IT programming books related reviews

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Not the be all end all, but a good place to start

My background is as an ASP developer and new dedicated DBA / Data Architect. I've done pretty extensive data modeling and implementation for several small to medium sized ASP applications. I am a big fan of the Wrox P2P series. This is my 8th Wrox purchase.I was disappointed in this book, but I'm having trouble putting my finger on exactly why I was disappointed. I read every word, which is rare for a technical book, but I just don't feel like I learned in the areas that I really wanted to learn. My two main goals for this read were to learn how to better build business rules into my databases and to reinforce and validate data modeling techniques I have been taught from mentors.Extensive coverage is given in the first half of the book to the logical design (extensive to the point of obnoxious). Tips on how to break down your notes for entities and relationships and the like are abundant. A theme I kept repeating to myself over and over as I read was that this is big-time overkill for anything other than an enterprise-scale application. I'm as big an advocate of documenting client interviews as the next guy, but come on - breaking down every paragraph looking for verbs is just overkill. There was no advice given on how to solicit valuable information. Reports are discussed, but I'm a firm believer that reports can tell you much more about an application's true value than anything else. I very much prefer to start by asking the question "What information do you need from the system to do your job better than you do today?" than to start out by asking, "What do you do all day?" I find it the only way to break users out of the paradigm that they have worked in for so long and it leads to much more innovative useful applications. Nothing like this was in the book. I learned how to go through notes that magically appear, and that reports will shed light on missed pieces of information and new pieces of functionality, but who doesn't know that that has designed a database?Davidson is a BIG advocate of normalization. And while there is no substitute for a well-normalized database for application stability and data integrity, Davidson advocates the breaking out of tables for the most meaningless of reasons. Those that develop applications on top of his databases much hate all the extra work he builds in. I disagree with his assertion that the database should be built to anticipate any possible changes to the user-expected data. You will spend forever trying to anticipate changes, and even longer coding over the massive database you have built. For example, in order to store a user's address, Davidson advocates a six-table structure with five joins. Are you kidding me? What coder wants to deal with all that just for the possibility that some time down the road the users may want to add Address Line 10 to the application.Davidson also follows an annoying pattern for demonstrating his normalization techniques. He presents a data model with problems, introduces a concept, applies the concept to the tables and comes up with a better model. This is great, except that he continues to build on the same example throughout the book. So, other than the very last model, all the ones before it are incorrect. You have to read every word in order to get to the correct answer. It makes it impossible to pick up a chapter to use as a reference, because if you create a solution similar to the one demonstrated, you will have an improperly normalized database. Fine for a book you read front to back, but not so good for a reference manual.The implementation details of the book were even more disappointing. Davidson is not an advocate of an N-Tier approach to coding. He believes that as many of the business rules that can be incorporated into the database should be built there. He openly says that he butts heads with his developers and system architects over this issue. I'm not surprised. While I suppose that building the business rules into the database is good for data integrity, I think the biggest advantage for the DBA is job security. I believe that a well-built database should be flexible to changes in business rules and that the data should be stored independent of those rules whenever possible. We all know rules change, and I don't like messing with a production database if I can help it. I would rather have flexibility in the model and trust my business tier coders to do their job.The chapters on Stored Procedures, UDFs, Triggers, and the like are too complicated for a newbie and too un-detailed for an experienced developer. I found Professional SQL Server 2000 Programming by Robert Vieira a much better reference for both the basics and best practices.I guess I've written enough. I still feel there is value in this book. For someone that has never designed a database before or has no formal training, it may be a good reference, but I fear it will be too complicated for a true newbie. There are valuable bits of advice and I broke out my highlighter more than once. In particular, Davidson offers some simple modes for overcoming common problems such as attribute change history.Three stars - I just had too many disagreements with the author to go any higher.-HawkeyeGK Embarrassing, DON'T BUT THIS BOOK

