IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP and MySQL Web Development
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
Rating: 5/5
Title: PHP and MySQL Web Development
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
Rating: 5/5
SAMS got it right with this book when realising that companies and web hosts are including PHP/MySQL combos all over the place. he.net has been doing it for years and as cgi-bins become less common and people want in-line code and dynamic sites, there needed to be the killer book on the duet that always ends up dominating: PHP & MySQL. Soon, O'Reilly is going to come out with one too but if its a good as their mSQL and MySQL book, don't bother and buy this one!
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: Data Mining with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Technical Reference
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Claude Seidman
Rating: 2/5
Title: Data Mining with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Technical Reference
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Claude Seidman
Rating: 2/5
This book just likes an academic seminar paper. It's hard to understand. It's not a practical book for study data mining.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Core PHP Programming, Third Edition
Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR
Authors: Leon Atkinson, Zeev Suraski
Rating: 1/5
Title: Core PHP Programming, Third Edition
Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR
Authors: Leon Atkinson, Zeev Suraski
Rating: 1/5
First, I'll admit that I'm biased against PHP because it's such a haphazard language. I was frustrated to no end to find out that they made a huge change to the object model with this PHP 5. But, since it's helpful to know PHP, I figured I would grab a book that was written by the authoritative gurus on PHP. With that having been said ...What a joke! This isn't a programming book, it's a memoir! The authors explain PHP only to the extent to which it allows them to glorify themselves and the open source community (or as I like to call it: the confoundingly elitist hippy brigade.Part 1 is actually the most useful part of this useless book. It walks you through the basics of the language. Thankfully, it has the most examples so you can do some real learning instead of listening to their pie-in-the-sky abstraction ideas. Part 2 calls itself a "functional reference", but it's anything than that. Each entry gets a paragraph talking about the language element. But, there's no indication of how to use it -- not even an example in most cases! Furthermore, part 3 and part 4 of the book are totally useless. Yes, they explain how to code a nice sorting algorithm, use nifty graphics manipulators, and how to write efficient code. But, honestly? If you were writing code in another language, you could buy modules for sorting and graphics for about $10 each that are far easier to use and more powerful than what's given in PHP. This book doesn't cover all the bases it should about writing code well - they dedicate anout 25 pages to the subject. And, if you're concerned about writing efficient code and building sorting routines from scratch yourself, go take a class and learn to do it right! (Hint: this book actually shows you how to do it INcorrectly on occasion.)Save your money and try one of the "customers who bought this also bought" because that will tell you where customers turned to after this book completely disappointed them.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP Fast & Easy Web Development, 2nd Edition
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Julie C. Meloni
Rating: 1/5
Title: PHP Fast & Easy Web Development, 2nd Edition
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Julie C. Meloni
Rating: 1/5
I am so disapointed in this text. Not only does the content/code on the CD NOT match the text in the book, some of it is just plain wrong. An errata is available on the book's Web site to some minor credit of the author but with errors in a book for beginners is completely unprofessional. Don't waste your money on this text. Sadly, this book is rated highly by others. I wonder if they got though the code.
Update: The latest version of this book, geared for PHP5 users is a huge improvement over this text.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: The Essence of SQL : A Guide to Learning Most of SQL in the Least Amount of Time
Publisher: Coriolis Group Books
Authors: David Rozenshtein
Rating: 5/5
Title: The Essence of SQL : A Guide to Learning Most of SQL in the Least Amount of Time
Publisher: Coriolis Group Books
Authors: David Rozenshtein
Rating: 5/5
It takes a whole lot more insight to write concise, thoughtful books like this than the encyclopedias that often fill bookstore shelves.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Lan Times Guide to SQL
Publisher: Mcgraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: James R. Groff, Paul N. Weinberg
Rating: 5/5
Title: Lan Times Guide to SQL
Publisher: Mcgraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: James R. Groff, Paul N. Weinberg
Rating: 5/5
I must say, that this book is written by professionals. I have tons of books about SQL, and this book is among of the best.What is important: authors waste no time on less important stuff. Every chapter, every paragraph in this book is like a sniper shoot.All clear, all design philosophy is explained. Caveats are pinpointed, working examples provided.This book will greatly help novices, and also will be useful for advanced users.
