IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Microsoft SQL Server(TM) 2000 Programming Step by Step
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Rebecca Riordan
Rating: 5/5
Title: Microsoft SQL Server(TM) 2000 Programming Step by Step
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Rebecca Riordan
Rating: 5/5
Once again Rebecca has taken a difficult topic - SQL Server 2000 - and turned the complexitities of the topic around. I have found this book to be an excellent guide to using Microsoft SQL Server 2000, and a good reference to fall back on.I would recommend this to anyone who is either planning or currently doing work with SQL Server 2000, you will find this to be an invaluable additional to the reference material included with SQL Server.Buy it today, you will not regret 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
There's so much wrong with this book that I really don't know where to begin, but here's my top ten in no particular order:1. It's written very, very poorly. Everything from silly, gradeschool analogies to terrible grammar, to convoluted explanations can be found in abundance. I literally laughed out loud at some of the horrendous prose the book serves up. 2. The book is loaded with errors. I've found so many I've quit counting.3. The book is nowhere near advanced. Were that not in the title, I guess that would be permissible, but it is, so the book should live up to it.4. Despite the subtitle on the back of the book, "Practical solutions to common T-SQL problems," the book is about as impractical as they come. Many of the techniques (when they work at all) are not practical in the real world. Handling complex numbers in T-SQL isn't practical, for example, because it's too slow and doesn't correct rounding errors. The authors never mention this.5. The book is terribly uneven. You can tell multiple people wrote it. You find everything from differing code formatting styles, to different writing styles, to differing opinions on how to address a particular problem. These guys obviously don't know each other well and aren't yet on the same page.6. Too much similarity to the BOL. There are far too many things that appear far to similar to the BOL. There are tables in the book, for example, that are virtually identical to their BOL counterparts. I didn't buy this book to get a printed version of the BOL. I get the BOL for free with the product and can print it if I want.7. No originality. There's no technique in this book that I haven't seen in at least one other that predates it.8. No deep insights. The book is nothing more than a hackneyed collection of code tricks that have appeared elsewhere. I want to know *how* the language works, not just see some code trick that some newsgrouper thought was neato.9. Too much padding. There's far too much whitespace and padding in this book. Without the strangely formatted source code (which appears to be laid out to use as much page space as possible), the excessive whitespace, pictures, tables, etc., this book would be about half as long as it is. It brings to mind the old Wendy's commerical: "Where's the beef?!"10. Horrendous organization. The book is all over the place in terms of topics. It makes no sense. It looks like a hodgepodge of things the authors thought might fill a book. It's a shame that such a mess was actually published.There are some "books" that should not see the light of day. This is one of them. Save your bucks and get a real book.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Web Application Development with PHP 4.0 (with CD-ROM)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Tobias Ratschiller, Till Gerken
Rating: 3/5
Title: Web Application Development with PHP 4.0 (with CD-ROM)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Tobias Ratschiller, Till Gerken
Rating: 3/5
This book seems to concentrate more on program writing concepts than it does on actual PHP. Your could get more code examples from reading the online help. Actual PHP explaination and concepts aren't actually presented until the 6th or 7th chapter(more than halfway). There is not a PHP command reference anywhere in the book. I have bought the PHP Essentials book in an effort to obtain a reference.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP Developer's Cookbook (2nd Edition)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Sterling Hughes, Andrei Zmievski
Rating: 5/5
Title: PHP Developer's Cookbook (2nd Edition)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Sterling Hughes, Andrei Zmievski
Rating: 5/5
