IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Paperback
Title: The Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Ken Henderson
Rating: 5/5
Title: The Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Ken Henderson
Rating: 5/5
This is one great book. Each chapter is a separate treatise on the things you need to know to master tsql. Each one is exquisitely written and loaded with ingenious examples. Want to know the secrets of the gurus? This is this book for you.
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Kalen Delaney
Rating: 2/5
Title: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Kalen Delaney
Rating: 2/5
I consider myself an expert SQL Server Database Administrator and hold the MCDBA, MCSE, and MCSD certifications. I consult on VLDB projects for IBM, EDS, and many others.I recently picked up this book in hopes of getting up to speed with the latest version of Microsoft's award-winning DBMS. Those hopes were quickly dashed as I compared the previous edition with this one and realized they were largely the same.The biggest hole is the complete lack of XML coverage. You cannot deny that XML is central to SQL Server, and more generally, to Microsoft's future plans (ever hear of .NET?) I suppose we could debate whether XML is "inside" enough to warrant coverage in a book like this, but I'd argue that it definitely is. The support was added to the server itself. You access the XML features from Transact-SQL, which the book makes a half-hearted attempt to cover. For my money, XML should have been covered in this book and covered in-depth.But XML's absence isn't the only problem with the book. There's no coverage of high-availability topics like clustering, log shipping, and advanced backup/restore options. Instead, the book has only been minorly updated from the previous (version 7.0) edition.All told, the book has major problems....
Product: Book Textbook Binding
Title: SQL Server System Administration (The Landmark Series)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Chris Miller, Sean Baird, John Lynn, Michael Hotek, Denis Darveau
Rating: 4/5
Title: SQL Server System Administration (The Landmark Series)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Chris Miller, Sean Baird, John Lynn, Michael Hotek, Denis Darveau
Rating: 4/5
Nicely organized without the hoo-hah of "how to" with gobs of screen shots. My reference point was a little SQL Server and a lot of data base experience. I understood what they were saying. The authors speak technical English. They make the appropriate assumptions about what you should know about SQL Server before you open the book. This is not a reference book (others are probably better) nor a book for beginners, although newbies might use this as a starting point. This book does not go into SQL syntax (others have done this better)...Not enough clarity was given on "new features" of SQL server. No reference was made to specific technet articles, but URL's were prominent. This was my first read on a SQL server book; so my rating of 4 stars might up or down. What I found most interesting was the last ten pages of the book, which were summaries of the "Landmark Series". The series looks good, maybe even very good. That's all.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: The Guru's Guide to SQL Server Stored Procedures, XML, and HTML (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Ken Henderson
Rating: 5/5
Title: The Guru's Guide to SQL Server Stored Procedures, XML, and HTML (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Ken Henderson
Rating: 5/5
The CD is loaded with over 600 samples of well-written, well-documented code. Innovative approaches and advanced techniques are everywhere. You combine this with the thorough explanations of the code in the text itself, and you have everything you need to master stored proc programming. I've been building Sql Svr stored procs for over 5 years now and I still learned lots of things I didn't know. Great code and clear explanations makes for one heckuva book
Product: Book Paperback
Title: The Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Ken Henderson
Rating: 5/5
Title: The Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Ken Henderson
Rating: 5/5
I saw the author speak at a conference last month and bought this book because the talk was so packed full of useful info. I assumed that if he could provide that much info in a hour long presentation, surely an entire book would just inundate me. Fortunately, that's exactly what happened.I've just spent the last month going through this book cover-to-cover. It seems that everytime I open it, I find some new tidbit I can use. The chapter on SELECT, for example, is just loaded with good stuff. The chapter on statistical functions - again - it's loaded with useful info. The Undocumented chapter - it alone is worth the cost of the book. The Automation chapter - it opened a whole new world to me in terms of TSQL-based solutions. The stored procs chapter could be its own book as well, as could the performance and tuning chapter. I spent a week each on each of these two chapters, and if you want to get the most out of the book, you'll want to do the same.All told, this is THE ultimate tome on SQL Server's Transact-SQL. I cannot give it a higher recommendation than that.
