IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Professional SQL Server 7.0 Programming
Publisher: Wrox Press
Authors: Rob Vieira
Rating: 5/5
Title: Professional SQL Server 7.0 Programming
Publisher: Wrox Press
Authors: Rob Vieira
Rating: 5/5
Written from an SQL database expert who's ever endeavor in trying to squeeze every once of performance or milliseconds in every piece of his code. What I like best is his writing style in providing clear explainations on many complex topics which makes the book very informative and easy to read. From a professional level reader, you may find many topics that you already know about, but there will be many topics which you will find the author explained them so throughly that in the end you have yourself saying, "Oooh, so that how it is". He..he..he..
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Professional PHP4 Programming
Publisher: Wrox Press
Authors: Deepak Thomas, Wankyu Choi, John Coggeshall, Ken Egervari, Martin Geisler, Zak Greant, Andrew Hill, Chris Hubbard, James Moore, Devon O'Dell, Jon Parise, Harish Rawat, Tarique Sani, Christopher Scollo, Chris Ullman, et al
Rating: 2/5
Title: Professional PHP4 Programming
Publisher: Wrox Press
Authors: Deepak Thomas, Wankyu Choi, John Coggeshall, Ken Egervari, Martin Geisler, Zak Greant, Andrew Hill, Chris Hubbard, James Moore, Devon O'Dell, Jon Parise, Harish Rawat, Tarique Sani, Christopher Scollo, Chris Ullman, et al
Rating: 2/5
First of all, I should say that I bought this book mainly because of all the favourable reviews, and consistently good reviews seem to be a good indicator of a book's quality. Not so with this one, unfortunately.There's no doubt that you'll get a truck load of information: the book can easily be used as a weapon (let it slip from your hands onto somebody's foot and they're bound to end up in hospital). The problem is that the information is not presented in a clear, consistent manner, nor is it very well organized.Each one of the 26 chapters is written by a different author, and the authors obviously didn't spend a whole lot of time planning how the chapters would all tie in with each other. Some chapters seem to have been written by people who are less than fully proficient in English, and yet others are just badly written.This may sound like nitpicking, but when you're trying to grasp fairly complex concepts and "take your programming skills to the next level", believe me, it makes a difference -- you need to be able to follow the author's thread. You want clear, well illustrated explanations, not page after page of geekspeak glossing over stuff that you're supposed to understand but don't.And though I'm certainly no PHP genious, I do have a fairly good understanding of the basics of PHP, which has enabled me to developed a few useful applications all by myself. In other words, I'm not a complete idiot who just happened to pick a book that's too advanced for me.If you're a geek and like plain geekspeak without many examples to waste your time, then by all means this book is an excellent investment.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Beginning E-Commerce with Visual Basic, ASP, SQL Server 7.0 and MTS
Publisher: Peer Information
Authors: Matthew Reynolds
Rating: 4/5
Title: Beginning E-Commerce with Visual Basic, ASP, SQL Server 7.0 and MTS
Publisher: Peer Information
Authors: Matthew Reynolds
Rating: 4/5
I would recommend anyone buying this to at least have a sound understanding of VB and ASP before attempting to work through the book. Despite its title, it can be quite complicated in places. Certainly not for the novice - but very informative throughout and the resulting e-commerce solution is of high quality.
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
It's not really a good reference. It lacks a lot of topics, and it doesn't follow a straight line. The online manual is better.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Learning PHP 5
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: David Sklar
Rating: 5/5
Title: Learning PHP 5
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: David Sklar
Rating: 5/5
From the title I would have expected that the book spend all of it's slim 300 page frame on a soup to nuts language introduction. For the first six chapters it looks that way as it rolls through language basics, variables, conditionals, arrays, etc. But then it veers into the practical for the rest of the book and covers topics such as database access through Pear DB and the use of XML.