I stumpled upon this book by accident, and only after 10 minutes of reading, I just had to get it. The book is targeting at experienced php programmers, and assumes good grasp of php and its functionalities. Unless you are have gone through at least one other book (like Wrox's PHP programming) and have had some serious project, you may not fully understand the need for some of these techniques.For example, php has specific functions written for each database. This cause portability problem of the code when switching databases. We all know a databases API is badly needed, and quite a few books have touched on this topic, but none which actually go through the code and explain in detail how they work, how database wrappers are created and used. Another example is the session handlers. Almost every php book includes a chapter on session, and briefly mentions how we can write our own session handlers, but they read more like a reference book. PHP developer's cookbook, again, actually take you through the steps of create them and how to incoporate them into your scripts. Other examples in this book include: how to interface with other programs and languages(sockets, COM, Java methods and classes). How to work with php images functions, php XML functions, ZEND API.Again, I wish I have found this book ealier, it would have saved me a bunch of headache and time. I truely suggest this book to any experienced PHP programmers out there.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Oracle8 DBA: SQL and PL/SQL Exam Cram (Exam: 1Z0-001)
Publisher: Coriolis Group Books
Authors: Michael R. Ault, Michael L. Ault
Rating: 1/5
Title: Oracle8 DBA: SQL and PL/SQL Exam Cram (Exam: 1Z0-001)
Publisher: Coriolis Group Books
Authors: Michael R. Ault, Michael L. Ault
Rating: 1/5
Extremely bad book. It talks about items that have nothing to do with SQL, PL/SQL exam. For example: It talks about pctfree, pctused etc. These items belong in DBA not in SQL, PL/SQL. Why is author confusing people? The PL/SQL part of book is extremely week.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP Pocket Reference, 2nd Edition
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Rasmus Lerdorf
Rating: 3/5
Title: PHP Pocket Reference, 2nd Edition
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Rasmus Lerdorf
Rating: 3/5
The binding of this book really is thin and tight enough to easily swat a fly--for those of you who have already bought this book, give it a try!But really, the content of this book is hardly what one would call a reference; it's no more than a categorized list of functions with extremely short descriptions of each one. If you've ever seen or read O'Reilly's Java in a nutshell book, then you know what a reference should be like; this is not like it. I probably looked at this book a couple times only, realizing both times it could not help me. You really can't use this book to learn PHP, and it's reference is not descriptive enough, so it's a lose-lose situation. At first I was disappointed when I ordered it online thinking I wasting away... perfectly good [money], especially since I can find all and more I need of reference at PHP.net, but then I realized this book is perfect for your bookshelf when you need a really thin book to fit in between other books to preven them from wobbling or swaying, giving a perfect snug fit. Don't buy it if you don't need it. But buy it if you don't care about wasting [money].
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL Server 2000 Developer's Guide
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: Michael Otey, Paul Conte
Rating: 5/5
Title: SQL Server 2000 Developer's Guide
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: Michael Otey, Paul Conte
Rating: 5/5
If you've tried finding answers about SQL Server on Microsoft's Web site, you already know that Microsoft's documentation is a mishmash of manuals, technical notes, and forum discussions. It's virtually impossible to get a clear picture of how to use SQL Server from this stuff. SQL Server 2000 Developer's Guide is a great "master index" to SQL Server 2000 -- it covers everything! But more than that, it provides complete, _working_ examples on the accompanying CD, which is a vast improvement over Microsoft's unusable code "snippets." I especially like the charts that relate SQL Server features to tasks and capabilities. This makes it easy to figure out what SQL thing to use to accomplish a particular task. Better, the book gives you step-by-step procedures so that you do things in the right order, rather than thrashing around in Microsoft's peculiar dialog boxes. This book doesn't cover every aspect of SQL Server in detail -- it's an essential adjunct to Microsoft documentation rather than a replacement for it. But I never needed a replacement to the manuals, just a map with example code and lots of helpful tips. That's what SQL Server 2K DevGuide is!
