IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 Unleashed (Unleashed)
Publisher: Sams Pub
Authors: David Solomon, Ray Rankins, David S. Solomon, Jeff Steinmetz
Rating: 5/5
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 Unleashed (Unleashed)
Publisher: Sams Pub
Authors: David Solomon, Ray Rankins, David S. Solomon, Jeff Steinmetz
Rating: 5/5
I have read 4 SQL Server 6.5 books to get up to speed for the MCSE exams. This is clearly the most thorough and well written. Deserves 5 stars overall. Here are my picks for SQL Server 6.5 books. 1) SQL Server Unleashed, 2) SQL Server DBA Survival Guide (btw you can download this at www.mcp.com), 3) Inside SQL Server (Soukup), then finally 4) SQL Server Programming Unleashed (I thought this one was not as good for DBA, and was pretty mediocre for a programming book.)Not only is this an excellent SQL Server book, but it is one of the best technical books I've read on a subject.I usually scour the review section at Amazon before making book purchases to avoid wasting time. Hope this helps you on your road to DBA-dom.
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: MCSE Training Kit: Microsoft(r) SQL Server(tm) 2000 System Administration
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Microsoft Corporation
Rating: 4/5
Title: MCSE Training Kit: Microsoft(r) SQL Server(tm) 2000 System Administration
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Microsoft Corporation
Rating: 4/5
I just recently started my SQL class, so I don't know everything, but I do know that as far as books go, this one isn't bad. For people who just want to get a paper certifiction as soon as possible...and then get fired job after job after job because they still don't know..., I suppose it isn't so hot....maybe that's why these kind of books get a lot of bad reviews. Here's a hint: I think it was meant to be used in a course with an actual instructor, and yes, you just might have to think and put some time in on it. SQL takes a good year to get down anyways, this book is just meant to introduce concepts, terms, and other information.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: A Guide to SQL Standard (4th Edition)
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: C. J. Date, Hugh Darwen
Rating: 2/5
Title: A Guide to SQL Standard (4th Edition)
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: C. J. Date, Hugh Darwen
Rating: 2/5
Maybe experienced database developers and administrators might find this book useful, however, in my opinion, for someone looking for an introduction to the SQL world, this is one confusing collection of printed pages with all beginning pages referencing the final ones, and vice-versa. The author does not hide his dissatisfaction with the official standard and claims that the confused nature of the book simply reflects the inconsistencies and unsettled issues in the standard itself. Well, in that case, with all due respect to standard-setter and author - I am beginning to wonder why talk about a standard at all !
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
Wow! This is a well written, well planned, and fantastically useful book on how to set up a database-driven web site. (If you don't know what a database-driven web site is, this is the book for you.) The authors, Luke Welling and Laura Thomson, have clearly done their homework on their audience. They have written a book that provides easy, step-by-step instructions on creating the components that web site owners want, including:- Password protect your site - how to create user authentication. Includes a section on generating random passwords and mailing them to the user.
- Build a personalized shopping cart
- Personalize web content based on session control
- A content management system - a web-based system for non-computer users to add new stories without touching an HTML editor
- Mailing list manager; mail HTML or text-based mail to everyone on your list automatically
- Web forums for user discussions
- Automated content retrieval off of the web (get stock quotes automatically from other web sites, etc.)
- Setting up simple file transfer functions (FTP) for uploading files
- Automatic simple image generation (i.e. buttons and graphs) - the ideas in this chapter can be easily extended to making page counters, etc.
- Generate personalized PDF files automatically (useful for creating printable, non-editable documents)In addition to going over the basics of PHP and MySQL, the Authors provide some excellent discussion about setting up good quality e-commerce sites and the use of encryption. There are a couple of minor shortcomings in this book. The Authors provide only a cursory treatment to using SSL (secure socket layers) in web transactions. SSL is an essential component of modern day e-commerce, and I would have liked to have seen a more detailed discussion about setting up and running SSL; oddly, the authors recommend buying a $1000 server package with preconfigured SSL rather than using the open souce SSL package which is available from the Apache website. Secondly, the slant of the book is angled towards Unix/Linux systems (which is not unexpected, as most servers run off of Linux/Unix); Windows users will need to make slight, but not scary, alterations in code. In most cases, the files can be copied straight off the CD and will run equally well in Unix/Linux versus Windows systems. In summary, this is an outstanding computer book on building a useful and interactive web site, powered entirely by free software. The authors take a complicated subject and make it easy to understand. Rather than focusing on abstract theory or dabbling in mundane details, this book provides step-by-step instructions that lets you set up a full-featured and powerful web site with a minimum of hassle.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Sybase Transact SQL Guidelines Best Practices
Publisher: Isosf Software
Authors: Mich Talebzadeh, Ryan Thomas Putnam
Rating: 5/5
Title: Sybase Transact SQL Guidelines Best Practices
Publisher: Isosf Software
Authors: Mich Talebzadeh, Ryan Thomas Putnam
Rating: 5/5
Having read this book I agree with the majority of the reviewers here that by far this book is the best Sybase Transact-SQL book I have seen around. With regard to the comments on specific chapters, the fragmentation Chapter covering the details and its associated shell script described in the appendix are excellent and very useful. We have started using the script in production and it does work. Also the chapter on tempdb optimization is really cool. I liked it style.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Sams Teach Yourself PL/SQL in 21 Days (2nd Edition)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Jonathan Gennick, Tom Luers
Rating: 4/5
Title: Sams Teach Yourself PL/SQL in 21 Days (2nd Edition)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Jonathan Gennick, Tom Luers
Rating: 4/5
This book is pretty good. Each of the 21 lessons takes a couple of hours to read, so the pace is about right. I learned a lot of PL/SQL from this book, so I'm glad I bought it.The book is pooly edited, though, and is full of errors. A couple of times there were serious errors in the example programs, but they weren't enough to spoil the book.If you have a little programming experience, you might try just using the PL/SQL chapters in the Oracle8: The Complete Reference. You're going to need a book like that anyway....
