IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Professional SQL Server 2000 Programming
Publisher: Wrox
Authors: Robert Vieira
Rating: 5/5
Title: Professional SQL Server 2000 Programming
Publisher: Wrox
Authors: Robert Vieira
Rating: 5/5
This is one of the few technical books truly worth reading from cover to cover. The author is an expert, and it shows in his discussions of the pros and cons of all approaches. This book was actually a pleasure to read thanks to his writing style and honesty concerning various issues. If you are developing applications for Windows or the Web using SQL 2000 you must read this book. It will teach you how to properly build and program your database (via views, triggers, and sprocs), enforce constraints, and track and optimize performance. The information on security is excellent. The coverage of OLTP vs. OLAP, and normalization vs. denormalization is great. I wish I had read this years ago. I also wish all technical books could be half as good. The only possible minus is the use of screen shots, but that only adds to the size of the book, it does not take away from the other material, and in most cases it is useful, so I still give 5 stars.I just completed this book for the 70-229 exam. Coupled with the Transcenders and Books On Line for filling in your problem areas after testing, you will be well prepared. I passed by a wide margin.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Understanding SQL and Java Together : A Guide to SQLJ, JDBC, and Related Technologies (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems)
Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann
Authors: Jim Melton, Andrew Eisenberg
Rating: 1/5
Title: Understanding SQL and Java Together : A Guide to SQLJ, JDBC, and Related Technologies (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems)
Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann
Authors: Jim Melton, Andrew Eisenberg
Rating: 1/5
I purchased this book for an independent study and found it severely lacked pertinent information. The core of JDBC is the Java objects that assist you in accessing a database, but this book fails to provide a decent explanation of them. The first 2 chapters are filler on Java and SQL, which someone learning to access a database using Java should already know. If you don't know them, the coverage in this book is hardly sufficient. Descriptions of code examples or discussions leading up to the code examples were probably the biggest shortfalls of the book. There is so much going on underneath that this book fails to explain.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: XML and SQL Server 2000
Publisher: New Riders Publishing
Authors: John Griffin
Rating: 4/5
Title: XML and SQL Server 2000
Publisher: New Riders Publishing
Authors: John Griffin
Rating: 4/5
In this book, John Griffin has provided a readable discussion of how to incorporate XML into your SQL Server 2000 applications. Starting with a gentle introduction to both XML and XSLT, John quickly moves into incorporating SQL Server 2000 into web applications, including discussion on Virtual Directories, executing SQL via HTTP, and Forms based queries. He then moves onto advanced topics like XDR Schemas and XPath, before concluding with chapters on FOR XML and OPEN XML, which are both important Microsoft extensions to SQL that are explicitly designed to improve the performance of SQL Server 2000 with XML.
One of the only disappointments I had with this book was the neglect of Web Services, which I would expect would be a major reason for using XML with SQL Server 2000. This is not a major criticism, and might be addressed in later editions of the book. In any event, any serious SQL Server 2000 developer should take a look at this book.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP and MySQL Web Development
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
Rating: 5/5
Title: PHP and MySQL Web Development
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
Rating: 5/5
This is a very useful book. If you're a web developer, and you're starting out with PHP, it will do wonders. It covers many important things such as creating a successful shopping cart, web based e-mail, web forums, and working with files such as PDF and images. What I enjoy most about this book is that it teaches you PHP and MySQL in a very coherent manner. In the beginning, it has a thorough introduction to PHP and its list of functions and it even covers PHP classes. It does this in a clean and understandable manner that is easy to follow. The chapters on MySQL and databases are also well put together. It covers the theory and implementation rather well using real world examples. Overall, it's an excellent book. If you're already a programmer, you'll fly through the chapters without any hassle.
