IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Kalen Delaney
Rating: 5/5
Title: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Kalen Delaney
Rating: 5/5
Let me start by saying I've read 3 books in this series (6.5, 7.0 & 2000). I've been a DBA for 5 years (2 years Oracle and now 3 years MS SQL Server).This book is a one-of-a-kind in the sea of SQL Server books available these days. It is targetted specifically at advanced developers and DBAs (and anybody else) who wants or needs to know the internals of SQL Server eg. How the SQL Server engine manages threads, memory, and on disk data structures.There have been a lot of reviews about what this book lacks but it is called "Inside SQL Server" not "EVERYTHING SQL Server". It's not about peripheral components like DTS, XML, replication and a vast array of other areas that SQL Server offers. It's also not about how to write SQL and it's not an Administration manual. At the risk of sounding repetitive (and a bit silly) it also won't teach you how to become a Day Trader or balance your checkbook and there's no discussion on the mechanics of Quantum Theory. If you buy this book hoping it will solve all of life's problems, I'm afraid, like many others (based on previous reviews), you'll be sadly disappointed.What it will show you is how SQL Server's Query Processor compiles and optimizes your SQL (good or bad). It will show you what the Lock Manager does and why. It will teach you how indexes and tables are stored on disk and how and why they are cached in memory. It discusses what fields are good candidates for indexing and when the Optimizer will use them. There's a chapter on efficient use of cursors and another on why stored procedures and batches are critical to good performance. There's much much more but at all times the focus is strictly on the core RDBMS.In closing I believe that this is an exceptional book, but it's not for everybody. If you're a developer (VB, c++, ...) who has to write some SQL as well then you're probably better off taking Kalen's own advice and reading "Advanced Transact-SQL for SQL Server 2000". After you read that (or something similar) and you need to get more performance, scalability, concurrency and/or consistency from SQL Server and know WHY you are getting it then this is "The [SQL Server] Bible".
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Essential PHP for Web Professionals
Publisher: Pearson Education
Authors: Christopher Cosentino
Rating: 4/5
Title: Essential PHP for Web Professionals
Publisher: Pearson Education
Authors: Christopher Cosentino
Rating: 4/5
It's easy to understand for beginners, and fast enough for professionals.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Oracle SQL Tuning & CBO Internals
Publisher: Rampant Techpress
Authors: Kimberly Floss
Rating: 1/5
Title: Oracle SQL Tuning & CBO Internals
Publisher: Rampant Techpress
Authors: Kimberly Floss
Rating: 1/5
Please, don't buy it. Not only it is not well structured, but it contains not up-to-date content (some parts only apply to 8i) and a lot of miskakes as well!
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Beginning SQL Server 2000 Programming
Publisher: Wrox Press
Authors: Robin Dewson
Rating: 1/5
Title: Beginning SQL Server 2000 Programming
Publisher: Wrox Press
Authors: Robin Dewson
Rating: 1/5
This book is extremely difficult to understand because of its poor writing and editing. You should buy another book. I am suprised to find how bad this book is, because I have normally had very good experiences with Wrox books. This one, however, was lightly edited, if at all.Poor editing makes the reader work much harder to understand the message behind the words. If you buy this book, you'll either have to work extra hard to understand the message, or you'll not understand as much about SQL Server as you should have.Examples of the book's nonsense:"An index defined as being clustered, defines the physical order that the data in the table is stored," p 231, paragraph 2."Therefore, providing the SELECT statement is not setting a variable, a recordset is returned," p 525, paragraph 4.Regards,Bill--My translations of the above sentences:"An clustered index specifies the physical order in which a table's data is stored.""Therefore, providing the SELECT statement returns a recordset--it does not set a variable."
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 bought this at the PASS conference recently and have really been pleased with it. This book has changed the way I work. I just had to tell someone about it.The first thing that jumps out at you is that Transact-SQL is POWERFUL! I had no idea you could do half the things you can with it. I've been under the impression for many years that Oracle's PL/SQL was actually more powerful than T-SQL. Boy, was I wrong! This book proves that's not true!My favorite things about this book are:1. No fluff - it stays on point
2. The informal, friendly tone - pretty rare in computer books
3. The attention to detail - there's no knook or crannie left unexplored in the language
4. Undocumented features - why doesn't MS document these?
5. The OLE automation chapter - the code in this chapter could be sold retail, I'm quite sureThanks to this book I have become a much better developer and a much bigger fan of SQL Server. Thank you Ken Henderson for writing it.
Product: Book
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Database Development From Scratch
Publisher:
Authors: Rob Hawthorne
Rating: 4/5
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Database Development From Scratch
Publisher:
Authors: Rob Hawthorne
Rating: 4/5
I thought that this book is worthwhile to use in a teaching environment for beginners to intermediate SQLServer users because is does what it sets out to do, build an app with SQLServer and ASP (read the back cover before you buy). ASP and how it can be used with SQLServer 2000 is what the real world SQLServer user needs. A user has a problem; how do they solve it efficiently with the right tool. If you want XML read XML. What idiot would build this small app with XML! Get real. ASP is the best tool that fit the project, and not the programmer's desire to build a universe.Most of the world is not cutting edge and willing to go to XML since most apps developed in-house for business are for specific projects on an intranet for a department. This is a down to earth title that has a real world cause and effect example. It did not get bogged down with all of the tools that you could use to be a DBA, there are other books for that. However, more specific examples of SQLServer code would have been useful, as well as running scripts and stored procedures. Cudos to a job well done.You delivered your goal.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP for the World Wide Web : Visual QuickStart Guide (2nd Edition) (Visual Quickstart Guides)
Publisher: Peachpit Press
Authors: Larry Ullman
Rating: 5/5
Title: PHP for the World Wide Web : Visual QuickStart Guide (2nd Edition) (Visual Quickstart Guides)
Publisher: Peachpit Press
Authors: Larry Ullman
Rating: 5/5
This book is great.
