IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Web Application Development with PHP 4.0 (with CD-ROM)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Tobias Ratschiller, Till Gerken
Rating: 5/5
Title: Web Application Development with PHP 4.0 (with CD-ROM)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Tobias Ratschiller, Till Gerken
Rating: 5/5
I just got the book today, and reading the first two chapters proved useful already. This book does not tell you about the obvious stuff. All the contrary, it starts right off by telling you about some of PHPs oddities (one of them I came across that was not documented in the manual, about arrays).This is the perfect companion to Professional PHP Programming. It is also an excellent guide on how to implement web projects in general.Again, don't hesitate to buy this book.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 (Microsoft Programming Series)
Publisher: Microsoft Pr
Authors: Ron Soukup
Rating: 5/5
Title: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 (Microsoft Programming Series)
Publisher: Microsoft Pr
Authors: Ron Soukup
Rating: 5/5
Very informative book that examines the SQL Server rather than the SQL Language. Good coverage of history. Well written and an enjoyable read.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Web Application Development with PHP 4.0 (with CD-ROM)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Tobias Ratschiller, Till Gerken
Rating: 4/5
Title: Web Application Development with PHP 4.0 (with CD-ROM)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Tobias Ratschiller, Till Gerken
Rating: 4/5
When I say 4 stars, read 4.5 stars.The authors are well known and respected in the PHP community. Much good info here. Let me say this: A Web Developer in the US, making $75,000/year, makes $35 per hour. I think it's a sure thing that you can read this book and save yourself at least a hour's work on your next project, so it is a good investment in that regard.I only found 1 actual error: In the PHP Normal Form example in chapter 5, the function is_numeric() already belongs to PHP. I don't know how the authors didn't catch this before publication, but it's not a big deal. Simply renaming the function fixes this error. Excellent book overall.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP Developer's Cookbook (2nd Edition)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Sterling Hughes, Andrei Zmievski
Rating: 4/5
Title: PHP Developer's Cookbook (2nd Edition)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Sterling Hughes, Andrei Zmievski
Rating: 4/5
You might find that receipts in this cookbook are useful as well as easy to use. It covers major functions to program in PHP. However, this book does not cover many useful commands, which you might use to make advance software in PHP. This book will become more useful when you also buy the PHP 4 Developer's Guide written by Blake Schwendiman and merely one of the must have books for any web developers.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Advanced PHP Programming
Publisher: Sams
Authors: George Schlossnagle
Rating: 5/5
Title: Advanced PHP Programming
Publisher: Sams
Authors: George Schlossnagle
Rating: 5/5
I have had the pleasure to read through this book, and I need to say that it is a must for those who take PHP seriously. This is not a usual tutorial type book, which will show an example for every keyword with long-winded explanations, but rather a compilation of best pratices and recommendations which you can build on.The performance section for example (which is one of my favourites) just scratches the surface on how you can use APD to find bottlenecks in your code. George provides you with some common examples, but the real work is still yours, you won't get a step-by-step guide.Another interesting point of this book is that it is not to read from start to the end. You will surely find sections you are already familiar with (Smarty being a prime example), or sections too advanced for you (ex. distributed environments). And George also takes the liberty to use PHP 5 OO code before introducing the new PHP 5 features, and using XML-RPC before the chapter on RPC calls.I find it very valuable to have a lengthy introduction to good coding practices at the begining, since most of the code in the book builds heavily on having a consistent coding style. What I miss from the begining though is the introduction on where can people find details if they are stuck. There are interesting PHP.net services (lxr.php.net for example), which are quite valuable if you are trying to find something in the PHP source, to get an idea of how things work.George having been heavily involved in the APC and APD development knows a lot about PHP and Zend internals. The last section provides you with a current and correct explanation on how you can extend PHP. None of the printed books on the market, or any online tutorial or manual can beat this section currently.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Php Fast & Easy Web Development (Fast & Easy Web Development)
Publisher: Premier Press
Authors: Julie C. Meloni
Rating: 4/5
Title: Php Fast & Easy Web Development (Fast & Easy Web Development)
Publisher: Premier Press
Authors: Julie C. Meloni
Rating: 4/5
I must say that I like this book. I am a german web developer and I live and work in Florida. It is very hard (well, expensive) to get german books over here and so I have to fall back on english books. Therefore I need books which make it simple and don't expect you to understand all the complicated technical babble. Well, this book does exactly what I want it to do. I knew a little about PHP before and I was excited to learn more. Well, this book taught me more and gave me the basics for the hard 'n heavy stuff (O'Reilly). The only reason why I give this book only 4 stars is that it wastes sometimes space to show you even the very (and again, I mean very!) obvious things. She (the author) shows you how to work with ALL the possible combinations of the example applications you create and combines all that with a screenshot (eg. "if you press the button "capitalize" (screenshot), it will capitalize your text (screenshot). Well, maybe I am just too cheap to like it when space (paper) is wasted for something so obvious. The book itself is great if you plan on buying another PHP book later. It really shows you the start and "getting into". Thank you Julie!
