IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL Anywhere Studio 9 Developer's Guide (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Wordware Publishing, Inc.
Authors: Breck Carter
Rating: 5/5
Title: SQL Anywhere Studio 9 Developer's Guide (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Wordware Publishing, Inc.
Authors: Breck Carter
Rating: 5/5
I am an experienced developer who is new to SQLAnywhere. This book is an awesome supplement to the SQL Anywhere documentation.
The book is easy to read and contains important details & subtleties about SQLAnywhere development. The material in this book saved me hours & hours of time & dramatically shortened my learning curve with SQLAnywhere. I particularly like the organization of the book - the content and order of the chapters is marvelous.
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Kalen Delaney
Rating: 4/5
Title: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Kalen Delaney
Rating: 4/5
We recently moved from Informix to Sql 2K and found this book very useful. Thanks to this and Henderson's book we were able to make the migration in 6 months. We actually unplugged the Informix server yesterday.This book teaches how Sql works inside. The product docs don't even tell half the story, so a book like this can help fill in the gaps.
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
The World Wide Web aka www is not a straight line to information, as many computer users envision its use. The important word is "Web"..like in Spider. There is a constant network of crosshairs and links, and finding your way to a destination can be difficult. Luckily, there is a search agent called "Google'" that does all the hard work, and turns the impossible into just difficult. The book "Google Hacks" is 325 pages of information, which has one hundred tips and tools about using the service. It is well written, and even illustrated with computer windows that help readers make their Internet searches less of an ordeal. It is intense reading but well worth the effort. Although the term "hacker" is familiar as it refers to the "bad guys" in cyberspace, O'reilly is launching a new series of books which will use the term to reflect on those "good guys", who are striving to make it a better world.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: The Rational Guide to: SQL Server Reporting Services (Rational Guides)
Publisher: Rational Press
Authors: Anthony T. Mann
Rating: 4/5
Title: The Rational Guide to: SQL Server Reporting Services (Rational Guides)
Publisher: Rational Press
Authors: Anthony T. Mann
Rating: 4/5
While not a deep technical treatise on the topic, this book will get those just starting with reporting services working quickly. If your evaluating RS for use and don't have the time for full fledged training, this book will allow you to install the server, configure basic security, and start generating simple reports. Keeping in mind that you will not find all the answers here, this book is succinct and delivers the essentials.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: From Access to SQL Server
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Russell Sinclair
Rating: 5/5
Title: From Access to SQL Server
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Russell Sinclair
Rating: 5/5
This is a great book in that it targets a specific need, and fills it. After developing in Access and programming with VBA for four years I thought I could handle moving to SQL Server without a great deal of assistance. Not true. There are lots of things different - lots of 'gotchas' that exist in SQL Server as do in every development environment. Learning them through trial and error is not a pleasant experience. This book help you avoid dead ends and move your project to completion as painlessly as possible. In particular I appreciated the help with the decision to use ODBC or an Access project and how to approach stored procedures and use them to best advantage. Rarely have I come across a book where just about every paragraph, no every sentence - contains useful information. This one does. It makes for kind of a dry writing style, but if you can picture having a highly experienced expert at your shoulder as you migrate your database from Access to SQL Server, whispering tips at the appropriate times, then you will know what this book can do for you.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Hitchhiker's Guide to Visual Basic and SQL Server
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: William R. Vaughn
Rating: 4/5
Title: Hitchhiker's Guide to Visual Basic and SQL Server
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: William R. Vaughn
Rating: 4/5
This is one of those books I'd like to complain about, but can't. The only thing lacking is more code examples. I would recommend getting Sussman's book ADO 2.0 to supplement this book.
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
I have not yet finished the book. I'm half way through it and I find it to be one of the best resources out there. I plan to go for MCDBA and I think this will help me a lot. Along with the other two training kits, I think this is the right formula. Do remember, that you must understand the product to clear these SQL 7 exams. I'll post a final review after finishing the book.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Advanced Transact-SQL for SQL Server 2000
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Itzik Ben-Gan, Tom Moreau
Rating: 4/5
Title: Advanced Transact-SQL for SQL Server 2000
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Itzik Ben-Gan, Tom Moreau
Rating: 4/5
I read this book basically cover to cover and recommend it to database and application developers interested in a very readable and informative text detailing most of the new features introduced in SQL Server 2000, specifically User-Defined Functions, Cascading Referential Constraints, Indexed Views, INSTEAD OF triggers, Distributed Partitioned Views, along with the new data types (bigint, table variables, and sql-variant), and the new functions SCOPE_IDENTITY() and IDENT_CURRENT().The authors don't just discuss the new features, but give concrete and practical code examples illustrating each of these features. Additionally, while the book deals very thoroughly with the SQL Server 2000 features listed above, it also provides code to emulate most of the features in pre-SQL Server 2000 installations. As such, the book is an invaluable reference to those who are not able to currently implement SQL Server 2000, but need the functionality.I was particularly impressed that the book provides an entire chapter dealing with a very efficient and practical method of handling hierarchical relationships in SQL Server. This is a topic that most other books on the market either ignore or just skim over, and IMHO this one chapter is worth the price of the book.The authors also frequently present alternative coding options, and then discuss the performance of each option. SQL Server has a number of options to present the relative performance of various coding techniques, and this book is one of the few that goes the extra mile in presenting how to do the analysis to get the most out of SQL Server.The only criticism I have of the book is that the authors appear a bit too willing to accentuate the positive aspects of each feature. I'd prefer a more in depth discussion of the pros and cons of employing various options. For example, Indexed Views are a wonderful technique for OLAP applications, but can have severe negative performance consequences in OLTP applications. While the authors mention this, I felt that a more thorough discussion of when to use and when not to use Indexed Views was warranted.However, this is essentially a minor criticism, and overall the book, IMHO, achieves its goal of presenting coding topics and techniques for the T-SQL programmer wishing to gain a better understanding of how to utilize T-SQL to its fullest.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Php Fast & Easy Web Development (Fast & Easy Web Development)
Publisher: Premier Press
Authors: Julie C. Meloni
Rating: 4/5
Title: Php Fast & Easy Web Development (Fast & Easy Web Development)
Publisher: Premier Press
Authors: Julie C. Meloni
Rating: 4/5
Either of Julie Meloni's PHP books (PHP Essentials and PHP Fast and Easy) are great books to begin with for those who want to learn about PHP and MySQL.
Julie teaches by example with simple scripts that build upon what was learned in those before it. The accompanying web site is very good, which I find essential for any programming book as there are likely to be bug fixes needed and updates posted.While her two books cover much of the same territory they use (mostly) different script examples so I found both of them to be worth having. The more examples I can see of working code, the better I can understand it. I will buy any other books that Julie writes.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Transact-SQL Programming
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Lee Gould, Andrew Zanevsky, Kevin Kline
Rating: 5/5
Title: Transact-SQL Programming
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Lee Gould, Andrew Zanevsky, Kevin Kline
Rating: 5/5
I've owned this book for over two years and I still go back to it as a reference. It covers Sybase SQL Server 11.5 and Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 (with limitted coverage of 7.0) so it is now a bit dated for Microsoft, but is still viable for Sybase use.I would love to see an updated version of this book for the Microsoft side. But this book is an excellent reference for determining the difference between the Transact-SQL languages in Microsoft vs. Sybase. The Microsoft and Sybase T-SQL languages were similar when this book was written, but have probably diverted even more since MS bought the license for SQL Server from Sybase. As much as I would love to see an updated version of this book, the new version would probably be more difficult to write.It's still a great reference for Transact SQL and I can't knock the book for age when it's a classic.