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
The great thing about this book is that the author goes beyond just delivering a bunch of example code. He actually takes the time to explain how it works. He has a direct, first-person style that is rare these days and that works perfectly. There's just enough commentary, but no filler or fluff. A very tight book that belongs on the shelf of every SQL practitioner in the business.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: The Guru's Guide to SQL Server Stored Procedures, XML, and HTML (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Ken Henderson
Rating: 5/5
Title: The Guru's Guide to SQL Server Stored Procedures, XML, and HTML (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Ken Henderson
Rating: 5/5
This is much awaited book for the ones who want to excel in xml, stored procedure. Ken describes excellently and has your total attention.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache in 24 Hours
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Julie C. Meloni
Rating: 1/5
Title: Sams Teach Yourself PHP, MySQL and Apache in 24 Hours
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Julie C. Meloni
Rating: 1/5
I picked up this book figuring that it would help me figure out the basics of how to install and get PHP, MySQL and Apache up and talking to one another. I figured wrong. If each chapter is supposed to take an hour to read and complete this book was useless in less than 20 minutes. It didn't tell me how to get MySQL started after installing it. Even with the "Advanced" section later in the book the stuff they put back there could have been in chapter one. It still wouldn't have made a difference since the best advice they gave was "if you have any problems getting it working RTFM."This book is going back to the store and I am just going to use Easy PHP to install the three. If I was able to understand all the instructions and technical stuff I wouldn't NEED the book in the first place. When I am ready for the true technical stuff I'll just install the three myself and compare settings to an already working server.Thanks for nothing...
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Mastering Oracle SQL, 2nd Edition
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Sanjay Mishra, Alan Beaulieu
Rating: 4/5
Title: Mastering Oracle SQL, 2nd Edition
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Sanjay Mishra, Alan Beaulieu
Rating: 4/5
I will agree with other reviewers that cite this book as an excellent resource. It is well organized and easy to follow from topic to topic without getting lost. The examples are well introduced and written with few minor errors. These will be easy to spot for someone who has used any flavor of SQL.
Some issues that I did have with the book revolve around what it isn't. Most of the book revolves around features that are new to 10g rather than a solid overview of the Oracle DML. This means that readers will not be properly introduced to string manipulation outside of the regular expression implementation which is new to 10g (Legacy DBs?). Also, you will have to look elsewhere for good information on CAST, CONVERT and case changing functions. These can be crucial as Oracle is much more strongly typed with regards to data than MS SQL Server.
As DBAs or reporting analysts aren't always privy to the latest release, I see the concentration on 10g's new features as a flaw. Over all this book will introduce you to Oracle SQL in an easy to follow manner. Experienced SQL users will be able to become functional by using this book but, will scratch their heads when they encounter the DML language gaps.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: A First Look at Microsoft SQL Server 2005 for Developers
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Bob Beauchemin, Niels Berglund, Dan Sullivan
Rating: 5/5
Title: A First Look at Microsoft SQL Server 2005 for Developers
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Bob Beauchemin, Niels Berglund, Dan Sullivan
Rating: 5/5
SQL Server 2005 will be a big release for SQL Server, on the scale of the 6.5 to 7.0 upgrade. With that kind of shift, it is critical to have a head start in planning. How are the decisions I am making today fit into SQL Server 2005? How will CLR integration help me build solutions? What can I do with the new XML datatype? These are all common questions answered in this book, along with many others.
The book is very readable with good context and background. It makes a great guide to using the SQL Server 2005 previews available to MSDN subscribers.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP for the World Wide Web : Visual QuickStart Guide (2nd Edition) (Visual Quickstart Guides)
Publisher: Peachpit Press
Authors: Larry Ullman
Rating: 4/5
Title: PHP for the World Wide Web : Visual QuickStart Guide (2nd Edition) (Visual Quickstart Guides)
Publisher: Peachpit Press
Authors: Larry Ullman
Rating: 4/5
PHP for the WWW is a great book if you are just starting out with PHP and have a little programming experience. It has a lot of great examples, most of them easy to follow. The thing I like most is that fact that it explains every little deatil of code they write.The chapter on databases (MySQL, to be exact) is my favorite, and probably the most useful. The book is a little short (not even 250 pages). I find that the worst part of the book is the explanation on how to configure PHP to work with Apache on Windows and Linux, and it doesn't delve into configuring MySQL Server at all. (***)P>Overall, a good book although what it is lacking in is fairly cruicial.
