IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Structured Query Language (Sql : a Practical Introduction)
Publisher: NCC Blackwell
Authors: Akeel I. Din
Rating: 5/5
Title: Structured Query Language (Sql : a Practical Introduction)
Publisher: NCC Blackwell
Authors: Akeel I. Din
Rating: 5/5
The copy of this book that I have had seen a lot of use and I can see why. There is no simpler text for learning the syntax and structure of SQL. I would recommend this as an introductory text with a book on database design. Particulary liked the many easy to follow examples.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Professional SQL Server 7.0 Programming
Publisher: Wrox Press
Authors: Rob Vieira
Rating: 1/5
Title: Professional SQL Server 7.0 Programming
Publisher: Wrox Press
Authors: Rob Vieira
Rating: 1/5
I really did not know SQL but after reading this book i passed the SQL MCDBA exams and got certified.
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 7.0
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Ron Soukup, Kalen Delaney
Rating: 5/5
Title: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 7.0
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Ron Soukup, Kalen Delaney
Rating: 5/5
I can't imagine that it would be possible not to get your money's worth from this book if you use SQL Server.The main strength of the book is the insight it gives you into the internals of the engine. This, in turn, makes it a lot easier to do things efficiently, and squeeze more performance out of your engine. This version revises an earlier edition of the book that was written by a core member of the SQL server team at Microsoft -- the discussion of the internals is straight from the horse's mouth, and there's a lot of good stuff in the book that you won't get anywhere else.The second reason to buy this book is that it does a good job of explaining the ideosyncracies of SQL Server, the things that separate it from engines from other vendors. This is particularly useful information to have before you install your engine for the first time -- it's easy to inadvertently make choices that have consequences you don't understand.Some of the complaints here about the book are easy to understand, but still strike me as not entirely well founded. Learning how to run a complicated database engine is hard, and it's not realistic to expect to pick it up from one book, or even from a single reading each of several books. I have found that returning to the book time and again as I become more seasoned at my job is helpful -- things that went right by me on the first reading make sense when I can put them into the context of real world problems I've encountered.This book isn't a good place to learn SQL, either at a beginning or an advanced level. I would recommend Joe Celko's books for people who are looking for instruction. It is also not a good reference for SQL Server -- the "Books Online" help system that comes with the engine is a great reference source. Finally, it's not a great nuts and bolts DBA howto book -- the "Microsoft SQL Server 7 DBA Survival Guide" is a better choice for people who want to learn how to set up backups and replication.But this book is the best window under the hood of the engine, and you'll learn a lot that will help you run your engine as efficiently as possible. Again, I can't imagine anyone doing anything with the engine who wouldn't benefit from the book.Finally, if you want to play with the engine, to learn about SQL, this is a great book because it comes with a 120 day evaluation copy of SQL Server 7 on CD.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Professional SQL Server 7.0 Programming
Publisher: Wrox Press
Authors: Rob Vieira
Rating: 5/5
Title: Professional SQL Server 7.0 Programming
Publisher: Wrox Press
Authors: Rob Vieira
Rating: 5/5
Robert did the great job. This is a must have book for people working with MS SQL 7 and later. As IT proffessional, I must say, that this book sets standards how the book for IT professionals (and for MS-SQL server beginners too) should be written.The book covers in detail not only relational database design and programming issues, but security and administrative issues, data replication and distributed data are cowered in detail as well and in my opinion, is one of the best books ever written about the MS SQL 7 server.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: The Essence of SQL : A Guide to Learning Most of SQL in the Least Amount of Time
Publisher: Coriolis Group Books
Authors: David Rozenshtein
Rating: 5/5
Title: The Essence of SQL : A Guide to Learning Most of SQL in the Least Amount of Time
Publisher: Coriolis Group Books
Authors: David Rozenshtein
Rating: 5/5
As English is my second language, I found this book very concise and easy to read. Though it is not a complete SQL guide, it do cover the most practical and fundamental parts of SQL. It is a small and thin book. It starts by a list of standard questions and walk you through the corresponding SQL expressions and explanations in only 119 pages. After reading this book, I found myself become more comprehensive and faster to read other complete SQL handbooks. I think this book is an effcient and effective SQL entrance and a fine teaching reference as well.
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
As a Java Web programmer of a couple of years I found this book an excellent resource that got me working quickly. It is definitely not for the beginning programmer as there are other books better suited to that task. Mr. Gilmore presents PHP in a clear and concise format. In the first chapters he covers, as he should, the structure, language syntax, and logical constructs with sufficient prose to get the experienced programmer working quickly. I found the depth of these topic slightly more detailed than needed but I breezed through them. He even includes an entire chapter on Strings and Regular Expression if you need the refresher.The second section is also well written and concise. He covers how to use PHP as a web scripting language and the database access aspects of it as well. If you are not familiar with how web apps work, Mr. Gilmore gets you workinq quickly with ideas and hints to using templates and dynamic page generation techniques. The chapters each complete with a sample PHP web app.The final section covers XML, Javascript/COM, and security. The security chapter is a must read for beginnig PHP programmers so the don't leave gaping holes in there sites.I highly recommend this book for any programmer looking to move to PHP. PHP is a high level productive web development environment and Mr. Gilmore made it even more so for me.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Sams Teach Yourself Transact-SQL in 21 Days (2nd Edition)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Lowell Mauer
Rating: 5/5
Title: Sams Teach Yourself Transact-SQL in 21 Days (2nd Edition)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Lowell Mauer
Rating: 5/5
I had no experience with sql when I purchased this book. It was great. It was easy to follow and I learned transact sql in far less than twenty one days. After reading this book, I got a job in programming and was finally able to change careers. When I saw all the negative reviews for this book I couldn't believe it! Those people obviously never read it!