As a beginner web designer/programmer, i knew some html, some css, and a little javascript. I bought this book because I was working on my first interactive site, and I wanted to write it in php. It was almost as though the author had read my mind, because there was either a page or chapter devoted to almost every single aspect of what I needed to accomplish with my site. The tips and side notes are extremely valuable as well.
I have 2 other 'Quickstart' books from Peachpit Press, and while I found the other 2 mostly 'fluff', this one really is packed with information.
While there are topics that don't cover everything (of course many of these topics could be a book within themselves), the author does a great job of realizing this, and pointing you in the right direction should you need more in-depth information.
The author also has an online forum where he is very good at answering php-related questions, and providing support for the book.
This book constantly sits about 3 feet away from my computer as a constant reference, and I can't think of anything I've ever spent less than $20 on that was as valuable as this.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Transact-SQL Programming
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Lee Gould, Andrew Zanevsky, Kevin Kline
Rating: 1/5
Title: Transact-SQL Programming
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Lee Gould, Andrew Zanevsky, Kevin Kline
Rating: 1/5
This book concentrates on transact sql for MS-SQL and Sybase. The book is well written and I covers a lot of ground. I bought it to write distributed stored procs. Well it gave me great examples and it also fills in the what if questions. Worth while. I keep it next to my desk.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL Server Query Performance Tuning Distilled, Second Edition
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Sajal Dam
Rating: 5/5
Title: SQL Server Query Performance Tuning Distilled, Second Edition
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Sajal Dam
Rating: 5/5
I am a SQL Server 2000 performance consultant - TuneSQLServer.com. This author presents the right stuff - lots of Query Analyzer and Profiler information. What is unique about this book is the large number of Query Analyzer graphical query plans. That is the right way to learn about performance and the best way to tune a system. I could worry about this book putting me out of business, but I know that it takes a long time to really understand the issues which are presented.
Sure theory is nice. The guy who gave the nasty review must be a serious competitor - g. Chapter 8 of the book has a large discussion about data fragmention. Sure, the optimizer can use DB integrity constraints as hints to formulate better plans, but constraints are not crucial. They are only helpful to the optimizer in a few cases when it is working on a very complex query. And about statistics histograms. Yes you should know that they exist on the first column of an index and that is about it. What is really important is being able to read the information in a Query Analyzer graphical plan to see if estimated values based on the statistics histograms differ greatly from the actual values when the query is run - turn on the Query / Show Execution Plan option and run your query. If the results are way off, you may end up scratching your head for a while. Estimates are only estimates and in some cases they are way off and that is the problem you must deal with. There are solutions even in those case but they are not always pretty. For God sakes, leave auto statistics update set to On. And only use a query hint as a very very last resort - that means almost never.
The common problem I see is that people spend too much time learning SQL Server 2000 theory. That time is better spent becoming fluent in reading graphical plans in Query Analyzer and doing experiments like those shown in the book. It is best to have developers get the correct results with their SQL and then tune the parts that Profiler shows are a problem. Too much time is spent trying to optimize queries during the design phase. The so called "optimized query formulations" often run slow because the developers don't have advanced SQL Server 2000 performance skills. What is the point in trying to optimize when you really don't know how to do it - a waste of time. Sure, try to use techniques that are known to work well, but don't overdo it. Most of the time what I see are query formulations and indexes that were supposed to be optimized by theory and in practice run badly. I often speed up systems 2 to 10 times by fixing weird problems that theory doesn't cover. The book does a good job setting the correct focus on using Query Analyzer and Profiler. Don't theorize, see what is actually happening and use experience and the bag of tricks to deal with the performance issues.
There are no silver bullets to SQL Server 2000 performance tuning. Some problems are easy to solve but many complex queries take a lot of experimentation to get a good result. Often times skewed data and stored proc plan retention is a big problem. SQL Server 2005 statement level recompiles are going to go a long way towards getting rid of that problem. I do not agree with everything the author claims, but 90% of what he shows in his book is the right stuff for understanding how to get SQL Server 2000 to perform well! Buy the book and learn more than you know. But don't expect to know all the answers after reading this very good book!
Product: Book Paperback
Title: MySQL and PHP From Scratch
Publisher: Que
Authors: Wade Maxfield
Rating: 1/5
Title: MySQL and PHP From Scratch
Publisher: Que
Authors: Wade Maxfield
Rating: 1/5
Yes,247 pages out of 347 pages of this lame book is a complete reprint of php manual,which you can find on php.net for free.The first 111 pages about mysql ,php ,apache and imp are just reprints of their installation manuals,which are also freely available online.I have no ideas why QUE publishes this kind of "book".
