IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL In A Nutshell, 2nd Edition
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Kevin Kline, Daniel Kline, Brand Hunt
Rating: 5/5
Title: SQL In A Nutshell, 2nd Edition
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Kevin Kline, Daniel Kline, Brand Hunt
Rating: 5/5
SQL in a Nutshell is just what the name implies: a quick-reference guide for SQL that helps you locate USEFUL information QUICKLY. The author does a great job of identifying the most common uses of many commands, while avoiding endless detail on all the obscure variations. This no-nonsense, get-to-the-point approach enhances my productivity and fits most of my needs in a reference guide. Another winner in the Nutshell series!
Product: Book Paperback
Title: MCSE Administering SQL Server 7 Exam Cram (Exam: 70-028)
Publisher: Coriolis Group Books
Authors: Jeffrey Garbus, David Pascuzzi, Alvin Chang
Rating: 1/5
Title: MCSE Administering SQL Server 7 Exam Cram (Exam: 70-028)
Publisher: Coriolis Group Books
Authors: Jeffrey Garbus, David Pascuzzi, Alvin Chang
Rating: 1/5
This book represents a low point in the Exam Cram series. I have utilized six other Exam Cram books with good results in preparing for my MCSE tests. For the most part they were right on the number. However, having taken the 70-028 Administering SQL Server 7.0 test, it is apparent that the author of this book either did not take the test himself before completing the book, or simply chose to ignore the test as a benchmark of what to write about. In a word, as a test prep resource this book is a very weak presenter of what is actually encountered in Microsoft's SQL 7.0 Admin test.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP 4 Developer's Guide
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
Authors: Blake Schwendiman
Rating: 4/5
Title: PHP 4 Developer's Guide
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
Authors: Blake Schwendiman
Rating: 4/5
I was able to take this book and apply what I had learned from it very quickly. It has also been a good help as a reference book.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: MCSE SQL 2000 Administration Exam Cram (Exam: 70-228)
Publisher: Coriolis Group Books
Authors: Kalani Kirk Hausman
Rating: 1/5
Title: MCSE SQL 2000 Administration Exam Cram (Exam: 70-228)
Publisher: Coriolis Group Books
Authors: Kalani Kirk Hausman
Rating: 1/5
I passed 70-228 on my first attempt, using this book in conjunction with Transcender and Books Online as my primary study resources. You won't get all the information you need to pass the real test from this book, but that is not its intent. It works well when used for what it is marketed as, which is a "cram" resource to supplement a sound knowledge of SQL Server 2000 administration. Especially useful for me were the practice questions, the practice test at the end, and the screenshots of Enterprise Manager dialogs. Good to have in the hours immediately before the test!The contents have a few errors, including referring to the model database as "modal" throughout the book, but that doesn't detract too much from the overall utility of the book. All in all, a good investment, considering the cost of each attempt on the real test.RD
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP and MySQL Web Development, Second Edition
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
Rating: 3/5
Title: PHP and MySQL Web Development, Second Edition
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
Rating: 3/5
I found this book to be worth its weight in gold. There are some code errors such as list 1.3 on page 47, however this does not detract from the overall quality of the book. This book assumes that you understand html and if you don't you would not realize that the missing <html> tag and improper use of double quotes (improperly escaped) would result in the error. While an error free book would be nice, I realize that errors do happen. It would be nice if SAMS would have a place on their site for submitting spotted typos for an online errata (at least this wasn't obvious when browsing their site).
As a professional developer, I found that the book offers good advice for the beginner, explains best practices very well, and takes you to the next level. The first 11 chapters may be redundant for some, and may progress too quickly for less experienced coders, however, I feel that the book covers it's bases well.
On a positive note (concerning coding errors), if you get the code to work then you have really accomplished two tasks. Learning PHP and debugging :-) Five stars minus one star for those pesky 6 legged critters that keep popping up! Anyone with previous programming experience won't have any trouble coping with the bugs.
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: MCSE System Administration for Microsoft SQL Server 7
Publisher: Prentice Hall
Authors: Jeffry Byrne, Jeffrey Byrne
Rating: 1/5
Title: MCSE System Administration for Microsoft SQL Server 7
Publisher: Prentice Hall
Authors: Jeffry Byrne, Jeffrey Byrne
Rating: 1/5
Written on beta 1, have a lot of differences with shipmenent version, a mistake or two per page. Nothing common between test question, their answers and exam sinopsis.