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL Fundamentals
Publisher: Prentice Hall
Authors: John J. Patrick
Rating: 4/5
Title: SQL Fundamentals
Publisher: Prentice Hall
Authors: John J. Patrick
Rating: 4/5
I found this to be a very good read on SQL. I learned SQL in a whirlwind fashion in college. I then began programming in Oracle and found that I could use some review of SQL. This book is the only one that I found that would fit the bill. It was just the re-calibration I was looking for. It does have a couple of typo issues (few) but, it wasn't in the code examples. Considering the speed that these books are produced to keep up with the technology, I think John Patrick did a good job with this book. I would give it high marks as an SQL reference. I haven't found one yet that compares.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Core PHP Programming: Using PHP to Build Dynamic Web Sites (2nd Edition)
Publisher: Pearson Education
Authors: Leon Atkinson
Rating: 5/5
Title: Core PHP Programming: Using PHP to Build Dynamic Web Sites (2nd Edition)
Publisher: Pearson Education
Authors: Leon Atkinson
Rating: 5/5
After having this book for a week, I have found several shortcomings with its content. The coverage of some topics is not as thorough as it should be. It covers the basics, but as soon as you face a challenge, you're pretty much on your own. Also, I have found several instances where the index of the book only gets you close to a topic. It might not be on the page that the index says it is on (for example, the File function is listed in the index on page 134, but actually appears on page 133). HTTP vars don't even appear in the index (and aren't covered too well in the online help that comes with PHP). The CD in the book includes PHP version 4.0.0, which has been superceded already, as well as the examples in the book, most of which are only a handful of lines long each. The publishers should have saved money by having a web site for the book that could stay up-to-date. Overall, I was quite disappointed.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Transact-SQL Programming
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Lee Gould, Andrew Zanevsky, Kevin Kline
Rating: 5/5
Title: Transact-SQL Programming
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Lee Gould, Andrew Zanevsky, Kevin Kline
Rating: 5/5
Transact-SQL Programming, by Kevin Kline, et al., is a very good SQL book, and an excellent Transact-SQL book. It covers Microsoft SQL Server 6.5/7.0 and Sybase Adaptive Server 11.5. (The changes in Transact-SQL from SQL Server 6.5 to 7.0 , by the way, are really not significant.)This book is strongly oriented towards database programming, not administration. It's not for beginners. It's not a setup and configuration guide, nor is it a "cool features" book. And it's definitely not about how to hook up Visual Basic to SQL Server and call it database programming. In order to get much from this book, the reader should be able to perform basic queries, inserts, updates and deletes using SQL. However, while some familiarity with SQL is presumed, the book has several chapters on "standard" SQL that is some of the best I've ever read for novice to intermediate SQL programming. (If you're entirely new to SQL programming get Joe Celko's Instant SQL book, or something like it.)There are a few glaring typos throughout the book. I didn't perceive them to be any more frequent than in most recent computer books. Personally, I'd rather have the information in the book available a couple of weeks earlier than to wait for another proofread to shake out a couple of dozen typos. And furthermore, if the typos, in this book at least, are really throwing you, it's because you aren't understanding the material. Go back and re-read more carefully.Once again, this is a Transact-SQL programming book. It is not a Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 book. If you don't understand the difference, you're probably not ready for this book. But if you want to learn how to use Transact-SQL to write professional, commercial database applications for either SQL Server 6.5/7.0 or Sybase Adaptive Server, this book provides everything you need to know.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Professional PHP Programming
Publisher:
Authors: Jesus Castagnetto, Sascha Schumann, Harish Rawat, Chris Scollo, Deepak T. Veliath
Rating: 5/5
Title: Professional PHP Programming
Publisher:
Authors: Jesus Castagnetto, Sascha Schumann, Harish Rawat, Chris Scollo, Deepak T. Veliath
Rating: 5/5
Ok, this is a very good book. I bought this book, with very limited programming experience. I had only really tinkered around with PHP.I found this book very easy to read, and use when I needed it later for a specific job. I think this book is better used going through it from start to finish, taking notes, or however else you learn. There are about 200 pages of Appendix with some handy references.I skipped the installation chapters as I had PHP already installed on my web host.At the end of many chapters, there are exercises you do that links to the chapter you just covered. For the first few chapters you work on a online job application, and build that up at the end of each chapter. Then it moves on to an address book...At the end of the chapters(before the appendix) is 4 case studies: Shopping cart, Phorum discussion board, Email application, and Database browser. Here they write these web applications, and show you how it's done!There are not many mistakes in the writing. I think there are two mistakes in the code, but that is covered on their website.Overall I think this is the best book on the market for PHP. It is interesting, very practical, and is a great book for learning PHP.What are you waiting for? :)