I have read and reviewed over 25 MS certification books, and this is among the worst I've ever seen. This book was obviously rushed into print, as the spelling and grammar errors are the worst I've ever seen in any published material. There are many cases where they give example SQL text that doesn't even run b/c of inaccuracies. Many of the exam questions specify incorrect answers and/or tell you one answer is correct, then the answer explanation will explain why another answer is the correct choice.The book is week on substance, as many of its pages are filled with screen shots rather than enlightening content. The test questions are not similar to the type of questions found on the actual exam. If anyone actually reviewed this book before it went into production, they should be fired immediately, as it's hard to read more than a couple pages without finding errors, many of which make it difficult to determine what the author is trying to say.If you want to learn SQL server and desire to pass the exam, spend your time with other material. Great Introduction

I had no knowledge of JAVA or JDBC and a limited understanding of SQL. I found the book extremely informative and well written Given the enormity of the three topics covered the author does an excelent job of introducing these. I don't think this book will suit professional Java Coders but if you want to understand the concept of how JAVA, JDBC and SQL work together this is an excellent book. A great book to get started Great book for fast understanding of SQL

By far the best book for learning SQL fast that I have read. I have recommended it to many software developers who understand computer languages and want to learn this one. Wonderfully thin and straight-forward, it does not focus on the boring details of SQL syntax, but on how you write various types of queries using this language. Best value I have found to date in an introductory SQL book. Not really a programming manual.

I'd rather give this 2.5 stars but that's not an option. I recently checked this book out of the library prior to deciding whether to buy it for my personal reference library. I was hoping for a good overview of programming PHP applications but instead got a basic language reference, which is okay as far as it goes but it certainly isn't the way it's advertised. As a reference manual its adequate but not as good as some of the other manuals out there, including the (free) online PHP documentation. On the whole its rather a disappointing book as it doesn't fulfill any objective well. Thorough and comprehensive

The first and only a fully comprehensive book on Transactional replication, filling a gap that has existed for over five years. I found it easy to read, and I like that it covers both the surface phenomena like wizards, and internals such as tables and stored procedures. By taking time with both, the book adds a nice perspective to a very complex topic. It also avoids the scattershot approach of online help.
Just a couple of days after getting the book, I jumped ahead to the internals of the distribution database and based on Hilary's info, write a query to monitor the progress of transactions. Very nice! A worthless collection of cliches??

The concept of the author's article is excellent. I have discussed the idea of "page ranking" versus "site ranking" with fellow memebers at work and the process is right. There appears to be no way to trick or fool search engines. You can buy pay-per-click ranking (That's expensive.) or work to make your pages worth something to the search engines. I'd advise every webmaster to re-set their thinking. Concentrate on page ranking! Not a COMPLETE waste of time

I don't agree with the other review on here that says this book is a complete waste of time. There are a few bright spots here and there. If you're very new to SQL Server, you may find, say, 5% of the book to be useful and to pass on info that you won't find in the Books Online.However, I do agree that the narrative is pretty uneven at times. You can definitely tell that more than one person wrote this book (e.g., when you see completely different code formatting on the SAME page :-).I didn't get much out of the book myself, hence the two-star review. Then again, I'm an advanced SQL Server developer (MCDBA) who's been working with the product for about two years now. The book was definitely beneath me, but if you're just starting with SQL Server you might learn a few things from it. Good Succinct Primer on SQL

I taught a class to co-workers who had no SQL experience using this book, covering the first 6 chapters in approximately 4 hours; and the next day they were able to assist in writing queries, easing my workload (this is an excellent book to use for learning how to write queries, but it does not cover design, for that see Steven Roman's Access Database Design and Programming). This book demands a careful reading as it explains the syntactical differences between different implementations of SQL (e.g., Access uses * and ? as wildcards as opposed to % and _). Not for the exam

It is so different from the exam: for example, all the SQL Profiler and the execution plans are missing. Nevertheless, it's a good companion to other guides and it takes 2-3 days to read. Better than nothing....

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