IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book
Title: Start to Finish Guide to SQL Server Performance Monitoring
Publisher:
Authors: K. Brian Kelley
Rating: 5/5
Title: Start to Finish Guide to SQL Server Performance Monitoring
Publisher:
Authors: K. Brian Kelley
Rating: 5/5
This book gives great detail about SQL Server counters and perfmon. My whole team is using it to determine what our baseline counters should be that we monitor and how to react to them. The book tells you counters to watch and when you should worry. It also talks about what to monitor in Profiler. Very detailed and exactly what you'd hope to see from this type of 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
This book is unusual in that it delivers more example code than you usually see in tech books. I'm accustomed to seeing lots of sample code, but not this much. This is the most I've ever seen in a programming book of any kind.However, that alone would not be reason enough to give the book five stars. What really sets it apart from the other Transact SQL books is its in-depth explanations and commentary on these samples. I can grab example code from lots of places, including the 'Net, but without explanations as to what it does, it's a lot less valuable.Not only are the explanations of the sample code well done, but the general instructional material in the book is also par excellence. The chapters on Transactions and Cursors, for example, are among the best I've seen on their respective topics. Ditto for several of the other chapters. Henderson explains things from the perspective of an expert programmer who not only wrote all the code you see in the book, but also understands how it works well enough to convey that to the reader in practical terms. I don't know about other readers, but I found the prose friendly and easy-going without being fluffy or getting off on to tangents. So, I'm giving this one five stars because it deserves it. I've never seen a book that combined so much great code with expert-level commentary and instruction. It is exactly what coders like myself look for in a tech book.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Database Administrator's Guidebook
Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR
Authors: Carl H. Speshock
Rating: 5/5
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Database Administrator's Guidebook
Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR
Authors: Carl H. Speshock
Rating: 5/5
A book that is to be a great resource book! The examples that are presented in this book, along with the CDROM,and the detail instructions on how to build something with SQL Server 2000 are extremely easy to understand and useful. The book is already benefiting my DBA team create standards, procedures, best practices, etc. Some great example code and sample DBA shop documentation on the CDROM as well.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Web Application Development with PHP 4.0 (with CD-ROM)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Tobias Ratschiller, Till Gerken
Rating: 2/5
Title: Web Application Development with PHP 4.0 (with CD-ROM)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Tobias Ratschiller, Till Gerken
Rating: 2/5
I had such high hopes after I'd picked up David Beazley's excellent Python reference in the same series. Unfortunately, the writing is just awful and apparently unedited.There's no cohesion, no real goals apparent in the prose. The first chapter is a rambling discussion of why you should use good descriptive variable names.Later on, personal anecdotes about the history of the web world dot the pages, as if they added something. Editors! Editors! We need more editors! See also "Professional PHP Programming" for another book badly in need of an editor.
Product:
Title:
Publisher: Rating: 5/5
Title:
Publisher: Rating: 5/5
The book is easily worth the price and is an excellent reference volume. It provides standards for best practices for developers of PL/SQL applications, from naming conventions to commenting the source code. This is something that every Oracle developer and DBA should read and try to apply to their environments. The book covers many of the new features of Oracle8i and provides ample examples. The one complaint I have, and it was echoed by some of my associates, was that their was no disk or CD accompanying the book. The authors refer to the examples by file name but there is no disk or CD to get the files from. Presumedly, the examples are available from the Oracle Press Osborne web site. But a disk should have been included for those users who may not have access to the internet. Aside from this, the book is excellent reading for DBAs and developers and is crammed with information. It includes a history of Oracle and PL/SQL that some may not be aware of, as well as the major features of each version of PL/SQL, from version 1.0 through 8.1. For me it was a brief trip down memory lane, for I cut my teeth on version 1.0 of PL/SQL. The index could be improved a little for better cross referencing, but the coverage of Oracle topics is first rate. As a DBA and developer, I found the book invaluable and it is one of the books that I recommend to clients and associates. (Here's a tip: Tell your associates to get their own copy.) The book is written in a near conversational tone and far from the dry, antiseptic tone of Oracle's own manuals. Maybe Oracle should get the TUSC guys to write their manuals. The books is nothing less than what I have come to expect from the people at TUSC.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Php Fast & Easy Web Development (Fast & Easy Web Development)