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: OCP Introduction to Oracle9i: SQL Exam Guide
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: Jason Couchman
Rating: 3/5
Title: OCP Introduction to Oracle9i: SQL Exam Guide
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: Jason Couchman
Rating: 3/5
This book is an update from the release 8i. Looks like the author did not take the time to properly update material, the functions chapter have missing lots of the new functions in 9i, same goes for MERGE and INSERT INTO (SELECT FROM ...) statements.
I was surprised some of the new 9i stuff was not even mentioned in the book.Some of the examples are well explained, but there are some errors, you better test them and not take them as granted.You can use this book with Sybex Introduction to Oracle 9i, both will be enough to pass exam.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL: A Beginner's Guide
Publisher: Osborne/McGraw-Hill
Authors: Forrest Houlette
Rating: 4/5
Title: SQL: A Beginner's Guide
Publisher: Osborne/McGraw-Hill
Authors: Forrest Houlette
Rating: 4/5
It's probably not really for people who want in-depth knowledge about SQL and relational database.But it delivers the concept clearly without using too many words or using too many code or pictures.It's a very clear and consise book that refresh the most basic concept for experienced programmers.The style and editing makes it very easy to find the topic you want and it's a very clean book.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Hardening Apache
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Tony Mobily
Rating: 5/5
Title: Hardening Apache
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Tony Mobily
Rating: 5/5
Computer security is hard, very hard. Any reasonable attempt to make a system secure has to involve more than a choice between {none, some security features, unusable}. There are so many different things that we want to do with our software and there are probably just as many ways in which it can be attacked. In order to be able to fend off attacks, it is necessary to know what kind of attacks can occur. Finally, many security procedures must be automated, which requires generic defense strategies that are capable of recognizing an attack when it differs slightly from one that has already been planned for.
This book about the Apache server does all of that, starting with which version to use and how to install it with security enabled at the appropriate level. After these topics are covered in chapter one, Mobily moves on to descriptions of the most common attacks in chapter two and logging the interesting events in chapter three. If you are versed in security, most of the material in chapter two will be familiar, but it is hard to overstate the importance of chapter three. Being able to read an account of what has happened on a system is the only way to prove that your security measures are working and the only way to learn when you are successfully attacked. Mobily also shows you the critical steps in testing to determine if your log system is actually working properly.
Chapter four is devoted to explanations of cross-site scripting attacks (XSS). This is an attack where a web page is designed to accept input, but that input may be used to drive erroneous results. A simple, yet excellent demonstration of how this can be done is presented. While it is not sophisticated, it demonstrates how careful you must be when accepting even the most basic of inputs from a web page.
Chapters five and six deal specifically with security in the Apache server. Five explains the security modules available in Apache and six describes how you can lock down Apache by "putting it in jail." These specifics, of which there are many, should be required reading for anyone who has any hand in managing an Apache server. The last chapter shows you how to automate the security functions, clearly necessary if you are ever to get any sleep.
There is a great deal of source code used to describe how the features are implemented. Demo code is in Perl, but XML, HTML and database access commands are used when appropriate.
All around this country, companies and organizations are quietly paying out large sums of money to settle issues when their computer security was lax. Sometimes that payment is through the legal system, but the vast majority does not appear on the books. Reduced efficiency of the server, dropped and misplaced orders and greater effort by the staff are just some of the consequences of security problems. This book should be mandatory reading for all people who manage an Apache server, at $29.99 a copy it will probably pay for itself in less than 24 hours.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Professional SQL Server 7.0 Programming
Publisher: Wrox Press
Authors: Rob Vieira
Rating: 5/5
Title: Professional SQL Server 7.0 Programming
Publisher: Wrox Press
Authors: Rob Vieira
Rating: 5/5
This book is perfect. I was looking for a book that approached SQL Server from the programmer perspective and NOT the DBA perspective. That is what this book does. The author starts off assuming you are an experienced programmer but with no DB (or SQL Server) skills. This was perfect for me because he wastes no time in jumping right into the meat of SQL in a manner that is VERY interesting. Robert Vieira is a very talented writer who makes SQL Server look easy, making good use of humor along the way. The content is very thorough yet easy to read. I recommend it highly, and don't waste your money on anything else.
