ex-Secret Service Agent"

Melanson does a great job of giving his readers a look inside the world of the Secret Service. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the SS, or is fascinated by government agencies in general! There are not many books available that give you a thorough, unbiased look at the Secret Service. A very in-depth account of the agency's history dominates the majority of this book, but Melanson also does a great job of showing how the agency has changed with the times. As a current applicant with the SS, I can verify that the book was right in-line with application procedures and requirements. This book gave me a better understanding and appreciation of what the Secret Service really stands for! Melanson's book is more informative and detailed than anything I have read about this unbelievably interesting agency!

This is the nonfiction telling of a married couple from North Carolina who both served in both the Confederate and Union Armies during the Civil War. It would make a great novel, but the story is told here with a few too many footnotes and not enough about the intriguing Malinda. It makes me curious to know about other women who may have served in the Civil War disguised as men.

I found this book strictly by accident at the library. Being a Civil War buff all my life and reading any biography I can get my hands on during that period, I was really thrilled when I came across this book.

It is wonderful to read about Keith and Malinda Blalock and all they endured and suffered. A great accounting of their lives and those around them. Their exploits in the mountains of North Carolina was riviting. I couldn't put this book down.

The only disappointment was the author did not get more into Keith and Malinda's lives and the lives of their children once they returned to their home after the war. It would have been interesting to read about their children that they had and their lives.

The author did a wonderful job researching the Blalocks and all that they lived through.

A must read for any history-loving person who loves biographies.

I am the grt. grt. grt. grt. niece of the "daring and notoriuous" Col. George W. Kirk. Over the years I have done a great deal of research on Kirk, and, as the author did, often came across mention of the Blalocks, and I, too, was fascinated by the couple. From what I knew of the Rebels in Blue, I was certain that if someone could do the research and connect all of the fragmented material the result would be a fantastic thriller, full of real-life colorful characters. It is a story of loyalty and rebelion, devotion and betrayal, love and hate,freinds and foes,survival and death, heroes and villains - the story of my family's heritage as well as our nation's. The end result of Steven's writing the book that I had longed for far exceeded my expectations, and I am certain that any who read Rebels in Blue will agree that this story is well worth reading.

I guess I expected that a platform independent standard such as XML would have been better expained using a platform independent language such as java. For the unix/java engineers out there....this book contains much useful information and don't get me wrong, I learned a lot. The question is, would I have learned as much or possibly more if I didn't have to put up with 90% of the code examples written in VBScript? Many examples require Internet Explorer. Content was up-to-date and informative but somewhat repetative (12 authors).

The book covers too many topics and just few are developed in deep while others are superficially introduced because not yet standardized at the time of print. The book claims it covers the following topics: XML, XSLT, DOM, DTD, SOAP, XLink, XPointer, XPath, WAP, WML...and more; but just XML, Schemas, DTDs and SOAP could almost fit the book's size.

Chapters don't follow a very logic thread and it doesn't deal enough with very relevant subjects. Wrox probably planned to make this book the XML bible but I think they are far from the target.

The XML declarative language, with its adaptability and expressive power, is continuing to become the language of choice for reporting and classifying information. XML is a formal grammar that captures the syntactic features of a document type definition, and its properties, syntax, and applications are discussed effectively in this book. It covers XML as formalized by the W3C and the authors show how to use XML in Web-based and database applications. Readers who have developed applications in HTML will probably view XML as somewhat more abstract, since the visual representation of the content of a document is not emphasized in XML. Readers are expected to have a background in HTML, JavaScript, Java, and ASP in order to read the book. Although XML can be learned by reading the W3C specifications, these documents are frequently difficult reading, and this book makes the learning of XML much easier than reading these specifications. They include the W3C specifications for XML 1.0 in an appendix to the book for the interested reader. The book is a little dated, since the W3C has been updating XML specs since the time of publication (especially with regard to schemas), but there is a 2nd edition coming out soon.

In Chapter 1, XML is introduced as a mark-up language and its inherent extensibility emphasized. This is followed by a detailed treatment of XML syntax in the next chapter, with emphasis placed on the hierarchical nature of XML. The authors do include a discussion of Processing Instructions (PIs) for users who want to use XML in this fashion.

Document Type Definitions (DTD) are the subject of Chapter 3, where the authors communicate effectively how DTDs formal grammar is used to specify the structure and permissible values of XML documents. The formal DTD structure is discussed, and the principles behind writing DTDs are effectively outlined. They also discuss the problems with using DTDs.

Data modeling with XML is discussed in the next chapter, with information modeling via static and dynamic models treated in detail, and the authors carefully distinguish these two approaches. The actual designing of XML documents is given a nice overview as well as the role of schemas in XML. This is followed in Chapter 6 by a discussion of the (tree-based) Document Object Model, which overviews how XML documents can be accessed by various programs. Some helpful examples are given on how the DOM can be used to create an XML document programmatically. An alternative way of processing an XML document is discussed in the next chapter on the (event-based) SAX interface. The authors outline in detail the benefits of using SAX rather than DOM. In Appendix B the reader will find the Internet Explorer 5.0 XML DOM 1.0 W3C specifications. In addition, in Appendix C, the specification for the SAX 1.0 interface is given.

The shortcomings of DTD are addressed in terms of XML Schemas and namespaces in chapter 7. Since this book was published, XML Schemas have reached W3C recommendation status as of Nov 2000. The authors give a good overview of namespaces and schemas, with helpful examples. This is followed in chapter 8 by a discussion of how to link and query into XML documents using the XML information set, XLink, XPath, XPointer, XML Fragment Interchange, with XLST covered in the next chapter. For database applications, the authors outline the differences between relational databases and XML documents. A very detailed treatment of how XLST transforms the source document is given, and the authors compare XLS and DOM transformations. An Internet Explorer XSL reference is included in one of the appendices of the book.

More details on the relationship between databases and XML is the subject of chapter 10, wherein the authors show how to store XML and how data can be communicated between different servers using XML. The issues involved when moving data from RDBMS to OODBMS or from Oracle to Sybase, are discussed by the authors. This is followed by an interesting discussion on how to use XML as a distributed component model for server-to-server communications via XML-Remote Procedure Call and Simple Object Access Protocol.

E-commerce applications are discussed in the next chapter, with EDI and its improvement via XML. The business markup language cXML , which allows business to business electronic commerce transactions across the Internet, is also treated in detail.

The authors then finally discuss how to render XML documents more readable and pleasing for the viewer in the next chapter using the style languages CSS and XSL. The discussion is really interesting, for the authors dig a little deeper into the foundations of style languages. The discussion of style languages as rule-based languages is particularly illuminating.

The next chapter is very interesting and its inclusion is actually very surprising, namely a discussion of the Wireless Application Protocol. The authors give an introduction to the Wireless Markup Language and WMLScript. The book ends with four useful chapters on case studies for data duality, distributed applications, a book catalog information service, and SOAP.

There are many applications of XML in many different areas, such as CellML (proprietary) used in cell biology, CML (Chemical Markup Language) for molecular chemistry, IML (Instrument Markup Language) for control of laboratory equipment, BSML (Bioinformatic Sequence Markup Language) for gene sequencing, and MathML for formatting of mathematical equations. I find XML an extremely powerful approach to information reporting and I am currently developing a package called NMML (Network Modeling Markup Language) for use in reporting results in simulation and mathematical modeling of networks, and FMML (Financial Modeling Markup Language) for use in reporting results in the modeling of financial instruments. This book, along with the W3C specifications, has been a tremendous help in the development of these applications.