IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL Server 2000 Stored Procedure Programming
Publisher: Osborne/McGraw-Hill
Authors: Dejan Sunderic, Tom Woodhead
Rating: 5/5
Title: SQL Server 2000 Stored Procedure Programming
Publisher: Osborne/McGraw-Hill
Authors: Dejan Sunderic, Tom Woodhead
Rating: 5/5
This book doesn't cover SQL Server 2000 in any depth, doesn't cover stored procedures to any great degree, and doesn't offer anything insightful re: programming. Basically, the book doesn't do what the cover claims. It was a complete waste of my time.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Sybase SQL Server II: An Administrator's Guide
Publisher: Coriolis Group
Authors: John Kirkwood
Rating: 4/5
Title: Sybase SQL Server II: An Administrator's Guide
Publisher: Coriolis Group
Authors: John Kirkwood
Rating: 4/5
I was surprised to find that no one has reviewed this book yet, even if it is out of print. I bought this book to supplement "Sybase SQL Server 11 Unleashed" by Rankins etc. While that book is better as a general overview of Sybase, this book covers certain topics in more detail. As such, Kirkwood's book is better suited to DBAs than developers. It covers topics such as integrity, cursors, datatypes, the threshold manager, auditing, security, backup and recovery, the optimizer, problem anticipation and solving, configuration parameters (useful!), creating databases, master database rebuilding, storage stuctures and indexing, multiuser issues (concurrency and memory) and other miscellaneous features.Negatives? Some topics that one would expect to be covered here are missing. Still, for DBAs, I would recommend this book to complement "Sybase Unleashed". I generally use both.
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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: XML Processing with Perl, Python, and PHP
Publisher: Sybex Inc
Authors: Martin C. Brown
Rating: 5/5
Title: XML Processing with Perl, Python, and PHP
Publisher: Sybex Inc
Authors: Martin C. Brown
Rating: 5/5
XML is not so difficult, but when coping with Perl or PHP, you need something to tell you exactly HOW to do that. Add to this Python, a very well written book, and you get Martin C. Brown's book.
I think that if you're really serious into programming XML with Python and Perl, you absolutely must have this book.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes, Third Edition
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Ben Forta
Rating: 5/5
Title: Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes, Third Edition
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Ben Forta
Rating: 5/5
This is indeed a rarity for computer books: a lot of good information in a compact format that plainly explains the basics of SQL and is easy on the wallet. In 3 years of buying computer books this is EASILY the best value I have ever gotten! I would recommend this book to anyone learning database programming for the first time, I wish I had had my hands on this book when I took VB database programming in college! Excellent book!
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL Anywhere Studio 9 Developer's Guide (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Wordware Publishing, Inc.
Authors: Breck Carter
Rating: 5/5
Title: SQL Anywhere Studio 9 Developer's Guide (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Wordware Publishing, Inc.
Authors: Breck Carter
Rating: 5/5
I've been using SQL Anywhere since version 6 and one of my biggest complaints has been how tough it is to find concise documentation on particular items such as tuning, setting up transactions and when to use what kind of transactions, etc. This book goes through all of this and much more. This is a well thought out book and will be useful for all. This book will have a prominate spot on my desk where I keep the reference materials I use all the time. Thanks Breck for this endevor
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: MCDBA SQL Server 7 Administration Study Guide (Book/CD-ROM Set)
Publisher: Mcgraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: Syngress
Rating: 1/5
Title: MCDBA SQL Server 7 Administration Study Guide (Book/CD-ROM Set)
Publisher: Mcgraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: Syngress
Rating: 1/5
I was extremeley disapointed with this book. It has a lot of mistakes and poorly written. Coriolis book by Talbert is much, much, better. That one actually helped me.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP 4: A Beginner's Guide
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: William McCarty
Rating: 1/5
Title: PHP 4: A Beginner's Guide
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: William McCarty
Rating: 1/5
The examples in this book are decent. It has a path from beginner to intermediate that is acceptable. I think its main setback is that it doesnt really get into how the data is being parsed based on the code you write. Something he doesnt explain in the book that I found out the hardway (getting laughed at by the geeks in efnet-#php) is that globals are not turned on by default. This book assumes they are and doesnt tell you what thats all about. I would recommened this book to someone who doesnt want to learn php, but is more interested in stealing some codebits to put some projects up quickly. While I refer to it from time to time, when I do, im usually looking for the mickey mouse approach which this book seems to embrace. I wonder if I am allowed to say mickey mouse in a review.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Apache Server for Dummies
Publisher: For Dummies
Authors: Ken A. L. Coar
Rating: 5/5
Title: Apache Server for Dummies
Publisher: For Dummies
Authors: Ken A. L. Coar
Rating: 5/5
If are looking for a book on Web Server (esp Apache) and want to have fun while reading it, then, this is the one!
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Notification Services
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Shyam Pather
Rating: 5/5
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Notification Services
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Shyam Pather
Rating: 5/5
This is a book well worth reading from beginning to end, from preface to appendix. I have done so twice, with the result that I have learned SQL-NS well enough to explain its concepts and architecture to my teammates and higher-ups and to embark upon design and development of notification apps of my own. Mr. Pather puts mastery of this platform within your reach. His pedagogical approach is exemplary, for its organization, pacing, clarity, style and tone. And he covers absolutely everything you need to know about SQL-NS. I wish every computer book out there were written this way.