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Joe Celko's SQL for Smarties: Advanced SQL Programming (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems)
Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann
Authors: Joe Celko
Rating: 2/5
Title: Joe Celko's SQL for Smarties: Advanced SQL Programming (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems)
Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann
Authors: Joe Celko
Rating: 2/5
It's been several years since I read this book, but do I not remember seeing comparative statistics. The premise of "fewer passes through the data means faster queries" sounds quite logical. I was on a development team in the late '90s that followed the techniques in this book to the letter.Characteristic functions looked really "cool" at first. The ability to, essentially, have different WHERE clauses for each column in the SELECT clause is impressive. I like and sometimes recommend this technique for reporting. However, for at least one OLTP development effort, this technique was a speed bump.By the middle of the initiative, we had a lot of very complicated and slow code. Debugging takes much longer in the land of "DECODE(ABS(SIGN(TO_CHAR( ))))." Database calls were unacceptably slow after production-level volumes of data were interrogated during integration testing. There were two reasons for the performance degradation.Before function-based indexes were available (as they have been starting with Oracle8i), applying ABS, TO_CHAR, SIGN and any other functions automatically lead to full table scans. Indexes that are not sorted according to DECODE-like functions will simply not help find the data faster. Keep in mind that function calls consume CPU time as well; use a utility like TKPROF to see how much (custom functions are especially expensive). With suppressed indexes and thousands of function calls per SQL statement, it is easy to see why characteristic functions are generally not performance enhancing.This book offers useful some reporting techniques that should generally be avoided in OLTP systems. If you decide to use characteristic functions as an alternative to conventional WHERE clause lines, strap a scalability test harness onto the database before issuing a single ABS function call.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Oracle 9i Java Programming: Solutions for Developers Using PL/SQL and Java
Publisher: Peer Information
Authors: Bjarki Holm, John Carnell, Tomas Stubbs, Poornachandra Sarang, Kevin Mukhar, Sant Singh, Jaeda Goodman, Ben Marcotte, Mauricio Naranjo, Anand Raj, Mark Piermanini
Rating: 5/5
Title: Oracle 9i Java Programming: Solutions for Developers Using PL/SQL and Java
Publisher: Peer Information
Authors: Bjarki Holm, John Carnell, Tomas Stubbs, Poornachandra Sarang, Kevin Mukhar, Sant Singh, Jaeda Goodman, Ben Marcotte, Mauricio Naranjo, Anand Raj, Mark Piermanini
Rating: 5/5
O9iJP is loaded with examples, on integrating Java with Oracle technologies such as PL/SQL, SQL*Loader, interMedia Text, and more. Rather than a guide to Java, JDBC or PL/SQL, this book is first and foremost a collection of useful tips and tricks, that I found of great value.For example, in one of my own applications, I had been using C procs for extended file handling (working with directories, etc.). The file handling package developed and illustrated O9iJP showed me a much better alternative, as I had been having contsant maintenance problems with the C procs (related to listener setup, etc.).
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL for Dummies
Publisher: For Dummies
Authors: Allen G. Taylor
Rating: 1/5
Title: SQL for Dummies
Publisher: For Dummies
Authors: Allen G. Taylor
Rating: 1/5
I was unimpressed with the way this book is presented. Not enough examples of core SQL.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Transact-SQL Programming
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Lee Gould, Andrew Zanevsky, Kevin Kline
Rating: 5/5
Title: Transact-SQL Programming
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Lee Gould, Andrew Zanevsky, Kevin Kline
Rating: 5/5
An amazingly comprehensive, yet fun book. I had never before even seen SQL Server but was thrust into the job of DBA. With the help of this book(and some late nights) I realized I loved SQL administration, and SIX(!!!) weeks later Passed the MCP SQL 7.0 Implementation Test.