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Developing Client/Server Systems Using Sybase SQL Server System 11
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Authors: Sanjiv Purba
Rating: 1/5
Title: Developing Client/Server Systems Using Sybase SQL Server System 11
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Authors: Sanjiv Purba
Rating: 1/5
* Bad index, so I can not use it as a reference book.* Chapters 1, 2 and 3, whom are they geared to? Not that much useful.* It is always hard to find answers to simple and basic questions, if exists in the book at all. * It may be useful to an expert database programmer that is Sybase beginner, as a book to get snippets of information about Sybase. That is on the bases of something better than nothing.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Professional PHP Programming
Publisher:
Authors: Jesus Castagnetto, Sascha Schumann, Harish Rawat, Chris Scollo, Deepak T. Veliath
Rating: 4/5
Title: Professional PHP Programming
Publisher:
Authors: Jesus Castagnetto, Sascha Schumann, Harish Rawat, Chris Scollo, Deepak T. Veliath
Rating: 4/5
Overall, I was very pleased with my purchase of this book. It's reasonably clear & comprehensive, and the tutorial projects illustrated the concepts well.There are many plug-in libraries available for the language, and the book seems to cover them all. I've made good use of the mysql section. The biggest complaint I have about the book is the function reference appendix: Like every other book and the official online docs, this book groups the functions by type - not alphabetically. This may be useful the very first time you encounter the language and you're wondering how comprehensive the language is, but after the first 2 minutes it just gets in the way of finding information on that particular function you read about and are trying to find again.The function reference was also a little frustrating because each function was given one very sparse line of explanation - so it's not really useable. (Alternatively, if it had pointed the reader back to the full explanation in the text, that would've been helpful.) Anyway, function references should be "handy", not "frustrating".Similarly, the HTML tag reference was seductive when I saw it in the bookstore, but it turns out to be just terse enough to be almost useless in practice. I can see why some reviewers thought it was a waste of 60 pages. Just a bit more info on the tags & the clauses, and it really would be a useful perk.But the bottom line is: With much C++ experience, and minimal HTML coding experience, I was able to whip together an impressive skeleton of a complex web-based application in six days. Management had previously thought the app would take a major companywide effort, but instead gave us the go-ahead to develop it further. Soon to be a new product line for the company!
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache in 24 Hours
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Julie C. Meloni
Rating: 5/5
Title: Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache in 24 Hours
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Julie C. Meloni
Rating: 5/5
I jumped right in on page 294 of hour 14 of the book, since I'm at the stage to pretty much skip past the introductory basics. I tackled a simple discussion forum which worked well, pretty much 'right out of the box'. I spent the last couple of hours in the usual manner: customizing slight functionality, design and layout. There were a couple of write ups on amazon which cut really bad on her. I must say that I'm before and intermediate stage in the language and she fits "just right". I really like her style -- she's independent and her writing style is really clear and clean. You can't ask for much more than that. She really takes her time with the code. Judging from the 5 pages in this mini web-application I know that she's really careful with her coding. I didn't come across even one type-o, amazing. The lady really has a lot of class. For all those who cut on her, I'll just have to say that they're not that well bred, so you can pretty much disregard what they've got to say. About debugging. LOL . . . If you're going to get involved in ANY language, whether it's scripting on the server-side or client-side or even a full programming language proper, then you'd better be prepared to learn how to debug it yourself, since there are just too many little nuances which can go wrong at any one instance anyway! My God, I've had scripts working fine, but then they broke simply because I'd go back and test them with apostrophes and quotes. So in my opinion, it's up to the person who's doing the scripting to do all the final testing before they submit it to the public site.
And to the person who said she's not complete and comprehensive, they better go back and read her book again. Every bit of information that she writes is comprehensive to the point of holding your hand along the way in a fresh and exhilarating pace. She leads in with background information which 'sets the mood and awareness' to a nodding developer who is awakened to expect what to see as she unfolds each module in an effortless, and lucid manner which allow the reader to 'see' what they'd been missing. Discovery is the author's forte. If I must say so, anyone and everyone who wishes to develop must be able to capture concepts, standards and ideals before the event (whether the event is cutting and pasting or simply knocking out code). In a word, in education, it's always the 'why' before the 'how' (why am I doing this before how to do this) and Julie is a brilliant instructor. If you're at a stage of being tired of standing in a bookstore for hours trying to comprehend what you need next and don't know what to buy, you're probably at the stage where I was before I bought this book: somewhere past beginner, but yet before intermediate (in other words, you know enough to be dangerous ;-)). You're needing to understand both concepts as well as the actual hands-on coding. Go ahead and buy her book. You'll be glad you did. Gotta walk before you can fly, but with her you're soon flying. Believe it or not, when you return to the bookstore in a month or two later, the advanced books which almost made you vomit because they contained simply too much code are now comprehendable and even desirable and you'll know what to buy almost immediately at this next higher level because of Julie's help.
One last word of note. There were only 3 movies in my life which didn't have any padding, the Titanic being one; and only a couple of books, this book is one. It's a rare book which doesn't 'waste you time' with padding (unnecessary and repetitive $hit). Her writing lends itself to always being on track and focused in showing you what she's talking about, especially her explanations when she's breaking down how the code works. She's even taken the time to break everything down for Windows vs Linux/Unix users. Amazing.
