I am a recent graduate of the Masters' Program in Information
Management and Systems at the University of California, Berkeley. One
of my emphases at
Berkeley was in XML, but, with everything else I had
to do, I didn't have time to look into
XSLT as deeply as I wanted.
Then, just last month, I had the opportunity to take a course in XSLT,
XQuery, and XSL-FO offered by Crane Softwrights, Ltd. It was a great
course, and I now feel vastly more at home in XSLT, and very well
acquainted with XQuery and FO, which I didn't know at all going into
the course. The course consisted of five 8-hour days on XSLT and
XQuery and three on FO, and covered the entire
W3C recommendations.
The instructor was G. Ken Holman, principal of Crane Softwrights and a
world-class expert in XML. Ken was a member of the committee that
developed XML and a founding chairman of both the XML Conformance
Committee and the XSLT/XPath Conformance Committee. He is co-editor of
the OASIS UBL 2.0 specification and chairman of the OASIS Code List
Representation Technical Committee.
At the end of the eight days, I told Ken how much I liked the course
and that I thought a lot of my classmates in the
San Francisco Bay Area
would be interested in taking it over the summer. After talking it
over, we decided it was worth a try to set something up for July or
August. We also thought it would be great if the course had a mixture
of full-time students and XML users from workplaces.
The course would be conducted at a hotel in the area, such as the
Embassy Suites in
Walnut Creek. Ease of access by
public
transportation, such as BART, would be a requirement. Based on the
results of the survey and success in finding corporate participants,
I'll follow up with another posting as quickly as possible.
At this early stage the dates have not yet been selected and will be
determined based on the feedback from a survey soliciting interest.
You'll find the survey at
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=7DK2sxNiXHTSQQXvtJZtcw_3d_3d
The cost is expected to be approximately US$500-US$550 per day (the
lesser price for former customers, early registration and multiple
seats).
These are the most in-depth configurations of Crane's XSL and XQuery
training classes, covering the use of every element, every attribute,
every keyword and every function of both XSLT/XPath 1.0 and 2.0 and
XQuery 1.0, and every formatting object of XSL-FO 1.0 and 1.1 with more
detail and more exercises than other available configurations of
Crane's material.
Use the links that follow to view the course syllabi:
Practical Transformation Using XSLT, XQuery and XPath (5 days):
http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/training/ptuxq/ptuxqsyl.htm
Practical Formatting Using XSL-FO (3 days):
http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/training/pfux/pfuxsyl.htm
The venue for the courses is to be determined, but will be in the Berkeley/Walnut Creek area,
California
For those who are unfamiliar with Ken Holman's extensive credentials, here's a link to his bio:
http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/bio/gkholman.htm
For those who still cannot make it to the new class, we have extended
the free worldwide shipping of our hyperlinked interactive 24-hour XSLT
DVD-ROM video product:
http://www.CraneSoftwrights.com/training/ptux/ptux-video.htm
If you are interested in having Crane Softwrights teach publicly or
privately in any area of the world, please contact Ken directly
(gkholman at
CraneSoftwrights.com).
If you are interested in
this July/August training, be quick to select your preferred dates before we lock in.
Thanks!
-Jim Miller, MIMS, UC Berkeley School of Information, Class of '09
