Casanova Voltaire said
Although Microsoft has moved on to VB.net, many developers are still using VB6. It has become increasingly hard to find VB6 XML info on, say, MSDN, so a book like this is essential.

The code examples are clear and practical. The book manages to work well both as a how-to and a reference. If I were to nitpick, there are two things would mention. First, because of when the book was published, it does not cover the most currenrt version MSXML. However, porting the code samples to newer versions of the DLL is quite easy. Second, the book does not come with a CD. An HTML or PDF version of the book, with a searchable index, would be sweet.

Overalll, though, this is a good deal if, like so many, you are still working with VB6.

Steve Caruso said
I purchased this book to learn to do DOM programming, not to use the code provided by the authors. I was hoping for clear examples, instead I got a book that expects me to download their sample code or type it all in (and there is ALOT) in order to easily follow the samples. Typically this would be fine, but a majority of the functions and classes you can download are poorly explained, or not explained at all. This book is more like instructions on how to use a lot of code written by the authors to manipulate XML.
I own two other WROX books, these book were easy to follow and gave just the right amount of code to get me going. This book does neither. Big disappointment.

Anonymous said
The following is a sentence from page 131 paragraph 1 of this book: "After declaring a generic Node object to serve as the parent node for the new node, and a variable to hold our function response, which we optimistically set to True - which will be changed if our attempt at adding the node fails, we check to see if the node index is within bounds, using IsNodeIndexOK, described just after this function."

The logical flow to the entire book in not much better.

This makes learning anything about XML and VB difficult. I have spent more time attempting to determine what the authors are tring to say than I have learning about XML.

I was able to work with the sample code to some extent. But even the sample code was incomplete and more difficult to follow than necessary.

With a complete rewrite this could possibly be a good book.

Anonymous said
This is has been a disappointment for me. I purchased this book because of a project I am working on. It told me everything I already know and gave terribly laid out examples.

I was never quite sure working through the examples if the code was required or if the Authors were merely showing us what they could do with XML/VB.

Christopher said
I looked for a book that would explain how I can use msxml.dll. This book had lots of examples that I used in my own app. The content was accurate, and simply laid out. Its worth the money!