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
Wonderful book for advanced SQL developers. Skips the basic stuff you can read in BOL and gets down to exactly what advanced developers can't find anywhere else.This book gave me new approaches and ideas for programming with TSQL that I haven't found anywhere else.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Joe Celko's SQL for Smarties: Advanced SQL Programming (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems)
Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann
Authors: Joe Celko
Rating: 5/5
Title: Joe Celko's SQL for Smarties: Advanced SQL Programming (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems)
Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann
Authors: Joe Celko
Rating: 5/5
This book is one of the first references I have found on SQL that doesn't spend 75% of the book discussing simple Select, Update and Delete statements. This book covers a lot of areas that makes it easy to find what you want in one source. I would be hard pressed to find a better book on this subject.
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 7.0
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Ron Soukup, Kalen Delaney
Rating: 4/5
Title: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 7.0
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Ron Soukup, Kalen Delaney
Rating: 4/5
If you are looking for a basic introduction to SQL Server this is not the book for you. However if you are looking for a book that give the next level of understanding over every other SQL Server book out there then this is definitly a book you are looking for.This book goes well beyond the basic create a database, backup a database, modify a table, add a user, with a ton of screen shots formats of the vast number of books now available on SQL Server to explore the more technical details of the product that provide real guidance. In working with DBAs that I have had to bring up to speed on the product, I have found that this book is an excellent "next step" after they come back from DBA training.The authors provide the reader with an understanding of what is going on under the hood of SQL Server. Their explanation of both the use of system tables as well as their content is second to none. The archtectural overview and performance tuning are the best I have found. There is really no other book out there today that drills down on this information to the depth and with the intelegence of the authors.The one gripe I have, and why I am not giving it 5 stars, is that the locking section could be better. There are locking situations I have had occour while using the product that the book does not address.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Professional SQL Server 2000 Programming
Publisher: Wrox
Authors: Robert Vieira
Rating: 2/5
Title: Professional SQL Server 2000 Programming
Publisher: Wrox
Authors: Robert Vieira
Rating: 2/5
big disappointment!!!! for programmers that are looking for Programming ODBC SQL Server Applications... no covering at all for general database access APIs (odbc,oledb....)
Product: Book Paperback
Title: McSe Readiness Review Exam 70-028: Administering Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 (Mcse Readiness Review)
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Jill Spealman
Rating: 4/5
Title: McSe Readiness Review Exam 70-028: Administering Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 (Mcse Readiness Review)
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Jill Spealman
Rating: 4/5
This book allowed me to pass the 70-028 exam successfuly. The combination of questions and cases presented in this book are very accurate to the exam. During the exam, just reading the question and identifying the pattern with a question on the book was very often, that allowed me to save significant amount of time. In particular I believe that the Troubleshooting area is where this books really shines. I only whish the book had even more cases. I certainly recommend this book as a valid way to check your readiness before you take the exam.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL Fundamentals
Publisher: Prentice Hall
Authors: John J. Patrick
Rating: 5/5
Title: SQL Fundamentals
Publisher: Prentice Hall
Authors: John J. Patrick
Rating: 5/5
This book has a unique approach by mirroring concepts between Microsoft Access SQL and Oracle SQL so you can understand the differences between them as well as how to adapt your coding to work in both. Because of how involved this can get, it may be more suited to intermediate and advanced programmers rather than beginners. The accompanying CD-ROM includes all the code from the book.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Transact-SQL Programming
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Lee Gould, Andrew Zanevsky, Kevin Kline
Rating: 1/5
Title: Transact-SQL Programming
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Lee Gould, Andrew Zanevsky, Kevin Kline
Rating: 1/5
Since the book says it was published in 1999, I don't understand why it doesn't cover SQL Server 7.0 better. It should not have been published w/out decent 7.0 coverage. Worse, the cover claims it covers 7.0, but the only real 7.0 coverage is in a single appendix. This borders on false advertising. Had I known this when I first looked at it, I would not have bought it.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Advanced Transact-SQL for SQL Server 2000
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Itzik Ben-Gan, Tom Moreau
Rating: 1/5
Title: Advanced Transact-SQL for SQL Server 2000
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Itzik Ben-Gan, Tom Moreau
Rating: 1/5
This book has far too many holes. There's too much stuff left out. We spend all day talking about Itzik's coding style vs. Tom's, but we don't ever talk about statistical functions, star-schema joins, performance tuning, or the myriad other Transact-SQL related topics. Intead, this is a poorly done one-off of magazine articles that weren't that good in the first place...
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Sams Teach Yourself Transact-SQL in 21 Days (2nd Edition)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Lowell Mauer
Rating: 1/5
Title: Sams Teach Yourself Transact-SQL in 21 Days (2nd Edition)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Lowell Mauer
Rating: 1/5
This book spends 500 pages exploring what's already covered quite adequately in the Books Online. Why would anyone write a book that does this? Also, there are several glaring ommissions. As a beginner, I found this book to add little to what's already provided with the product.
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: Oracle8i Certified Professional SQL & PL/SQL Exam Guide
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
Authors: Jason S. Couchman
Rating: 3/5
Title: Oracle8i Certified Professional SQL & PL/SQL Exam Guide
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
Authors: Jason S. Couchman
Rating: 3/5
I was a DBA two years ago. I had about 3 years experience using Oracle. I found this book to be a good review, though I found myself finding various errors. Some errors were typo's, some were just my own disagreement with the author. I also felt like the author didn't have much experience as an Oracle DBA--this may be unjustified, but it was my feeling based on reading his examples and comments. Nonetheless, the sections of the book match up with the overview of knowledge required by the OCP test 1Z0-001 very well, and by design. I just read through the book and took one of the sample tests. Taking the real test, I scored 55/57 (39 is passing), so I think the book significantly helped me prepare. Another problem with this book is that it is not followed up by others in this series. Now I am ready for the next test, but guess what, no book! That's right, I have the option of buying the book with all five tests, but not one book per test, like this one. I think I'm switching to the "Exam Cram" series due to that (even though I hate the title!)I hope this helps,
Regards,
David
