IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP Cookbook
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: David Sklar, Adam Trachtenberg
Rating: 5/5
Title: PHP Cookbook
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: David Sklar, Adam Trachtenberg
Rating: 5/5
This book, utilizing O'Reilly's cookbook format, starts each chapter with common tasks and describes nearly every aspect of PHP required to perform the task. I have previous Unix scripting experience and I was quickly able to develop quality PHP applications in a very short amount of time. The cookbook format allows me to easily return to important sections for refresher information.... thus making this a great learning tool and an excellent reference.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Beginning Php 4 (Programmer to Programmer)
Publisher: Peer Information
Authors: Chris Lea, Allan Kent, Ganesh Prasad, Chris Ullman
Rating: 3/5
Title: Beginning Php 4 (Programmer to Programmer)
Publisher: Peer Information
Authors: Chris Lea, Allan Kent, Ganesh Prasad, Chris Ullman
Rating: 3/5
This book does a good job to introduce PHP to beginners. The examples are pertinent and illustrate what can be done with PHP. However, some examples, pertaining mainly to filesystem operations and crypto, cannot be used "as is" on a Win system and take some tweaking to make them work, or are impossible. If you are using an Unix-like environnement, all should be fine for you and this book is a must buy if you have little or no experience ; if you are on a Win environnement, it is still great book to get some insights about what PHP is about.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: The Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Ken Henderson
Rating: 3/5
Title: The Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Ken Henderson
Rating: 3/5
Essentially a rehash of SQL techniques that exist in many other books. I was hoping of insight into (with examples) various types of SQL queries. However, that being said, if you can buy only one SQL book, this would be the one.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL from the Ground Up
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
Authors: Mary Pyefinch
Rating: 1/5
Title: SQL from the Ground Up
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
Authors: Mary Pyefinch
Rating: 1/5
I bought this book hoping for a complete, concise, and clear treatment of SQL. Unfortunately, what I got was a confusing, disorganized mess of a book whose examples are full of obvious typos (eg, they use inconsistent names for the same database columns within a single example -- didn't anyone proofread this book?), and whose explanations often do more harm than good. To take just one example: early in the book there's a 15 line SQL query full of operators the reader has not yet been introduced to, whose explanation points out that "this example includes a left outer join". Fair enough, but this is within the first 40 pages or so of the book, and the author hasn't actually told the reader what a left outer join *is*, or why the reader should care. The careless construction and copy-editing of this book makes it more confusing than enlightening. My copy will be going back to the bookstore.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP and MySQL Web Development, Second Edition
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
Rating: 5/5
Title: PHP and MySQL Web Development, Second Edition
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
Rating: 5/5
This new edition of the book is every bit as good as the previous and more, it will get you up to date with the latest PHP standards while following along with a wide variety of "projects you can actually use." Just as before, this book covers practically everything PHP: commonly used functions, regular expressions, object orientation, database design & integration, security, sessions, e-commerce, project management, useful libraries (image manipulation, pdf files) etc etc.. The code examples include a shopping cart, web forums, content management, e-mail related services, creating a site with membership, and it doesn't stop there - the book is just cram-packed full of information.Any serious PHP web developer should own this book, it opens you up to whole new world of development by relating concepts of software engineering (believe it or not) - in simplified explanations.So what's new? The PHP code and descriptions have been updated, the variety of web resources has grown, the most noticable change of all is the addition of a new chapter which touches base with XML and SOAP. It's very hard to find good PHP books these days (at least where I've been looking) and this is one of em, no complaints :-)
Product: Book Paperback
Title: The Guru's Guide to SQL Server Stored Procedures, XML, and HTML (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Ken Henderson
Rating: 5/5
Title: The Guru's Guide to SQL Server Stored Procedures, XML, and HTML (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Ken Henderson
Rating: 5/5
This is one of the few books that explore T-SQL. As a DBA I am always looking for a better, easier way to write code. This book is full of code examples and new ways to look at the material.
I hope that Ken continues writing his series. The next version of SQL Server will allow other languages in the queries. That should be a major change for us.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: The Guru's Guide to SQL Server Stored Procedures, XML, and HTML (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Ken Henderson
Rating: 5/5
Title: The Guru's Guide to SQL Server Stored Procedures, XML, and HTML (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Ken Henderson
Rating: 5/5
This book was all I could have asked for. I have been wanting to learn about XML in SQL Server for a long time. I read the Books Online, but just couldn't really get it. I mean I could write the code and I could play with OPENXML, but I didn't really *understand* what I was doing. This book changed all that. Now it all makes sense. Unlike a lot of other books, it doesn't repeat the online docs. It starts where the Books Online ends. And the sample code is really useful. The book says there are over 700 example files and I don't doubt it! The sheer number and the quality of the samples makes the book worth the price all by itself.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL Server The Complete Reference
Publisher: Osborne Publishing
Authors: Gayle Coffman
Rating: 5/5
Title: SQL Server The Complete Reference
Publisher: Osborne Publishing
Authors: Gayle Coffman
Rating: 5/5
As a experienced mainframe database programmer making a shift to the client server environment, I found it hard to come to terms with the material. My personal opinion is that Coffman has a problem getting the subject matter across to all but the most seasoned SQL Server professional. Most of what is in the text may be found within the books on line facility.I have resorted to the book by Otey and Conte 'SQL Server 7 Developer's Guide' which I found far superior, covering SQL Server 7 from the Development and Maintenance points of view, and easy to understand. .....Steve Simon
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL Queries for Mere Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Data Manipulation in SQL
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Michael J. Hernandez, John L. Viescas
Rating: 3/5
Title: SQL Queries for Mere Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Data Manipulation in SQL
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Michael J. Hernandez, John L. Viescas
Rating: 3/5
While this text may be fine for writing queries for the retrieval of data, it was useless for my task of populating an empty database from a variety of flat files.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Create Dynamic Webpages Using PHP & MySQL
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: David Tansley
Rating: 2/5
Title: Create Dynamic Webpages Using PHP & MySQL
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: David Tansley
Rating: 2/5
For a beginner like me the book was just great and I appreciated having the CD so I could easily copy and paste the code snippets.
It could have assumed more than just a linux audience as there were one or two difficulties I faced as a windows user.
