Java and XML

Acknowledgments

As I look at the stack of pages that comprise the manuscript of this book, it seems absurd to try and thank all the people involved in making this book in only a few paragraphs. However, as this is arguably simpler than covering the entire realm of Java and XML in just under 500 pages, I am certainly willing to attempt it; for those of you I forget, please forgive me in advance!

This book was initiated by a call on Thanksgiving weekend, 1999, from my editor, Mike Loukides, which came as I was feverishly writing another book for O’Reilly. I was a bit dubious about putting a book I was very passionate about on hold for six months, but Mike was as adept at convincing me of the importance of this book as he has been at editing my words and making them useful. As I look back, this was easily the most enjoyable and exciting thing I have ever done in my technical career, and I owe much of that experience to Mike; he guided me through a very difficult first few chapters, allowed me to vent when I had to revise the XML Schema chapter three (yes, three!) times due to revisions of the specification coming out, and was also an all-around musical guy when I needed to take a break. Without him, this would certainly not be the high-quality book we both believe it is.

Additionally, I had a supporting cast of family and friends that made the amount of time and effort needed to make this book happen possible, and even enjoyable. My mom and dad, who corrected my grammar daily for eighteen years of my life; my aunt, who was always excited for me even when she didn’t know what I was talking about; Jody Durrett, Carl Henry, and Pam Merryman, who spent more time making me a good writer than I had any right to expect; Gary and Shirley Greathouse, who always reminded me to never settle; and my grandparents, Dean and Gladys McLaughlin, who were always there in the wings supporting me.

I had an incredible group of technical reviewers, who made this book both accurate and relevant: Marc Loy, Don Weiss, George Reese (who managed to get an entire chapter added in response to his comments!), Matthew Merlo, and James Duncan Davidson. James in particular was helpful, as his willingness to correct minor errors and be brutally honest with me was instrumental in reminding me that I am a developer before I am a writer.

I also owe an incredible debt of gratitude to Jason Hunter, author of Java Servlet Programming (O’Reilly & Associates). This book, though started in November of 1999, experienced a rebirth in March of 2000 as Jason and I spent an entire afternoon sitting on a lawn in Santa Clara griping about the current Java API offerings for XML. The result of this discussion was twofold: first, we developed the JDOM API, covered in this book (with help and encouragement from James Davidson at Sun Microsystems). We believe that this API will be instrumental in bringing Java and XML more in line with each other, as well as keeping the focus of using XML on the Java programming language and usability, rather than on vague concepts and obscurity. Second, Jason has become an invaluable friend, and has helped me through the often confusing process of completing a book and being an O’Reilly author. We spent entirely too many evenings talking for hours into the night across the country about how to make JDOM and other code samples work in an intuitive way.

Most importantly, I owe everything in these pages to my wife, Leigh. Miraculously, she has managed to not kick me out of the house over the last six months, as I have been tired, inaccessible, and extremely busy almost constantly. The few moments I had with her away from writing and my full-time consulting job have been what made everything worthwhile. I have missed her terribly, and am anxious to return to spending time with her, my three basset hounds (Charlie, Molly, and Daisy), and my labs (Seth and Moses).

And to my grandfather, Robert Earl Burden, who didn’t get to see this, you are everything that I have ever wanted to be; thanks for teaching me that other people’s expectations were always lower than I should be satisfied with.