IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Paperback
Title: The Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Performance Optimization and Tuning Handbook
Publisher: Digital Press
Authors: Ken England
Rating: 5/5
Title: The Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Performance Optimization and Tuning Handbook
Publisher: Digital Press
Authors: Ken England
Rating: 5/5
There is much overlap with the inside sql server 2000 book from microsoft but that book is more a detailed survey with a intuitive technical foucus while this book is a more pratical focus. These two books work together to form the ultimate 'book'. This book covers everything in detail and has many practical expamples, but the examples are not page fillers. It actulaly has many less pages than inside sql server.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Hitchhiker's Guide to Visual Basic and SQL Server
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: William R. Vaughn
Rating: 1/5
Title: Hitchhiker's Guide to Visual Basic and SQL Server
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: William R. Vaughn
Rating: 1/5
I've been using VB for years, ASP since 1.0, and SQL 7.0 since the beta. I bought this book hoping to learn some new stuff. By the first 4 chapters I've found find a lot of useless and offputting MS polemics, and a hodgepodge of information covering versions of Jet up to Access 9.0 (Office 2000?) and SQL 7.0. Makes fun of web applications because of thin-client metaphor - isn't there eenough room for all types of systems in our increasingly complex world today? This book needs to get a lot more focused. I can't believe the amount of time dedicated to even mentioning 16-bit platforms. If you need info on developing for legacy systems - use the legacy books already on your bookshelf! I recommend WROX's ADO 2.0 Programmer's reference for one - and it's smaller and cheaper. I'm not sure I'll even finish reading this one, and it definitely won't find its way into my most used books.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Programming Informix SQL/4Gl: A Step-By-Step Approach
Publisher: Prentice Hall
Authors: Cathy Kipp
Rating: 5/5
Title: Programming Informix SQL/4Gl: A Step-By-Step Approach
Publisher: Prentice Hall
Authors: Cathy Kipp
Rating: 5/5
This book is an excellent resource for a novice user of Informix. I give this one 2 thumbs up. Even my expert coworker peeks into it once in a great while. My work place has the Informix books offered by the vendor which can be highly wordy and, for me, unreadable. Also, the book by Paul Mahler, "An Informix 4GL Tutorial" is pure crap. Or maybe the title should have been, "Mahler's Only Way To Do Informix--An Unapproachable approach".I have used both the first and 2nd editions written by Cathy Kipp. The first edition used a smaller font, was easy to read and was more compact and, after using it as a beginner Informix programmer, I grew attached to it. When I started using the 2nd edition, it took me a while to get used to the larger font or the more spread out documentation. In other words, a command could be covered in a single page on the first edition making it easy to read, but it took 2 pages to cover the same command in the 2nd edition. However, the 2nd edition had more substance over all.Warning to the buyer! The books page numbers in the index and the actual pages those references are located can be a couple pages off. AFter the index was written, a few more lines were added throughout the book. This screws with your ability to find an indexed item in the book. For example, the index says: Isolation Levels p.446 but the actual page is p.448,9. Although, the plus side is the index is very thorough and make finding needed commands easily (within a page or 2).Drawback #2, as with most large paperbacks that are used on a daily basis, the book will start falling apart--pages unglueing out of the binder after a few months to a year.But again, it has definitely been an excellent resource. I almost would give this one 4 stars except, compared to the couple other resources I have seen, this one beats all the rest. Even if it has its couple of flaws.If you have any questions, I will be more than happy to respond.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Sams Teach Yourself SQL Server 7 in 24 Hours (Teach Yourself -- Hours)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Matthew Shepker
Rating: 1/5
Title: Sams Teach Yourself SQL Server 7 in 24 Hours (Teach Yourself -- Hours)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Matthew Shepker
Rating: 1/5
It only took me a few pages of reading this book to realize that I was holding in my hands a potential energy source if the power grid shuts down on January 1, 2000. If the lights go out, this book is firewood. Without a doubt, "Teach Yourself SQL Server 7 in 24 Hours" is one of the most poorly written, badly edited technical books I've read in years. I've seen worse, of course, but that was the manual that came with my stereo. But seriously, the writing in this book is so bad, I believe anyone reading it might have a hard time focusing on the actual content. The author, Matthew Shepker, often appears uncertain about his subject matter.For instance, at one point, toward the end of an exceptionally jumbled gob of misinformation on page 35, Shepker writes, "It is bad database design to have more than one column containing a phone number at which your employee might be reached."Sorry, Matthew. What you MEAN to say is that it is bad database design to have an employee's phone number appear in more than one place in a database. If it did, then every change to that number would have to be carried out once for each time it appeared. This is what normalizing is for, and lies at the heart of the reason relational databases exist. Having employees with more than one number is a problem easily solved, but having to limit the number of phone numbers you can list would actually be a problem in itself. Leaving contact information out of a database because it is "bad form" is worse than bad form.I know this is a minor point, but this is a book aimed at beginners, and Shepker never bothers to explain his point. In fact, he never bothers to mention the concept of normalization -- at least not here.At other times, I'm not even sure Shepker knows what he means. Consider the following example:"Relational database management systems are applications of mathematical theories that solve how data can be effectively stored."Or even better:"A table, also known as a relation in database theory, is a representation of some amount of data that is important to the organization collecting the data."Both of these statements may be true, but they are presented in the context of a text for beginners in such a way as to completely lack meaning.And then there is the bad grammar. The book is full of it. I ran into so many grammatical errors in this text, I actually had to stop reading. Here are a few examples I managed to jot down:"Global temporary tables are dropped as soon as the user who created it logs out of the system.""Local temporary tables are dropped as soon as the user who created the table logs out of the system, and any other users who had been referencing it logs out.""Many reasons for using views are as follows:""A great deal of advantages to using stored procedures are as follows:""You can do a great deal of things with stored procedures."These are not mere typographical errors. They are exercises in poor writing.Of course, the editing is worse; did anybody notice that the exact same information appears on pages 45 and 70? Please tell your editors and proof readers that there is more to thier job than running a spell checker.A writer can lack style completely and still manage good grammer, especially with decent editing. But with this book, I'm wondering if either it wasn't edited at all, or if the writing was so horrendous that this is all your editors could cull from it.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Secure PHP Development: Building 50 Practical Applications
