IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Professional SQL Server Development with Access 2000
Publisher: Peer Information Inc.
Authors: Rick Dobson
Rating: 5/5
Title: Professional SQL Server Development with Access 2000
Publisher: Peer Information Inc.
Authors: Rick Dobson
Rating: 5/5
If you need to upsize an Access database to SQL Server, this is the book which will solve all the little problems you might have. Not only does it talk you through installing all the necessary software, but it also walks you through just about every process you are going to perform in getting all those Access objects converted to Project form.If you are new to ADO, the book contains an excellent primer to the subject to get you started, although you might want to consult the Microsoft documentation for some of the more in-depth stuff. Speaking personally, this book has served as my bible in upsizing a 240-user Access database replicated over 7 sites to SQL server. If we found it useful, you will too. Get it.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Hardening Apache
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Tony Mobily
Rating: 4/5
Title: Hardening Apache
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Tony Mobily
Rating: 4/5
It's quite rare that I get to review a book by a fellow Sandgroper (ie. person from Western Australia). The last time was for "Man Kzin Wars X" by Larry Niven and Hal Colepatch, with Colepatch being from WA. So what is there to say about this book? Well, Mobily has brought under one cover various methods to strengthen Apache against incursions. There are several excellent books on computer security, but as a rule, they tend to survey the entire field. So if they mention Apache, space considerations if nothing else preclude extensive coverage. Here Mobily has made that a non issue.Why Apache? It is probably the most common web server in use, edging out all proprietary rivals. Linux boxes run it by default. But it has also been ported to every other major operating system. So certainly Mobily has chosen a vital application to support.How useful is this book? If you are a systems administrator and have been managing Apache for several years, you probably already know, or should know, the bulk of this book. But a lot of your Apache security experience may have been garnered in bits and pieces over this period, using information from disparate sources. Suppose instead you are installing it for the first time. The actual installation should be trivial. It is the multiple security issues that you have to get right.Which is this book's virtue. It centralises the issues into an easily accessible form. PLus it is not dependent on the latest version of Apache. Barring a fundamental rewrite, which is unlikely because it is stable and well tested, Mobily's suggestions should stay fresh for several years.
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 am very surprised Exam Cram published such a bad book. I have used Exam Cram before and have found their books very usefull. This one was the exact opposite. The material and diagrams presented are barely ledgible. I agree with the previous reader about not being able to finish it. It is clearly a waste of money.
Product: Book
Title: PHP and MySQL For Dummies, 2nd Edition
Publisher:
Authors: Janet Valade
Rating: 3/5
Title: PHP and MySQL For Dummies, 2nd Edition
Publisher:
Authors: Janet Valade
Rating: 3/5
I wanted to learn PHP and MySQL but I was a complete novice before buying this book. This books was a great investment in gaining knowledge for both php, mysql and putting the two technologies together. My only complaint is that by the end of the book the author seemed to have gotten really lazy. The examples wont work at shown especially chapter 12: Building a Members Only Web Site" All in all, this book is a good reference for novices. Once you're out of the novice stage, do expect to buy another book; one that is more indepth. Good luck.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP and MySQL Web Development, Second Edition
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
Rating: 5/5
Title: PHP and MySQL Web Development, Second Edition
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
Rating: 5/5
I looked at a lot of PHP books and selected Luke & Laura's (in its first edition) because it had a pretty comprehensive but fast-paced introduction to the language and then went on to show several practical applications. Some other books just duplicate the php.net function reference, or walk you through the tiresome details of a single project, but this book gets you working in the language and then gives the key elements of several practical projects that are typical for PHP programmers: shopping cart, content management, mailing list, discussion forum, etc.The authors wrote that they aimed their book at readers who have some HTML and some programming experience, but not necessarily any web-programming experience. That put me in their target market, and I found the book an excellent fit.I looked over the second edition today, and it is a significant improvement. The code is now current with PHP 4.3, and while the authors try to use techniques that don't require the latest PHP version, the code is more compatible now with the latest version (e.g. register_globals is not assumed to be set On). Other tweaks in the code listings, e.g. "if (isset($myvar))" instead of "if ($myvar)", show the code has been polished. The typeface is improved too; there seems to be more text on each page but it's actually more legible.I looked up a practical problem today, how to log-in and keep session-state variables for database-authenticated users. Lots of articles on the web, and even some PHP books, offer home-grown solutions that could be translations of 1997 Perl code, but Luke & Laura give a simple and elegant method (in chap. 20) that exploits PHP's latest built-in capabilities and is easy for me to extend. They extend it, too, in their example apps later in the book.PHP is popular because it's a cheap, easy, and full-featured language for web programming. This book has the thorough and practical approach that will have you quickly building commercially useful PHP applications.
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
Although this book will probably help get you "ready" for the test (70-229), you will need several other resources to gain a true understanding of the concepts set forth. The excercises are far too general, but the essay type reviews at the end of each chapter are extremely helpful. I would suggest Professional SQL Server 2000 Programming and SQL Server 2000 Developer's Guide as companions.
