IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: Brian Larson
Rating: 5/5
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: Brian Larson
Rating: 5/5
Microsoft's recently released SQL Server reporting solution has many powerful capabilities such as matrices, charts and graphs, subscriptions and notifications. However, these extended features have until now been largely untapped due to a lack of proper documentation. Brian Larson's book finally fills many of the gaps by covering not only the essentials of the product, but also providing a thorough examination of the more advanced capabilities. His step-by-step approach is incredibly easy to follow. In addition,the frequent screenshots and detailed index allow you to quickly identify the information you are interested in. I highly recommend this book and give it a Five-Stars rating without hesitation.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: MCSE Database Design on SQL Server 7 Exam Cram (Exam: 70-029)
Publisher: Coriolis Group Books
Authors: Jeffrey Garbus, David Pacuzzi, Alvin Chang, David Pascuzzi
Rating: 4/5
Title: MCSE Database Design on SQL Server 7 Exam Cram (Exam: 70-029)
Publisher: Coriolis Group Books
Authors: Jeffrey Garbus, David Pacuzzi, Alvin Chang, David Pascuzzi
Rating: 4/5
Today I passed the exam and this book was my main instrument during preparation.The book gives right directions and touches all the topics that you may encounter on exam. No unnecessary topics, and no topics missed. It is of a comparatively moderate volume and allows to focus on exam preparation.Of course, nothing is ideal in this world, this book isn't too. Not everything is covered with a depth necessary for exam. Sample test in the book is noticeably easier than a real exam. I also noticed some minor errors.BTW, it was my 8th MS exam (previous were 4 MCSE core exams, TCP/IP, IIS 4, Proxy 2) and I found it the most difficult. Before reading this book, I had read Special Edition Using SQL 7 (QUE) and played with MS SQL 7 for a couple of months (but I had an experience with other DBMS).SUMMARY: I recommend this book for the exam preparation but I don't recommend to rely on it as the only source of information, use at least SQL Books Online as a supplement, and of course play with SQL Server, trying and checking all unclear moments on a test database.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Creating Interactive Web Sites with PHP and Web Services
Publisher: Sybex
Authors: Eric Rosebrock, Eric Rosebrock, Sybex
Rating: 4/5
Title: Creating Interactive Web Sites with PHP and Web Services
Publisher: Sybex
Authors: Eric Rosebrock, Eric Rosebrock, Sybex
Rating: 4/5
This is the perfect book if you're planning to build a complex website and don't really know how to achieve this. If you need to build a web site with a membership system, news section, content management system, online store, process payments and track visitors, but you don't know very much about PHP scripting, don't think twice. This is your book. It just get to the point. The author gives to you all his experience building large interactive web sites with PHP. The only drawback that I can see in this book is the title. The chapter about webservices does not tell you anything about building SOAP or XMLRPC servers, instead of that, it tells you how to connect to the Amazon or Google Web services APIs and get the information you need, which is also good.I definitely recommend it to anyone with this kind of interests, even if he really doesn't know anything about PHP or MySQL.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Professional SQL Server Development with Access 2000
Publisher: Peer Information Inc.
Authors: Rick Dobson
Rating: 5/5
Title: Professional SQL Server Development with Access 2000
Publisher: Peer Information Inc.
Authors: Rick Dobson
Rating: 5/5
This book is aimed at the professional Access developer who wants to learn how to tap into the power of SQL Server, or for the professional SQL Server developer who wants to make use of the excellent front-end and reporting capabilities of Access. I found this book helpful and I don't fit either of the above categories!Rick Dobson explains in a clear and easy-to-understand manner everything that we need to get started... and then some! Everything from installing the database engines to publishing Data Access Pages on the Internet is covered. Provided that you have some experience with database development and/or programming, you will find this book to be one of the most valuable in your collection.
