IT programming books related reviews
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 maintain several ASP applications with MS SQL backends and with this book I'm able to do things with SQL queries I never thought possible.This book has a thorough index and great code examples making it a perfect reference manual for solving complex SQL query problems.This is the only book you'll need for Transact-SQL.
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 7 Administrator's Guide
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Ron Talmage
Rating: 5/5
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 7 Administrator's Guide
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Ron Talmage
Rating: 5/5
So many authors cannot explain things well, or leave out important details. Ron Talmage gives understandable explanations that made things very clear to me. I found the explanations of Cube and Rollup in the Microsoft materials very unclear. Mr. Talmage's explanations were practical and simple which made me wonder why other authors make it so hard! Mr. Talmage's book is not intended to be a Microsoft comprehensive reference, it is intended for real-world practioners and gives clear, detailed explanations of the things you need to know. I teach courses in SQL Server and recommend this book to my students. I heartily disagree with some of the negative comments I have read. I wonder if these people really use SQL Server. If so, they would find this book an invaluable reference.
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: MCSE: SQL Server 2000 Design Study Guide (Exam 70-229)
Publisher: Sybex
Authors: Marc Israel, J. Steven Jones, Marc Israel, Steve Jones
Rating: 3/5
Title: MCSE: SQL Server 2000 Design Study Guide (Exam 70-229)
Publisher: Sybex
Authors: Marc Israel, J. Steven Jones, Marc Israel, Steve Jones
Rating: 3/5
If you are totally lost and do not know where to start when studying for 229, this book is a good place to start. However, there are many holes in the book that you need to be aware of. Supplement this with reading of BOL or taking the Transcenders. If you rely totally on this book, you would be in for a shock in the exam. It covers at best 80% of the material.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Oracle PL/SQL Programming, Third Edition
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Steven Feuerstein
Rating: 5/5
Title: Oracle PL/SQL Programming, Third Edition
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Steven Feuerstein
Rating: 5/5
The book is a comprehensive coverage of the language through most Oracle8 components. It does not have Oracle8i component coverage that is found in Oracle PL/SQL Programming: Guide to Oracle8i Features by the same author. It's a shame the two books haven't been merged into one as Oracle9i is in the marketplace.It's improved from the first edition but still needs polishing on its coverage of Index-by (or AKA PL/SQL) Tables. It is an indispensible book. I've used it as a text for teaching college courses in PL/SQL with good student comments on textbook. There is no better book.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP and MySQL Web Development, Second Edition
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
Rating: 3/5
Title: PHP and MySQL Web Development, Second Edition
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
Rating: 3/5
I would not recommend this book. It is certainly NOT for a beginning programmer. It assumes C programming knowledge which surprised me while reading. I found the book useful but if you are a beginner at programming find another book. Most of the examples also failed to function correctly but their content could get you going on the right steps.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Professional Data Warehousing with SQL Server 7.0 and OLAP Services
Publisher: Peer Information Inc.
Authors: Sakhr Youness
Rating: 3/5
Title: Professional Data Warehousing with SQL Server 7.0 and OLAP Services
Publisher: Peer Information Inc.
Authors: Sakhr Youness
Rating: 3/5
As my title states, this book was fairly difficult to read from cover to cover. This is not due to any complexity (although I found myself re-reading certain sections because of quirky grammar) or failure to convey each neccessary aspect of a subject, but the text is laden with grammatical errors, the sentences are short, stubby and choppy, and each concept is repeated throughout multiple paragraphs (exceeding the "hammering-in" quota). Makes for a quite annoying read. The content is there (however badly written it is), thus the reason for my saying that it may make a good reference book. I wish I had a great book to recommend, but this is my first delve into this subject.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Learn SQL
Publisher: Republic of Texas Pr
Authors: Jose A. Ramalho
Rating: 1/5
Title: Learn SQL
Publisher: Republic of Texas Pr
Authors: Jose A. Ramalho
Rating: 1/5
This book is extremely poorly organized. Being familiar with basic SQL statements (INSERT and SELECT type statements), I found this book to be a waste of money. The Appendix is the majority of the book (page 167 - 671 including the Index). The syntax is also quite bizzare. While you may think of this as a reference, good luck finding what you want to do.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: A Programmer's Introduction to PHP 4.0
Publisher: Apress
Authors: W. Jason Gilmore
Rating: 5/5
Title: A Programmer's Introduction to PHP 4.0
Publisher: Apress
Authors: W. Jason Gilmore
Rating: 5/5
A more appropriate title would have been 'An Introduction to PHP 4.0 for HTML Programmers'. The first five chapters cover basic programming concepts such as data types, conditional statements, functional programming, in arrays in very great detail. I found myself (a VB, C, and C++ programmer) skipping dozens of pages at a time. However, in addition to the basic theories, the book does do a good job explaining the various commands and functions PHP uses, although in a manner slightly more basic than I had expected.Starting in chapter 6, however, Gilmore throws down new concepts fast and furiously. The quality of his explanations doesn't suffer, he simply covers more in a briefer period of time in a manner that a somewhat experienced programmer will easily understand.On the whole, I was very impressed with this book. It does a fantastic job introducing PHP 4.0 and serves as a fantastic reference book as well.
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
Don't buy this book! It doesn't relate in any way with the exam, it's very bad written and full of useless information. I couldn't read more than 100 pages.
Product: Book Unknown Binding
Title: Sybase SQL Server 11 Unleashed
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Ray Rankins, Jeff Garbus, David Solomon, Bennett W. McEwan
Rating: 5/5
Title: Sybase SQL Server 11 Unleashed
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Ray Rankins, Jeff Garbus, David Solomon, Bennett W. McEwan
Rating: 5/5
This is an excellent book. I've worked with other relational DBMSs extensively, and I found answers to all my "how do you do it in Sybase?" questions easily. It's a good book to read from beginning to end, if you want to learn Sybase from scratch. Also I think it would be good as a reference -- other developers are constantly coming by my desk to look stuff up in it. The only problem I've had so far is that the Aurora desktop (on the CD) doesn't work on my 95 machine, and it appears the Northern Lights company has gone out of business, so there's absolutely no support for the product.
