IT programming books related reviews
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
A friend gave me this book for my birthday and I must say -- it was a very fine present indeed. I have already put several of Mr. Henderson's techniques to use in my own work. The book is to the point and has character and depth that only the best books have. The best parts are (IMHO):* The SELECT chapter -- everything you ever wanted to know about the SELECT statement, including many things that you'd never guess it could do* The statistics chapter -- a cornocopia of techniques for extracting stastical info from large data banks* The transactions chapter -- at long last, someone has finally spelled out how transactions work, with complete examples for each isolation level and complete explanation for the ramifications of each* The tuning chapter -- the A-Z of tuning T-SQL queries -- everything from query hints to bcp hints to perfmon and everything in between* The undocumented chapter -- finally someone has created a one-stop-shopping repository for that hidden info many of us in the business had used, but never had a reference forI highly recommend this one. If you buy just one SQL Server book, get The Guru's Guide.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Google Hacks
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Tara Calishain, Rael Dornfest
Rating: 4/5
Title: Google Hacks
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Tara Calishain, Rael Dornfest
Rating: 4/5
If you're looking for a book that will teach you to do more effective searches in Google... this isn't it, although it does have a fair number of hacks usable directly from the search window. You can find plenty of good information on doing effective searching in Google itself, in the "All About Google" section, where you'll find a tutorial entitled "How to Search"."Google Hacks" is really for the programmer looking to integrate Google into other web apps. While a good deal of information on the Google API can be found at Google, along with the downloadable developer's kit, this book provides a number of excellent examples of scripts in various languages. It's not a tutorial, but rather a compilation of shorts hacks and scripts that use Perl (of course), XML, Python, Java, C# and probably others I'm forgetting to add Google functionality to applications.This isn't a book for the complete novice at scripting, but beginners shouldn't be put off by it. If you have a basic understanding of Perl and HTTP there's a good deal of useful information to be gleaned here.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Google Pocket Guide
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Tara Calishain, Rael Dornfest, DJ Adams
Rating: 5/5
Title: Google Pocket Guide
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Tara Calishain, Rael Dornfest, DJ Adams
Rating: 5/5
Don't get distracted by the "operating manual for toothbrush" review below: it's a very useful little book. Yes, some information can be gathered online, and even on Google itself--but not all. I'm a fairly knowledgeable Internet user yet I've found a number of options in this book that I didn't know of before (even though I *have* read Google's online Help.) Moreover, a lot of people actually *are* "rubes" as far as the Internet, and there's nothing wrong with that, or with giving them a pocket-size guide where everything they need to know is gathered up in one place and described clearly and in a readable, systematic format. But the book is more than just that though--like I've said, I'm no rube here, yet I've found this little guide rather illuminating. Good book, good price: what else? Recommended for any Google user (is there still anyone who's not?) Get it.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Apache: the Definitive Guide (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Ben Laurie, Peter Laurie
Rating: 3/5
Title: Apache: the Definitive Guide (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Ben Laurie, Peter Laurie
Rating: 3/5
An unwelcome reminder that not everything that comes from O'Reilly is top notch.This book seems to have been written half heartedly. The explanations of many of the directives in the configuration file seem to be repetitions of online manual contents with the authors not taking the time to provide really useful insights or clarify difficult concepts.The attitude of the book seems to be: "This is what we did to get Apache running on BSD and Windows. If it helps you, great, if not, tough !"I also have a doubt about the technical credibility of the authors. Their advice seems glib and dubious at times.I have run Apache on Windows before without consulting documentation and I expected to learn something useful from this book. Not in the 1st three chapters.Not a great tutorial. Not a very good reference manual.One of the few books I would lend to someone and probably not worry about it being returned.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Programming PHP
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Rasmus Lerdorf, Kevin Tatroe
Rating: 2/5
Title: Programming PHP
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Rasmus Lerdorf, Kevin Tatroe
Rating: 2/5
I was disappointed in this book. The title implies that the book would cover PHP in the same manner that Programming Perl (from the same publisher) covers Perl, but this is not true. Programming Perl is a very good in-depth reference for Perl, and I still use it frequently. Programming PHP is much too shallow, and I usually have to refer to the online PHP manual available at php.net instead.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Data Transformation Services DTS
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Timothy Peterson
Rating: 4/5
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Data Transformation Services DTS
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Timothy Peterson
Rating: 4/5
An excellent resource of example dts packages and visual basic dts examples. A little too much of the book is devoted to practically all available tasks. Would have been more useful is the more commonly used tasks i.e. data transformation, execute sql. etc were given more attention.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Core PHP Programming: Using PHP to Build Dynamic Web Sites (2nd Edition)
Publisher: Pearson Education
Authors: Leon Atkinson
Rating: 1/5
Title: Core PHP Programming: Using PHP to Build Dynamic Web Sites (2nd Edition)
Publisher: Pearson Education
Authors: Leon Atkinson
Rating: 1/5
This book is useful as an expensive alternate to the online function list, but it really offers nothing usful in itself. If you are new to programming a book that contains mistakes mistakes in a large portion of its sample code is not very helpful in getting over the learning curve. The examples are at best half jobs. Most of the function examples are exceptionally partial, and there is little commentary to fill this hole.DO NOT BUY THIS BOOK
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL for Dummies
Publisher: For Dummies
Authors: Allen G. Taylor
Rating: 3/5
Title: SQL for Dummies
Publisher: For Dummies
Authors: Allen G. Taylor
Rating: 3/5
The book is well organized and simple for beginners to understand. It starts off with the simple stuff and works up to more complicated issues such as unions etc. If your a beginner, I recommend this book highly. If you have access to a SQL database at home, the examples are easy to follow, although depending on your database you may need to tweak the language a little.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP and MySQL Web Development
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
Rating: 2/5
Title: PHP and MySQL Web Development
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
Rating: 2/5
I did be better of reading the manual. I spotted several mistakes and several low grade examples which i thought were very decently covered in the manual.Over and above all this, the inconsistent code styles totally put me off.The only saving grace were the case studies.It was definitely not worth the money i spent.
Product:
Title:
Publisher: Rating: 1/5
Title:
Publisher: Rating: 1/5
This book is a perfect bad copy of the Oracle PL/SQL User's Guide and Reference. Errors are prevailing. Specially the Chapter PL/SQL Basics.
