This book presents XML programming from a conceptual perspective, teaching not just the technology, but the background and thinking behind it. Developers learn to do it right, gaining a thorough understanding of the hows and whys from the ground up. Rather than teaching programmers to memorize specific APIs, this book teaches programmers how to think about XML programming in a language-neutral way, with examples in various languages (such as Java, C++, Perl, and VB) and provides guidance on how and when XML can be used in real-world situations.