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Kalen Delaney
Rating: 1/5
Title: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Kalen Delaney
Rating: 1/5
This book is a great referrence... but I feel funny judging it. It's like judging an encyclopedia... just another one of MS 'Inside SQL Server' series books. It's a good referrence to keep around, has useful info, and I prefer to read paper over a monitor anyday.... I won't be returning my copy anytime soon. I only gave it a 4 star rating because there is nothing that jumps out and makes this a "gotta have this" type book... but, by all means, it's worthwhile keeping around if you work with SQL 2000 at all.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Core PHP Programming, Third Edition
Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR
Authors: Leon Atkinson, Zeev Suraski
Rating: 5/5
Title: Core PHP Programming, Third Edition
Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR
Authors: Leon Atkinson, Zeev Suraski
Rating: 5/5
How can you convey the power, the flexibility and the simplicity of a relatively new language without loosing any of your audiences, beginner to advanced, along the way? I have been a programmer for over 6 years, but have never had the pleasure of doing anything with PHP before I started reading this book. I must say, I was totally impressed after I had finished reading Leon's book. The PHP language itself has grown tremendously over the past 8 years or so, and I can certainly see why it is so appealing to users of all levels. The author of the book, Core PHP Programming, does an amazing job explaining the nuance of PHP that any level READER can understand the topic and does whatever it is that he or she is after - which would be designing a dynamic web site in this case.Leon starts the book with the paraphrase "...answer is that PHP is better" and goes on to explain why that is the case. His answers would compel any PHP user or potential users:1) PHP is free
2) PHP runs on UNIX, Windows, and Mac OS X
3) PHP is modifiable
4) PHP was written for Web Page creation
5) Support for PHP is free and readily available
6) PHP is popular
7) Programming skills developed in other structured languages can be applied to PHPBy the end of page 11 (5 pages into chapter 1) the reader is hooked and wants to read on to find out what all Leon is talking about. All the key phrases are there: free, extendible, lots of supports, and ease of use.
By the end of Chapter 7 or page 160, you are ready to rock. By now, you know what PHP is all about and have learned its syntax, features, and have even looked (or hopefully written) some code.
Dynamic Function Calls ends chapter 4. This section CLEARLY shows to any programmer how powerful PHP really is and how easy it would be for anyone to utilize that power. Dynamic Function Call is very difficult to implement in Java (I don't know of any way to do in C++ actually - specially in one line of code). In one line of code PHP is able to accomplish this task. Very powerful stuff...
I was personally very impressed with the OO features of the language, which was depicted very well in chapter 6. I also need to say that Leon's introduction to Objects and Classes are very easy to understand for users new to the topic.For the next few hundred pages, in Part II of the book - Functional Reference, various functions that PHP supports are shown and each one is explained in a great detail. Most of the functions have also been followed by an example that shows the usage each function just described. These chapters are very good reference even for the advanced users as PHP has grown so much that keeping track and memorizing of all the functions would be nearly impossible.
Leon ends the book with a section called Software Engineering. The two chapters that I liked in this section were the design and the design patterns chapters. Chapter 27, Design, is basic software engineering practices in a nutshell. Something that took me over two graduate level courses to cover, the author gives an overview in about 25 pages. I recommend this chapter to any novice programmer. The chapter on Design Patterns is simply put, great. 4 Design Patterns from the popular GoF book are described:
i) Singleton
ii) Factor y
iii) Observer
iv) Strategy
A reader can benefit the specific examples that are given in this chapter as they apply to Web site design and implementation. The examples given are reusable and would benefit any user of PHP.
Throughout the book the author does a very good job at showing the reader what the differences between PHP and other languages are. I think PHP would be a very good first language to learn b/c it has all the features of other popular scripting languages such as Perl and structural/OO languages such as Java and C/C++.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: MDX Solutions: With Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services
Publisher: Wiley
Authors: George Spofford
Rating: 1/5
Title: MDX Solutions: With Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services
Publisher: Wiley
Authors: George Spofford
Rating: 1/5
and when you got a totally unreliable index you can't use the book, nothing more to it! You have to search half the book just to find what you're looking for, the author tend to get too complecated on explanations, not a good MDX reference
Product: Book Paperback
Title: MCSE Fast Track: SQL Server 7 Database Design (Covers Exam: 70-029)
Publisher: New Riders Publishing
Authors: Thomas Moore
Rating: 2/5
Title: MCSE Fast Track: SQL Server 7 Database Design (Covers Exam: 70-029)
Publisher: New Riders Publishing
Authors: Thomas Moore
Rating: 2/5
I bought the Readiness Review, thinking it would help me, but the book is worthless. This Fast Track book is basically the same price and a lot better. It is broken down exactly for the exam and is easy reading. Only thing is lacks is a test similator like the Readiness Review has.
