IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft SQL Server 7 in 21 Days
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Richard Waymire, Rick Sawtell
Rating: 5/5
Title: Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft SQL Server 7 in 21 Days
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Richard Waymire, Rick Sawtell
Rating: 5/5
I'm not a huge fan of the Teach Yourself in X Days books but being that this was the only book available at the time, I purchased it anyway. I must say that I am completely satisfied with this one.While I was expecting a book that was published just for the sake of being published early, I got an excellent text that actually teaches the subject. Even though this book was written on the beta version of the product, the authors know what they're talking about and the errata was kept to a bare minimum (I think I found one or two sample listings to be missing a comma somwhere in the first week).If you're looking to get started with SQL 7 or learn the new interface, I would have to strongly suggest this one.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP Essentials
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Julie C. Meloni
Rating: 2/5
Title: PHP Essentials
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Julie C. Meloni
Rating: 2/5
I didn't heed the first review carefully enough. This book really is for beginner's ONLY. If the only coding you've done is to write an HTML web page in notepad, then this book may be for you. It is an excellent book for anyone who has not done any programming in PERL, JAVA, JavaScript, or C. But if you've managed to write a few lines of code, especially if you've done some PERL cgi scripts, "Professional PHP Programming" by Wrox press is much, much better. In fact "Professional PHP Programming" is so well written, clear, and repeats itself often enough, that it may be just as good for beginner's. It certainly can capture a wide audience, from intelligent newbie to professional level.I gave this book only 2 stars because I think most everyone who has stumbled onto the importance of PHP at this time should buy the Wrox book instead. However, if PHP dwarfs the visibility of PERL in the cgi realm by next year, this book may have more of an audience. It is certainly an easy, pleasant, and nice read.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Oracle PL/SQL Programming, Third Edition
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Steven Feuerstein
Rating: 5/5
Title: Oracle PL/SQL Programming, Third Edition
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Steven Feuerstein
Rating: 5/5
I am new to PL/SQL but have read other programming books.
The index & TOC work. It is easy to find the syntax of a particular feature and every feature is illustrated with many examples. The layout is clean.
A disc with sample PL/SQL is included. We've adopted some of the packages in the advanced book for use in our own organization.
The author apparently has a quite a lot of experience with PL/SQL. This is useful in describing likely cryptic error messages, PL/SQL limits or quirks. For example PL/SQL uses 'ELSIF' not 'ELSEIF'
There are jokes, but they are not too numerous or dumb.
A lot of space is devoted to source code format and good programming practice. I'd say this was wasted, if my organization's code base wasn't rife with magic numbers. In any event if the style & practice material is irksome it is easily skipped.
btw if you're thinking of buying this book, you might consider working for Habitat for Humanity's IS group. We'll give you a copy.
The $$ pay is low, but we're on a mission from god. (I use term both literally and as it was in the movie The Blues Brothers)
Send mailto information_systems@habitat.org
or visit www.habitat.or
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 book's good, but only for learning PHP properly in your own time. Its not that great as an on-the-job reference book since it does not cover everything from all angles(few books do or should). The authors all help out at phpbuilder.com and I find the search facility there more helpful for day to day programming needs. So with the book and the free, searchable, online help these guys deserve every penny they get from sales of this book.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Writing Stored Procedures with Microsoft SQL Server: The Authoritative Solution
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Matt Shepker
Rating: 4/5
Title: Writing Stored Procedures with Microsoft SQL Server: The Authoritative Solution
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Matt Shepker
Rating: 4/5
I disagree with the negative comments given to this book. Even if it IS simply a rewrite of Books Online (a complaint of other reviewers), it's done in a very easy to read style - and the order of topics covered worked well for me. I've been programming with VBA for years, but was totally new to stored procedures - and this book has me tackling stored procedures with confidence. I'm impressed. I'm guessing this is NOT a good book for the person who has been working with stored procedures for a long time and wants fine-tuning - some of the examples are a bit simplistic - BUT it IS a good book for the beginner. Maybe even more important, unlike most "beginner" books, the author includes solid conceptual foundations - explaining the why as well as the process.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes, Third Edition
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Ben Forta
Rating: 5/5
Title: Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes, Third Edition
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Ben Forta
Rating: 5/5
I absolutely love this book. I'm fairly new to relational databases and SQL, and I can say quite honestly that this is one book that never leaves my computer's side. Any time I have to write a query that goes beyond simple SELECTs, I turn to Forta's book because it offers quick, concise, and useful information on getting the job done. I've had the book for about 4 months and so far, I've been able to get answers that I can apply usefully in just minutes. It's worth repeating that I'm fairly new to all this, so my demands aren't necessarily all that great.A word of caution to other database beginners: This is ***NOT*** a beginning book on databases. Forta offers about 5 pages on database rudiments, which won't be nearly enough unless you've been exposed to the material before. For instance, if you're not familiar with the term "normalization" or the ideas behind "one-to-many" or "many-to-many" relationships, you should bone up on your basics first. If you need to learn about database basics (especially if you're using MS Access), I'd recommend "Inside Relational Databases" by Whitehorn and Marklyn.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL Instant Reference
Publisher: Sybex
Authors: Martin Gruber, Martin Gruber
Rating: 1/5
Title: SQL Instant Reference
Publisher: Sybex
Authors: Martin Gruber, Martin Gruber
Rating: 1/5
I was very disappointed with this book. It does not really serve as a reference, but a small tutorial on SQL instead, with the text crowded into a small booklet. There are few tables and even fewew examples. Also, for MySQL users: Many of the capabilities are left out. I go to a reference to look up things, not to read through several pages only to find that what I'm looking for is not there.
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
I liked this book okay, but felt it was a bit dated. I kept running into techniques that I've heard Microsoft has recommended against, like directly querying the system tables or using *= joins. Also, the book seemed uneven -- I guess that's probably due to the multiple authors, but I dunno. I bought Henderson's Transact-SQL Guru's Guide book at the same time and I'm far happier with it. It's better in almost every category and covers 7.0 extensively.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Writing Apache Modules with Perl and C
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Lincoln Stein, Doug MacEachern
Rating: 5/5
Title: Writing Apache Modules with Perl and C
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Lincoln Stein, Doug MacEachern
Rating: 5/5
This is primarily *the* mod_perl book. While mod_perl is very powerful and puts the full resources of Apache at your fingertips, you first need to know what the full resources of Apache *are*. This book does a great job of breaking down the steps of a request, outlining what you can and cannot do at each step, and providing examples of anything that's tricky.Definitely not a book for beginners, but if you're familiar with Perl and CGI and willing to learn, you've have a great toolkit you can use on Unix and Win32 systems.Both authors contribute regularly to the mod_perl mailing list (see http://perl.apache.org/) and are fantastically helpful to even novices like me. People like them make the Internet work.
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: MCSE: SQL Server 7 Administration Study Guide
Publisher:
Authors: Lance Mortensen, Rick Sawtell
Rating: 4/5
Title: MCSE: SQL Server 7 Administration Study Guide
Publisher:
Authors: Lance Mortensen, Rick Sawtell
Rating: 4/5
Note the worst book in the world, but fairly darn close. I bought three study guides for this exam and the only one that seemed to be helpful was the Coriolis Exam Prep by Talbert. It got a bit detailed in parts but was the clear winner of the three I read.
