IT programming books related reviews
Title: Sybase Transact SQL Guidelines Best Practices
Publisher: Isosf Software
Authors: Mich Talebzadeh, Ryan Thomas Putnam
Rating: 5/5
My colleague attended Sybase TechWave 2004 and received a copy of this book from Sybase. I have read it and I like its style. The authors have tried to explain complex topics in practical terms. I was most impressed by chapters covering Data Access, Query Tuning, Cursors and Joins. I recommend it to every Transact SQL developer Sybase or Microsoft. It covers practical aspects without being tedious.
Title: Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes, Third Edition
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Ben Forta
Rating: 5/5
This is a thin reference book, actually. The name is somewhat misleading in that there are no exercises generally associated with "Teach yourself X in Y time" type books. Although I don't work extensively with databases, it's a good reference book to recall how to structure queries in a manner that's simple and straightforward.
Title: Professional Apache Tomcat
Publisher: Wrox
Authors: Chanoch Wiggers, Ben Galbraith, Vivek Chopra, Sing Li, Debashish Bhattacharjee, Amit Bakore, Romin Irani, Sandip Bhattacharya, Chad Fowler
Rating: 4/5
This book covers the basics including code snippets for the vast majority of files showing how a basic configuration might look.
This book covers the directory layouts required for a successful installation and the corresponding files which need to be in those directories. Fairly good coverage is given to each of the elements (with examples) contained in those files. Generally, the book helped me breeze through installation of java and Tomcat. The book provides separate examples for a windows installation and linux installation, which was most appreciated. However, I did struggle mightily when it came time to configuring Tomcat with Apache. As mine was not a "standard" setup. At the point where I needed a broader understanding of how these components meshed, I realized the book offers a well written, nicely organized description of the basics. Providing a holistic understanding of the interactions wasn't included.
Title: Oracle SQL*Plus: The Definitive Guide
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Jonathan Gennick
Rating: 4/5
I'm a newbie, as far as ORACLE is concerned, I have used a similar Database management system - UniVision, which has it's own language (Vision), I found this book an excellent introduction/guide to SQL*PLUS. So much so, that I've recommended it to colleagues and customers who are more experienced than I am - and they all agree with me. Splendid stuff.
Title: Upgrading to PHP 5
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Adam Trachtenberg
Rating: 5/5
I've been scripting PHP since PHP3. It was a good wakeup call to let me know I might not know everything about PHP anymore. Sessions were a cool new thing in PHP4, then superglobals in 4.1, and both were easy to understand and implement, but I couldn't seem to find a decent explaination of what was coming up in PHP5 and how to use it since there isn't a lot of code to read as examples (as of this writing). This was the answer for me. The book has 10 chapters; I got my money's worth after I finished chapter 2.
This book takes a seasoned PHP4 programmer and shows how PHP5 adds new features that reduce clunkyness that you just had to live with in PHP4. I can't even think how many different implementations I've seen of preventing SQL injections for MySQL queries. 4 pages explained how the MySQLi extension wiped out one of my complete MySQL classes that exists for nothing other than SQL injection and error handling. Albeit if I read the php.net manual, I could have figured some of it out on my own, but not with the helpful notes that Adam includes.
You should get this book if you write PHP4 classes, use MySQL <= 4.0.x, or you're thinking about switching to SQLite because you're weary about future support of MySQL in PHP and all the licensing changes from MySQL AB. I don't much like XML, so I skipped that chapter. I don't have any applications where I could use the streams, SOAP, Tidy, or Reflection functionality, so I can't speak on those either cause I skipped them, too.
Even though I didn't read half the book, the other half was worth it anyway.
Title: Foundation PHP for Flash
Publisher: Friends of Ed
Authors: Steve Webster
Rating: 5/5
I'm from Bolivia I bought this great book that shows you the use of PHP in Flash, althought you must know about Flash it helps you to increase your abbilities [...]. Never in my life I saw the support that this book has. It is amazing how fast the authors respond to your e-mails. If you want to amaze people with Flash making really dynamic stuff this is your book. The only thing that disapoints me is that flash can't load Images dynamically, if that would be the case we you could almost forget of making things in HTML.
Title: The Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Ken Henderson
Rating: 5/5
This book is unique. It doesn't read like all the other Sql Server books I have. Its totally different and fresh. The expert discussions of statistical functions in the language is like nothing else I've ever read. The full-text discussion, the Ole Automation discussion, and the undocumented chapter are all first rate. I loved the null values chapter and the DML/DDL chapters. They are also first rate.I can't think of a better value for the money than this book. It's very tight, and every page has some new tidbit that you'll be glad you read.
Title: Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 21 Days (4th Edition)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Ron Plew, Ryan Stephens
Rating: 5/5
I use(d) this book as the basis towards my WIN2K MCDBA...It is superior to anything out there including Microsoft's Official MCSE [Exam 70-228] SQL Server 2000 SA Training Kit... includes everything one needs assuming one immerses oneself in the book from Day 1 through Day 21 in addition to Day 22 (SQL Server Analysis Services (OLAP)) and Day 23 (English Query).It is both a superior reference book and programmer's guide. After purchasing Microsoft's official references I found myself repeatedly (frustrated by their shortcomings and referring back to this particular SAMS text). Enough cannot be said about this book.
Title: PHP3: Programming Browser-Based Applications with PHP
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
Authors: Dave Medinets
Rating: 1/5
I was developing two websites using PHP3 and MySQL so I bought this book to help: wrong. It's a disaster. It's been three months since I bought the book and I've gotten zero information from it. Today I tried to find out how to get the date, the index doesn't have date or time listed. It doesn't help with putting data in, or getting data out of forms or databases. Save your money.
Title: PHP and MySQL Web Development
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
Rating: 5/5
This is a extremely good book to learn PHP and MySQL from scratch, as I did. It provides absolutely wonderful real-world examples, and half the book is full of complete projects ranging from creating your own forums, to making your own web-based email service. Very well done.The only gripe I have with it is that I wish it went deeper into session control using PHP.