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: MCDBA SQL Server 2000 All-in-One Exam Guide (Book/CD Set)
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
Authors: Dave Perkovich
Rating: 1/5
Title: MCDBA SQL Server 2000 All-in-One Exam Guide (Book/CD Set)
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
Authors: Dave Perkovich
Rating: 1/5
1. The software DOES NOT WORK. The answers are often obviously wrong, the hints are not correlated to the questions, it appears the various parts of the exam were written by someone who lacked the knowledge to synchronize them (in a relational database book this is inexcusable). The practice tests have a hard time-out, and when you exit the test it locks-up your machine with an invisible pop-up window. 2. The text itself is so unbelievably brief, and so lacking in concrete examples, as to be unusable as either a tutorial or a reference guide. No trace of documentation on any but one feature of DBCC is included; Query Analyzer docs are woefully brief.3. This book will help you FAIL the MCDBA exams. Beyond that, as the other reviewers attest, the content is so off the mark that if you buy it, you will wish you hadn't.4. "No Stars" is not one of the valid selections. That's my rating.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL Server 7 Developer's Guide
Publisher: Osborne Publishing
Authors: Michael Otey, Paul Conte
Rating: 3/5
Title: SQL Server 7 Developer's Guide
Publisher: Osborne Publishing
Authors: Michael Otey, Paul Conte
Rating: 3/5
This 1000 page book is a collection of sections that feel largely cut and pasted from some manual. The rest could be written by a good secretary. Still, that would be of real use if you could find stuff; but the index is quite inadequate. There are two sections. The first half is administrative recipes, the second is programmer recipes. I give it a whole 3 stars because some of these admin recipes are useful. Like how to back up a database, some platitudes about performance, a little about cubes and replication, etc. SQL Server is a big topic; you can easily fill 400 pages just covering basics, and that's a worthwhile thing.But for a book that is supposed to be a developer's resource, in the end you get about 40 well ventilated pages that deal with the only current data access technique, namely ADO. There's a summary view of the SQL language and some rudimentary discussion of stored procedures. The rest of the developer stuff deals (superficially) with every piece of old technology, like Access, DAO, ODBC, RDO and DBLIB. There's a lot of filler; two page code quotes are followed by stultifying enumerations of what functions the code called. The Web and ASP? You get 60 flaccid pages in the last section; by the end of that chapter you are into deleting rows, and then onto 4 pages on Interdev, but there are, mercifully, lots of pitures. Why is it that they make you feel like you're lucky to even be getting that last chapter?The problem all around is that this is all very superficially treated, with a lot of white space, pages of double-spaced code, and pictures. I don't see what you could possibly develop, based on this book. If you have progressed to the point where you have doubts and questions, it's very unlikely you will find the answers here. This is more of a "don't rock the boat" sort of book, and it's an OK intro. $ is a little steep, considering that $ also buys you something the author put his heart and mind into, like "Pro SQL Server 7.0 Programming" by Robert Vieira. A more accurate title would be "A reluctant developer's introduction to SQL Server". If your favorite tools were VB3 and Access, and you think all these newfangled things like COM and OOP and Java and XML and UML are just "fads", then this is maybe the SQL book for you.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Professional PHP Programming
Publisher:
Authors: Jesus Castagnetto, Sascha Schumann, Harish Rawat, Chris Scollo, Deepak T. Veliath
Rating: 3/5
Title: Professional PHP Programming
Publisher:
Authors: Jesus Castagnetto, Sascha Schumann, Harish Rawat, Chris Scollo, Deepak T. Veliath
Rating: 3/5
This is a very good book. It's not only the list of all of PHP command, but it also has some chapters called Case Study, where it explains about making shopping cart and bulletin baord with PHP and MySQL. But you have to know C and C++ before you read this book. I know C but I don't know C++ (the OOP). That's why I stop reading this book, and buy some OOP book. Maybe I'll continue to read it after I finished my OOP book.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Oracle Reporting: Queries With SQL Objects
Publisher: Komenda Pub Co
Authors: Gary M. Lewis
Rating: 5/5
Title: Oracle Reporting: Queries With SQL Objects
Publisher: Komenda Pub Co
Authors: Gary M. Lewis
Rating: 5/5
This is a great book. I use it every day since it is a simple, yet complete, resource. Anyone who needs to write SQL queries or reports should have this book at their fingertips. Excellent examples and explanations of any SQL function you could ever need.