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes, Third Edition
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Ben Forta
Rating: 3/5
Title: Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes, Third Edition
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Ben Forta
Rating: 3/5
This book is a good intro into what SQL can do and how it's used today, but it's important to realize that it's really just an intro. Forta covers pretty much all the main topics, but he really only gives a brief synopsis of each one followed by one or maybe two examples. So if you want to learn SQL, this book alone is almost pointless to buy. It's just far too surface level. However, if you use this book to get acquainted with what SQL can do and then base further purchases off what you've learned in it, you'll probably do quite well. This book is very easy to read, pretty comprehensive (though not very deep), and certainly worth the "money" you'll pay for it. However, you'll definitely need to buy other books. I recommend SQL Queries for Mere Mortals by Hernandez. While that book really only covers query related issues (joins, unions, inner queries, etc.), it covers the topics pretty deeply and gives lots of good examples. I'm giving this book 3 stars because it delivers what it claims but by itself is just not all that useful.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft SQL Server 2000 in 21 Days (2nd Edition, Book Only)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Richard Waymire, Rick Sawtell
Rating: 5/5
Title: Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft SQL Server 2000 in 21 Days (2nd Edition, Book Only)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Richard Waymire, Rick Sawtell
Rating: 5/5
This is a very good book for the newcomer to SQL Server, particularly for those who have little experience with other databases.
It addresses various topics that are just enough to get you started on being able to get some work done with SQL Server and know what else you need to learn. Strange as it may sound, IMHO, discovering what you don't know is a valuable endeavour. Sure, it could've gone into a lot more detail on the query optimizer or how lock escalation really works, etc... but really, where do you draw the line? There's no good place that will please everyone. This book did a decent job.
This is not the book to make you an expert. In fact, it won't even make you an "intermediate" if there's such a state. It introduces enough to get you going. If you find yourself asking "well, what about this?" or "ok, you showed one way to use stored procedures, what if I wanted to ....", then the book has done a good job. If you have no questions or don't know what to ask, then it's failed.
As for the readers/reviewers who slammed the book for not making them experts, really, what were you expecting? You won't even know the ins and outs of installing Oracle or DB2 in 21 days much less get into any useful state (I've been an Oracle DBA for 7 years and DB2 for about 2 years, I know a thing or two about them).
If you are an experienced database administrator or developer on another database, this book is probably kinda slow for you and certainly will not contain the depth that you're probably seeking. For this audience, I'd recommend Inside SQL Server by Kalen Delaney. It's not all there but it's a great start.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Hitchhiker's Guide to SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services (Microsoft Windows Server System)
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Peter Blackburn, William R. Vaughn
Rating: 5/5
Title: Hitchhiker's Guide to SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services (Microsoft Windows Server System)
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Peter Blackburn, William R. Vaughn
Rating: 5/5
Being a beta tester for Reporting Services I had the chance to meet Peter Blackburn (the co-author of Hitchhiker's Guide to SQL Server 2000 Reporting). His name was the one to come up every time I was searching for help in any search engine or newsgroup about Reporting Services. He even was there, talking to me live on MSN Messenger, helping me to solve my most extreme problems or understand the various concepts about securing, authoring, deploying and managing RS.
I know that these guys spend a lot of time on researching, helping other people, giving Microsoft RS development team precious feedback. Their trails are all over the internet to prove it!
So, I was happy when Peter told me that he and Bill Vaughn were writing a book on the subject and I was really pleased to see that their book was such an excellent piece of work when I got it in my hands...
The book:
Written in a natural, easy to read language (I'm Greek and my English is not proficient) this book is a precious guide for the Report developer, the WEB developer, the Administrator and DBA, System Integrator and even the hardcore developer. This book explains in detail not only how but why. The two experienced authors suggest best practices and justify why. Another thing that I liked most in this book, is the Security point of view of everything. Peter will not let you setup an insecure RS without having nightmares and for all your life! He won't let you write a single query that leaves the infamous "Injection Code" backdoor open. Instead he'll give you an alternative and explain why it is better (see: "Procedure for passing parameters to Stored Procs").
The humour lying all over this book makes it really enjoyable - be prepare for some laughs too, Peter is quite a character.
But, this book is not only a very good guide. It is a source of valuable advices, tips, tricks, inside (MS) info but most of all it is an independent look on Reporting Services that goes farther than Microsoft itself!
I'll be more specific:
This book will show you how to achieve some things (that you'll desperately need when you become an expert) that MS simply does not support:
* Passing multivalue parameters - IN (p1, p2, p3)
* Creating and using your own parameter UI before report execution (my favourite)
* Expanding Reports with your templates and styles
* Customizing the Report Manager
Oh, I said: "show you"! I mean it. There is a DVD accompanying this book. This DVD is the most useful one I've ever used with a book. The "Hitchhiker's Guide Me" videos will show you step by step all the processes (you'll really appreciate the "Installing an SSL Security Certificate" guide).
My favourite parts:
* Installing and Configuring Reporting Services
* Report Security
* Extending Reports--Report Templates and Styles
* Customizing the Report Manager
* Managing Reports using SOAP
To conclude:
Excellent book, it worth the money. You'll read it once. If you are a developer it will be your best friend for ever!