Product: Book
Title: PHP and MySQL For Dummies, 2nd Edition
Publisher:
Authors: Janet Valade
Rating: 2/5
Title: PHP and MySQL For Dummies, 2nd Edition
Publisher:
Authors: Janet Valade
Rating: 2/5
i'll keep this review tio the point. when learning something, I like to have straightforward tutorials that guide me step-by-step through the process of creating something. i dislike having to read through mountains of theory before even getting to a halfway decent practical. it's ok as a reference, but i felt that it didn't really give me a good enough start to utilse it as such.
i'm back to square one - looking through web page tutorials. that will teach me not to read other customer reviews!
Product:
Title:
Publisher: Rating: 1/5
Title:
Publisher: Rating: 1/5
I advice you to take a look at it to see how poorly one may organize a book pretending to be a 'quick reference'.The guy (or Osborne) makes his best in overcomplicating a search of needed information.Book is splitted in three parts with the same content and every part is also splitted in 4-5 parts sorted alphabetically - so you have a lot of 'ordered' sequences that creates complete disorder. For every command you should look through all three parts, because some (very short ususally) explanation is in part one, picture (schema) is in part two and explanations for the picture in part three. I've red tens of computer books and seen different examples, but for the first time I found a book where picture and accompanying text are splitted and put in different part of the book. It's definitely a record. And don't believe author about Informix and Sybase, because the book is almost completely about Oracle SQL, that author pretends to know. I can only imagine the level of Oracle customer support, because the guy is Senior(!) guy in Oracle's Worldwide support with the Oracle's 'Center of Expertise department'.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: The Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Ken Henderson
Rating: 5/5
Title: The Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Ken Henderson
Rating: 5/5
This book is filled with great info.... but I warn you... IF you have no clue about SQL this is probably gonna move a bit fast for you to absorb. If you've had exposure to SQL, Stored Procedures, and a programming language... it will make much more sense to you.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL Tips & Techniques
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Konrad King, Kris Jamsa
Rating: 4/5
Title: SQL Tips & Techniques
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Konrad King, Kris Jamsa
Rating: 4/5
This book has a lot of tips about SQL Server, although it doesn't say that on the cover. This was actually good for me since I was going on a job interview and I needed something like a comprehensive tips reference book on SQL (and SQL Server). I could have easily chosen a worse book. It's a bit wordy for me, and I'm not used to seeing so many typos, but considering that I have seen some terrible SQL books out there (including my college text), this book is actually well thought out.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Sams Teach Yourself PHP in 24 Hours, Third Edition
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Matt Zandstra
Rating: 1/5
Title: Sams Teach Yourself PHP in 24 Hours, Third Edition
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Matt Zandstra
Rating: 1/5
Not the first PHP book I've read. Good coverage of the incredible width of PHP facilities. Short on suggesting practical coding exercises. Sample code available (if you can find it).However (in common with most other PHP texts)it has already been overtaken by change/developments (book (c)2002, claims to be release 4.0.5 'aware'). From releases 4.1.0/4.2.0 the (PHP.INI) register_globals directive has been set to 'off' by default, and recommended to be kept that way for security reasons. Doing so will 'break' the first practical chapter ("Working with PHP") Hour 9 (Forms), and impacts Hours 13, 20, 24 to a lesser degree (and possibly others) - per hundreds of cries for help on PHP Internet discussion lists.Either wait for a book that refers to this MAJOR change in PHP, carefully study the PHP ChangeLog (not for the faint-hearted or raw beginners!), or trawl the discussion list archives to teach yourself about the new 'superglobals'.Sorry!
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Oracle PL/SQL Programming, Third Edition
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Steven Feuerstein
Rating: 5/5
Title: Oracle PL/SQL Programming, Third Edition
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Steven Feuerstein
Rating: 5/5
O'Reilly publishes good reference books. I always look for one of their books first when I am looking for a book in a given subject area. No one book in their Oracle series has it all, though. Each book covers it's subject area in depth...just make sure you get the right book! If you like the "Whatever For Dummies" kind of books, then O'Reilly books aren't for you. My only knock is that there are more books in the Oracle series than is really necessary...marketing at it's worst! Some of the seperate PL/SQL related books should have been combined into one volume.