Publisher: Premier Press
Authors: Julie C. Meloni
Rating: 5/5
Title: Php Fast & Easy Web Development (Fast & Easy Web Development)
Publisher: Premier Press
Authors: Julie C. Meloni
Rating: 5/5
Dear reader with the question regarding "Flash X". "X" is a placeholder used by the publisher when the version number of a title is not yet decided. It's not referencing version "10". Our Flash book title will eventually have a "5" in place of the "X", when it's published.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Microsoft SQL Server(TM) 2000 Programming Step by Step
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Rebecca Riordan
Rating: 3/5
Title: Microsoft SQL Server(TM) 2000 Programming Step by Step
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Rebecca Riordan
Rating: 3/5
I was somewhat shocked that a book on programming in SQL 2000 did not even mention XML in the index more or less provide a chapter on its use. Though the book may be beneficial if not an excellent resource to an absolute beginner a mid-level or experienced SQL developer will find it of little or no use. (I only read one chapter of which I gained little or no knowledge)I agree with other reflections here:For Beginners 5 stars For Mid-Range 3 stars For Experienced users - 1 star
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Professional PHP4 Programming
Publisher: Wrox Press
Authors: Deepak Thomas, Wankyu Choi, John Coggeshall, Ken Egervari, Martin Geisler, Zak Greant, Andrew Hill, Chris Hubbard, James Moore, Devon O'Dell, Jon Parise, Harish Rawat, Tarique Sani, Christopher Scollo, Chris Ullman, et al
Rating: 5/5
Title: Professional PHP4 Programming
Publisher: Wrox Press
Authors: Deepak Thomas, Wankyu Choi, John Coggeshall, Ken Egervari, Martin Geisler, Zak Greant, Andrew Hill, Chris Hubbard, James Moore, Devon O'Dell, Jon Parise, Harish Rawat, Tarique Sani, Christopher Scollo, Chris Ullman, et al
Rating: 5/5
Firstly i must admit that i have been waiting for a book like this to be released.I am the proud owner of three PHP books - PHP Pocket reference,Professional PHP Programming and Beginning PHP4.These books have influenced my career tremendously and shaped my development direction.
The Professional PHP4 is a well structured follow-up to the all of the above mentioned books and a must buy for anyone who wants to take their PHP skills further.
Well structured... because it takes you from the Professional rudimentaries to core PHP syntax,functions and OO to issues outside typical web application environment.It also covers multi-tier development using four different databases and even covers aspects of Il18n,optimisation and security.
I have now recommended this book to replace Professional PHP Programming in our local PHP education forum.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Dreamweaver MX: PHP Web Development
Publisher: Peer Information
Authors: Bruno Mairlot, Gareth Downes-Powell, Tim Green
Rating: 4/5
Title: Dreamweaver MX: PHP Web Development
Publisher: Peer Information
Authors: Bruno Mairlot, Gareth Downes-Powell, Tim Green
Rating: 4/5
This book is one of those rare books on programming PHP with Dreamweaver. The explanations and instructions are very good but you have to be carefull about the mistakes in conflicting database names and some coding. We spent almost 2 hours in finding where we are doing wrong. We finally found out that it was because the coding was misspelled... But we recommend this book to those who want to build php, mysql pages with DreamWeaver MX.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: MCSE SQL Server 2000 Administration for Dummies (with CD-ROM, covers test #70-228)
Publisher: For Dummies
Authors: Rozanne Whalen, Dan Whalen
Rating: 4/5
Title: MCSE SQL Server 2000 Administration for Dummies (with CD-ROM, covers test #70-228)
Publisher: For Dummies
Authors: Rozanne Whalen, Dan Whalen
Rating: 4/5
My first step for any certification is always a Dummies book. I find them well written and helpful to get me started... and this book was no exception. I did find a few mistakes and wrong information but that's been my experience with every certification book I've ever bought. This is a good book and well worth the money.
