IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Professional PHP Programming
Publisher:
Authors: Jesus Castagnetto, Sascha Schumann, Harish Rawat, Chris Scollo, Deepak T. Veliath
Rating: 5/5
Title: Professional PHP Programming
Publisher:
Authors: Jesus Castagnetto, Sascha Schumann, Harish Rawat, Chris Scollo, Deepak T. Veliath
Rating: 5/5
Excellent and clearly written book! I read it and I was able to concoct a decent looking web application using Oracle in a week! This book was written with PHP3 in mind and should be updated with the tricks like start_session, session_register, foreach and alike, but altogether, it's an excellent introductory text, especially if you have a C++ experience. Authors did a great job and I can only recommend the book.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL Server 2000 Stored Procedure Programming
Publisher: Osborne/McGraw-Hill
Authors: Dejan Sunderic, Tom Woodhead
Rating: 1/5
Title: SQL Server 2000 Stored Procedure Programming
Publisher: Osborne/McGraw-Hill
Authors: Dejan Sunderic, Tom Woodhead
Rating: 1/5
I am beginner in SQL and XML. This book as very well written and organized. The code is ease to follow. The Explanation is short and right on target!
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: MCSE Training Kit : Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Database Design and Implementation (Exam 70-229)
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Microsoft Corporation
Rating: 5/5
Title: MCSE Training Kit : Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Database Design and Implementation (Exam 70-229)
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Microsoft Corporation
Rating: 5/5
if you are a SQL developer and you want to pass the exam just read this book with some practice test like selftestsoftware and you will pass the exam,this book is really informative telling you what you want to know (even if you are a SQL developer),i don't know why other reviews didn't like the book(maybe they didn't get the practice test with the book),this is the only book prepare you for the exam.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL: From Novice to Professional
Publisher: Apress
Authors: W. J. Gilmore
Rating: 5/5
Title: Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL: From Novice to Professional
Publisher: Apress
Authors: W. J. Gilmore
Rating: 5/5
I recently finished reading this book, and have found it to be a comprehensive yet also user-friendly reference. It is rare to find this combination in a programming book, because the two are usually mutually exclusive. Based on my past experiences, how-to books are either very informative but too complicated for a beginner, or easy to understand but lacking in depth. Too often, those who are knowledgeable speak about a topic at a level too difficult for the layman to grasp.
This is not so with W.J. Gilmore. He is clearly an experienced programmer, in his thorough explanations of the intricacies of the language. What sets him and this book apart however, is the way he welcomes the beginner in his straightforward approach to the various topics. He covers the full spectrum of PHP5 / MySQL capabilities, and also elaborates on other closely related areas such as Apache, RSS, Smarty, and SQLite to name a few.
This book could very well be titled PHP / MySQL: And Everything Else Under the Sun. I bought both this and the companion text Essential PHP Tools, by David Sklar. Not to fault Sklar, but much of what is in his book is already covered in Gilmore's. Such topics include the Smarty templating engine, SOAP, and XML parsing.
I am a big adherent to the "So What" adage / principle. So, what does this mean for you, the end user, my fellow consumer and aspiring PHP5 programmer? It means that if you are looking for a volume which not only informs but also teaches, look no further. There are plenty of books out there that act as encyclopedias, but this one serves as both reference and guide.
If you are considering Gilmore's book amongst other options, purchase this one first and give it a read-through. If you still aren't satisfied, then look to other books to enhance your knowledge. My hunch is that as you progress in your understanding, you will find this book to be not only informative but also foundational to your programming skills.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP Web Development with Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Rachel Andrew, Allan Kent, David Powers
Rating: 3/5
Title: PHP Web Development with Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Rachel Andrew, Allan Kent, David Powers
Rating: 3/5
Having read the rave reviews for the this book of these other authors on Amazon, I was excited get started with this book learning how to actually use the tools that Dreamweaver provides for PHP based website creation. I admit I was a little disappointed but did learn alot about how to use Dreamweaver with PHP especially after repeating the examples more than once.
To be fair, the only part of the book that I wanted was how to use Dreamweaver's PHP features which cannot be figured out on one's own. The book includes chapters on web standards such as CSS and XHTML as well code reuse, debugging and error handling, and extension use and writing. I read the web standards chapter and glanced through the others because code reuse and debugging are easier to figure out and more or less similar to other development environments or roll your own situations. Also to fully disclose I'm not more than a beginner at PHP, but have programmed in other languages. I have worked through the O'Reilly intro book and a self-assigned exercise I invented for myself. I was really hoping for a leg-up with Dreamweaver. I found the results using this book mixed. So much for disclaimers.
There are two example applications used in the book. Sometimes the notes on the examples boil down to "do this step now so that it will work later" and not enough generalized explanation of the tools used to get the work done. I would have appreciated a little more bird's eye discourse on how the tools in Dreamweaver (behaviors, recordsets, and the fields and buttons and other form elements used with them) are supposed to be used together.
The other note I have is the books writing is for some reason sometimes hard to follow because it seems they have left something in their commentary out. Now this of course may not be true in your case as it was for me.
