IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Hardening Apache
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Tony Mobily
Rating: 5/5
Title: Hardening Apache
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Tony Mobily
Rating: 5/5
I am not a server admin, but a web applications developer, so my opinion on this book has a very specific bias. I really enjoyed it, especially because similar material available on-line is usually scattered across a multitude of different sources. Most content is interesting even for application developers and I especially liked the chapters covering different security related modules.
The chapter on automation, being totally based around Bash scripts was almost useless to me (but then, again, I am biased). The book is 100% Unix centric, it's somewhat of a shame, especially since Apache 2 on Windows is a viable option, but it's a choice I can understand
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes, Third Edition
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Ben Forta
Rating: 4/5
Title: Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes, Third Edition
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Ben Forta
Rating: 4/5
What a fantastic little book(let)
I'm not a great fan of Sams books, but this little SQL book has made me say (for the first time) there is a truly great Sams offering.If you are like me and feel that 400+ pages on a subject such as SQL is overkill (for the amount of SQL features most of us use), then this is the answer. It covers all of the most useful features of SQL with examples and analysis to a level that will enable effective application in the real world. It even points out proprietary differences in implementation (Oracle/Microsoft mainly).If you are a beginner to SQL this book won't frighten you off (nor will it leave you baffled and confused by being too short a volume to effectively cover the subject - with SQL you can get away with such a small volume, basically because it's most used functions are very simple to understand and use). Some of the coverage will leave you needing (wanting?) to read more, in particular Transactions/Triggers and Stored Procedures will demand the purchase of much larger volumes to get full mileage from them. But for what it claims to be, SQL without the fluff or overkill, this book gives you in 208 small pages, what other volumes I have read give in 800 long and tedious pages.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Google Hacks
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Tara Calishain, Rael Dornfest
Rating: 5/5
Title: Google Hacks
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Tara Calishain, Rael Dornfest
Rating: 5/5
O'Reilly has done it again. They have managed to publish a book that will probably never leave my desk. This book is probably one of the best non-programming books O'Reilly has ever published.So much of my work is done via internet search engines and of course my engine of choice is Google. Google never lets me down, always providing me the answer with minimal clicks. If any of your work relies on finding information via the Google search engine then this book should be part of your arsenal. There are a lot of functions provided Google that I never knew about.The first 70 pages of the book are dedicated to performing actual searches and what can be done to tweak them. Chapter 2 goes more into the other services that Google provides. The authors have done a great job providing an overview of the more advanced features this search engine gives you.Chapters 4, 5 and 6 deal with API applications that use internal Google functions or use other programming languages to maneuver those functions such as PHP, Java, Python, C# and VB.net. Chapter 7 is a great chapter dealing with pranks and games.Overall, if you can't already tell, I really like this book and can't think of anything that I don't like. Even if you aren't in the IT arena this book is an easy reading and informative addition to your bookshelf.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: How to Do Everything with Google
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: Fritz Schneider, Nancy Blachman, Eric Fredricksen, Fritz Schneider, Nancy Blachman, Eric Fredricksen
Rating: 5/5
Title: How to Do Everything with Google
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: Fritz Schneider, Nancy Blachman, Eric Fredricksen, Fritz Schneider, Nancy Blachman, Eric Fredricksen
Rating: 5/5
I was familiar with some of the boolean logic for more advance searching but this book goes much much further. Google is a great service but they don't document their capabilities very well - this book takes care of the gap! It opened a new universe of opportunities and time savers. It's worth the investment - it'll pay back quickly in hours of time saved in searching.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Transact-SQL Programming
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Lee Gould, Andrew Zanevsky, Kevin Kline
Rating: 1/5
Title: Transact-SQL Programming
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Lee Gould, Andrew Zanevsky, Kevin Kline
Rating: 1/5
This book really needs an update. Against some of the more recent SQL Server-oriented books, it looks like it needs about a pound of wrinkle cream. A lot of things changed with 7.0 and this book hasn't kept up with those changes. Much of the sample code doesn't work with 7.0. I sense that the book was written while 7.0 was still in beta, because it's obviously targeted at 6.5. Many of the statements regarding server internals are simply no longer accurate and many of the coding techniques were outmoded even for 6.5. I'm still looking for the ultimate modern T-SQL guide.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: The Practical SQL Handbook: Using SQL Variants (4th Edition)
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Judith S. Bowman, Sandra L. Emerson, Marcy Darnovsky
Rating: 5/5
Title: The Practical SQL Handbook: Using SQL Variants (4th Edition)
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Judith S. Bowman, Sandra L. Emerson, Marcy Darnovsky
Rating: 5/5
This is a good book for the people who r new to sql.
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Kalen Delaney
Rating: 2/5
Title: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Kalen Delaney
Rating: 2/5
I read the first version of this book and thought it was really useful. I don't feel that way about this one. It really needs to be updated. Many key SQL Server 2000 topics are not covered at all. Others have mentioned XML. While I agree that this is certainly worthly of an Inside book, I'm more disappointed by the lack of coverage of high-availability features. People would naturally expect features like this to be covered in a book like this, but, alas, they aren't. The book really needs to be updated.
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
His style has convinced me to go ahead and understand the T-SQL. I mean coming from a Oracle background and switching to MSSQL was a rather confusing one. Too many GUI's. But having found the usefulness of the query analyser and also to use the procedural code for some routine tasks. I'm a down a few chapeters and already like his style of writing.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL Server 2000 Stored Procedure Programming
Publisher: Osborne/McGraw-Hill
Authors: Dejan Sunderic, Tom Woodhead
Rating: 2/5
Title: SQL Server 2000 Stored Procedure Programming
Publisher: Osborne/McGraw-Hill
Authors: Dejan Sunderic, Tom Woodhead
Rating: 2/5
Book is pretty worthless. It's poorly written, doesn't cover important topics and contains loads of errors. Wasn't what I was expecting at all.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Beginning Php 4 (Programmer to Programmer)
Publisher: Peer Information
Authors: Chris Lea, Allan Kent, Ganesh Prasad, Chris Ullman
Rating: 5/5
Title: Beginning Php 4 (Programmer to Programmer)
Publisher: Peer Information
Authors: Chris Lea, Allan Kent, Ganesh Prasad, Chris Ullman
Rating: 5/5
Experienced programmers will find the first few chapters a bit slow, it seems to be aimed at people fairly new to any sort of programming. The pace picks up later in the book, with good sections on connecting to a MySQL database, using XML, generating graphics on the fly etc. The book concludes with a complete sample application using a backend database.For newcomers to PHP it's a good starting place, experienced web programmers/developers could probably jump straight in with Professional PHP.