Publisher: Wiley
Authors: Mohammed J. Kabir, Mohammed J. Kabir
Rating: 1/5
Title: Secure PHP Development: Building 50 Practical Applications
Publisher: Wiley
Authors: Mohammed J. Kabir, Mohammed J. Kabir
Rating: 1/5
When I saw this book at the local bookstore (one of only 10 PHP related books in stock), I thought, "Awesome! I've been looking for some more securing applications techniques." It turned out to be a big let down.The book is roughtly 750 pages (large print), the first 50 or so was an introduction and gave a few bad examples vs. good examples of code (which was good, and actually made me think the rest of the book was going to be good), then jumped directly into "here's 650 pages worth of class based applications for you to use". The last 40-50 pages of the book was a chapter called something to the effect of "Optimizing and Securing PHP". Of the whole book, this was the most dissapointing aspect, split equally between the 2 topics. I thought the whole book was going to be about writing secure PHP, not just 20 pages.Even the sample code they gave was in my opinion, poor. The author encouraged a strong misuse of OOP, having every single script have its own class dedicated to it. For example, one of the 50 "ready to use applications" was for handling users for their intranet. They wrote a class with methods for updating the user's information, adding a user, selecting the user's email address from the database, etc. The goal of OOP is to be abstract so that it can be used in more than one area, something the author didn't bother to learn before he wrote this book.Even the optimizing portion of the last chapter was a big let down. It felt like there was really only one example of code optimization. The rest of the pages explained how to make a particular PEAR script do a speed test on your code. How is that supposed to help me if I'm not even certain how to write it more efficiently?I'm not interested in a book that shovels me a bunch of code the author wrote. If I wanted free code, there's tons of sites out there for that. I want a book that's going to teach me how to think more securely and write more securely and think about the best/most optimized way to write a particular portion of code. Sadly, this book isn't it.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Unleashed (2nd Edition)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Ray Rankins, Paul Jensen, Paul Bertucci
Rating: 5/5
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Unleashed (2nd Edition)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Ray Rankins, Paul Jensen, Paul Bertucci
Rating: 5/5
This book might be useful, but the build quality is so low it is not worth the effort to find out. After two attempts and 2+ weeks of wasted time I have yet to receive a copy that is not missing from 1423-1470. Do yourself a favor and stick with O'Reilly (at least the book will not be missing parts). If you think you are going to use the index to find something, don't waste your time A-D is missing. Lets say you want to look into auto increment.....alter table....hmm hard to guess how many topics are between A and D.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP Essentials
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Julie C. Meloni
Rating: 3/5
Title: PHP Essentials
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Julie C. Meloni
Rating: 3/5
This is not a book for programmers. Quotes like "Commenting your code is a good habit to have," (pg.33) bring chills to a professional programmer (of course you comment your code!). The book is a one-hour read for anyone ever to write in a scripting language and covers, lightly, many topics in php programming including authentication and encryption. To write "production" PHP you'll need a meatier reference book. Overpriced for a cursory introduction to php.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 7 for Dummies
Publisher: For Dummies
Authors: Anthony T. Mann
Rating: 4/5
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 7 for Dummies
Publisher: For Dummies
Authors: Anthony T. Mann
Rating: 4/5
With a lot of experience in desktop databases (Access, Fox Pro) and SQL, and a desire to get up to speed with MS-SQL 7.0, I found this book was a great starting point.By no means will it make you a DBA, but it will give you a general overview of MS-SQL 7.0. It will walk you thru some, but not all, of the Wizards, and other features available in the MS-SQL 7.0 Enterprise Manager. Which, for people considering this book probably don't know, is the place where you do all your stuff (create databases, tables, manage users, etc.).This book does not show you how to ~program~ against an MS-SQL server. It doesn't even show you how to set up a client to access the server, which was a disappointment. But then again it's a server book, not a programming book.In a nutshell, if you want to get up to speed on MS-SQL 7.0 and know little or nothing about it, get this book. If you already know generally how to use and manage MS-SQL 7.0, then skip this book, and move on to something more advanced. ><>
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
This Sybex guide provides a good outline of the topics necessary to pass the exam. It is NOT sufficient of itself, but it does cover the required topics and lends structure to your studies. Combine this book with Books Online (and hands-on experience) for best results.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL Server 7 Developer's Guide
Publisher: Osborne Publishing
Authors: Michael Otey, Paul Conte
Rating: 3/5
Title: SQL Server 7 Developer's Guide
Publisher: Osborne Publishing
Authors: Michael Otey, Paul Conte
Rating: 3/5
The book was very clear from the beginning but mention so little on the Web Development using SAP. Good book for SQL developer but not for developing WEB using ASP. This book emphasizes the essential of SQL Server side and do mention too little about ASP. If anyone want to develop ASP with SQL server this is not the right book for them.