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Administrator's Companion (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Marcilina Garcia, Jamie Reding, Edward Whalen, Steve Adrien DeLuca
Rating: 5/5
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Administrator's Companion (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Marcilina Garcia, Jamie Reding, Edward Whalen, Steve Adrien DeLuca
Rating: 5/5
Probably the best book I own (and I own a lot). I have minimal experiance with SQL server, and I'm now an SQL admin by default at my company. Recently we required an upgrade to SQL 2000 to replicate with a client and I bought this book. For the first week I used it as a referenc to answer any questions that come up. Now I'm reading the thing pretty much straight through (skipping some of the beginning chapters and some clustering info which I don't need yet). I have yet to read a paragraph where the authors aren't absolutely clear. I feel like I'm becoming an expert at this stuff, and I'm sure it will be a good exam prep book. Yes it's over 1000 pages, but it is as readable as any book I've ever picked up (and this stuff usually puts me to sleep). I'd recommend it for all experience levels. The upgrade chapter was light, but I know why after having done one.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Essential PHP for Web Professionals
Publisher: Pearson Education
Authors: Christopher Cosentino
Rating: 3/5
Title: Essential PHP for Web Professionals
Publisher: Pearson Education
Authors: Christopher Cosentino
Rating: 3/5
The book is for those who know NOTHING about PHP!. They just need to know simple thing about HTML (just understand the code!), or it's for those who need QUICK reveiw on PHP.The author's language is very simple and to the point. He will teach you from installing PHP (and Apatche server) in your pc till integrating PHP with Mysql database. After you finish chapter 2, you will know how dynamic pages work and you can do very simple dynamic page. The chapter about database is perfect (now i understand and know how to make databases on my server!!)The author is explaining all lines of each script in the book, which is good way of understanding how a script works!After you finish the book, you will understand PHP scripting (you won't know everything about PHP) so you can start developing your self by doing more scripts.This is the only book i found about PHP, so can't compare it.but it is worth it!!
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
I passed my first Oracle DBA exam today - PL/SQL - with just 43 out of 57 or around 68%. Hey, I know it doesn't sound impressive but I got it just by reading the Oracle Documentation file on those tested sections. I have not found a single book that explains Oracle stuff well. I think the audience intended for this Exam Cram book are people from Mars. However, the documentation file has many good examples and is totally comprehensive for just about anything. In a nutshell, to pass any DBA exam, read the DOCUMENTATION !
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: 3/5
Title: MCSE Training Kit : Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Database Design and Implementation (Exam 70-229)
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Microsoft Corporation
Rating: 3/5
This book is great for beginners. The topics covered in the exam are dealt very nicely. The book gives a head start to any person who has had little or no experience in SQL Server. For the experienced programmer as well, this booh has something. There is a case study which goes along with the chapters of the book and so you get a hand on feel of a live project. But as I said this book gives you a head start. For complete understanding of the topic, u need to refer to book like Inside SQL Server 2000. Even Books Online is also sufficient. The topic structure in the same matches with the structure of the exam. So I would say if you are starting to work on SQL Server or haven't been exposed to all the topics that are part of the exam, this book is nice. But later you have to refer to Book Online for detailed understanding.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Web Application Development with PHP 4.0 (with CD-ROM)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Tobias Ratschiller, Till Gerken
Rating: 5/5
Title: Web Application Development with PHP 4.0 (with CD-ROM)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Tobias Ratschiller, Till Gerken
Rating: 5/5
I just got the book today, and reading the first two chapters proved useful already. This book does not tell you about the obvious stuff. All the contrary, it starts right off by telling you about some of PHPs oddities (one of them I came across that was not documented in the manual, about arrays).This is the perfect companion to Professional PHP Programming. It is also an excellent guide on how to implement web projects in general.Again, don't hesitate to buy this book.