What I did learn from this book is enough to use the basic php tools in Dreamweaver, so I do overall give it a plus, just not a rave. For example, I learned that each page maintains its own recordsets and recordsets can be cut and pasted between pages. I learned that field entry validation is accomplished by a simplified javascript behaviour which for real applications would probably have to be reworked. (The book does tell us where to get a better third party form validator though). Most valuable for me were the example applications which when studied and restudied should yield some confidence with Dreamweaver's imposing toolset interface.
My opinion is that as a tool for PHP, Dreamweaver is better if the user already knows enough PHP and javascript to modify the basis that Dreamweaver offers. It's still good if you don't but better if you do. Overall, this book has added to my ability to work with Dreamweaver in PHP so I would recommend it.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL In A Nutshell, 2nd Edition
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Kevin Kline, Daniel Kline, Brand Hunt
Rating: 2/5
Title: SQL In A Nutshell, 2nd Edition
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Kevin Kline, Daniel Kline, Brand Hunt
Rating: 2/5
This is not meant to be an in depth study of SQL, but a quick reference, which is what the the Nutshell Series is all about. Great companion to the Transact-SQL and the MySQL books, both from O'Reilly.Don't let the negative 'light weight' reviews turn you away. If you need something quick for a SQL reference, buy this book.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP and PostgreSQL Advanced Web Programming
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Ewald Geschwinde, Hans-Juergen Schoenig
Rating: 2/5
Title: PHP and PostgreSQL Advanced Web Programming
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Ewald Geschwinde, Hans-Juergen Schoenig
Rating: 2/5
The first thing that you will notice about this book is that it is littered with coding, grammatical and spelling errors. So much so that after a while you will begin to lose all respect for the writers. Not a good start.Next, you will realise that the content in this book is quite random. It is apparently "outside of the scope of the book" to discuss very useful string maniplution functions such as "strtr" and "strstr" (& others). Similarly the writer assumes that the code: if ($a)
is logically equivalent to:
if (isset($a))
which is just plain wrong (Page 54 & others). This could mislead readers into writing buggy PHP.Furthermore, the language used is so childish that one must wonder how it was ever published. Often-used superlatives such as "countless," "endless," etc. are very frustrating to read and not even technically accurate in most cases. It is difficult to find concrete examples, but I can guarantee that you will begin to skim-read most of the content in this book to avoid the writers' inaccurate, childish words.Readers new to databases and coding will find this book a confusing read. Quite complex ideas such as 'function overloading' are somewhat assumed knowledge. On the contrary, very simple concepts such as if/else statements are discussed in inordinate amounts of detail.Readers experienced with other databases and programming languages will find this book frustrating. The concepts that are covered in detail are generally very simple ones. The more complex ideas discussed in this book are rarely explored in any useful amount of detail.I still, however, gave this book 2 stars. Some of the content is covered well and I did learn a few useful tricks here & there. It is also quite useful as a reference tool (the index isn't bad) - but beware of the coding errors!
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP3: Programming Browser-Based Applications with PHP
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
Authors: Dave Medinets
Rating: 2/5
Title: PHP3: Programming Browser-Based Applications with PHP
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
Authors: Dave Medinets
Rating: 2/5
While this book is great for beginners to make a kick-start, almost everything covered in this book is available on the Internet, either on newsgroups/mailing lists, or php-related websites. Nothing original, no tips & tricks, just plain reference/tutorial.If you are just starting writing in PHP, this book is a very good reference.If you are programming on PHP more than a year, you don't need this book anymore, as you know Altavista and php mailing list.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 7 for Dummies
Publisher: For Dummies
Authors: Anthony T. Mann
Rating: 2/5
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 7 for Dummies
Publisher: For Dummies
Authors: Anthony T. Mann
Rating: 2/5
While this book maybe less than what a seasoned DBA maybe looking for it is non the less an excellent book. The author wrote the book using Beta 3 and I used it against RC-1 of SQL 7. There were some differences but not enough to interfere with the authors clear introduction to SQL 7.I believe you will find SQL Server 7 for Dummies to be a superb introduction to SQL 7 and as only one of two books on the subject in print at the time of this review it is the least expensive and most informative.Regards
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Hitchhiker's Guide to Visual Basic & SQL Server: William R. Vaughn (Microsoft Programming Series)
Publisher: Microsoft Pr
Authors: William Vaughn
Rating: 1/5
Title: Hitchhiker's Guide to Visual Basic & SQL Server: William R. Vaughn (Microsoft Programming Series)
Publisher: Microsoft Pr
Authors: William Vaughn
Rating: 1/5
This book was recommended to me by by a Microsoft Trainer. I bought the book, but didn't really use it for almost 6 months. I felt it was a little 'talky' and did not address specific issues I was interested in at the time. However, as I've progressed with SQL server, I've realized how good this book really is. It gives an excellent understanding of the underpinnings of SQL server and the different VB interfaces. It helped me through some difficult problems by giving me a better understanding of what was going on at the server level. You cannot rerally use this book as a reference tool. There is not much sample code. You need to read it cover to cover to get all of its benefits. I highly recommend this book.!