There is a lot to like about this book. The chapters are short, focused and practical. And I have no issues recommending the book on a technical level. Especially the database section which advocates simple safe SQL practices. In particular you should follow the advice on page 126 about using the '?' operator in your SQL queries.
There isn't much new for PHP 4 programmers looking to learn about PHP 5. In fact there is little or no emphasis placed on teaching you to write classes. The only information about classes is about their consumption. This is definitely not a book for the experienced PHP developer, but for a beginner this is one of the best.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL for Dummies
Publisher: For Dummies
Authors: Allen G. Taylor
Rating: 4/5
Title: SQL for Dummies
Publisher: For Dummies
Authors: Allen G. Taylor
Rating: 4/5
This book helps to "demystify" SQL. Before I started reading this and also "Learn SQL in 10 Minutes," by Ben Forta, I had a mortal fear of databases, one that thanks to this book I now realize is totally unfounded. This book has a lot of good technical information about SQL, but it's presented in a way that makes it easy to understand and won't "scare off" the beginners like me. I liked how the author took great pains to explain a lot of SQL commands, making them relate to the topic being discussed.The first two chapters cover relational database and SQL fundamentals. The next few chapters discuss more details about SQL, first its "languages," then how to build a SQL database, and once it's built how to retrieve data from it, and also issues relating to keeping it secure. Generally, a good "Dummies" book on a complex subject.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: The Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Ken Henderson
Rating: 1/5
Title: The Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Ken Henderson
Rating: 1/5
I recently bought this book and one titled Advanced Transact-SQL by Itzik Ben Gan. This is by far the better of the two. Compared to this book, Advanced Transact-SQL is a beginner's book. This book leaves out the BOL repeats and the strangely formatted code that takes up half a page and gets down to business quickly. The writing is crisp, witty, and will keep you engaged -- not an easy task for a book like this. I've read some good technical books in my time, but this is by far the best, SQL or otherwise.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Murach's SQL for SQL Server
Publisher: Mike Murach & Associates
Authors: Bryan Syverson
Rating: 5/5
Title: Murach's SQL for SQL Server
Publisher: Mike Murach & Associates
Authors: Bryan Syverson
Rating: 5/5
This is a good book. However, if you are just beginning to learn SQL, then you should really slug through "SQL Queries for Mere Mortals" first. Having done that, I found Murach's 2 page presentation style on each topic a very good way to reinforce what I had learned in "SQL Queries for Mere Mortals". The Murach text also teaches you the SQL extensions specific to Microsoft SQL Server 2000, and covers the UPDATE, DELETE & INSERT keywords, plus Data Definition Language and the other advanced features of SQL Server.
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
This book and SQL Server 7.0 Book on line (come with the product) helped me become a MCDBA. I really enjoyed reading chapter 13 and 14.
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: MCSE: SQL Server 2000 Design Study Guide (Exam 70-229)
Publisher: Sybex
Authors: Marc Israel, J. Steven Jones, Marc Israel, Steve Jones
Rating: 4/5
Title: MCSE: SQL Server 2000 Design Study Guide (Exam 70-229)
Publisher: Sybex
Authors: Marc Israel, J. Steven Jones, Marc Israel, Steve Jones
Rating: 4/5
Let me just get it out of the way by mentioning first that this book contains many errors - perhaps more than an average technical book. However, most are typographical and do not degrade the value of the book that much.
Having said that, the coverage of all the exam topics in this book is nothing short of superb! The explanations are detailed, clear and with numerous examples. For the purposes of the exam, I would go as far as to say that you may not need any other supplemental material (which is very rare for a study guide)!
This book covered all but 2 questions on my 70-229 exam. One of them was regarding the full syntax of OPENXML and the other was regarding Replication.
The questions at the end of the chapters are very similar to those on the test (again, rare for a study guide). If you can answer most of those questions correctly, you will do well on the real exam.
All in all, in my opinion, this is the best book out there for the 70-229 exam.
