IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL Performance Tuning
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Peter Gulutzan, Trudy Pelzer
Rating: 5/5
Title: SQL Performance Tuning
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Peter Gulutzan, Trudy Pelzer
Rating: 5/5
Out of 25 plus books I have read on SQL, this is the best book yet I have found for performance tuning. 90% of the programmers in our shop have puchased their own copy. If you really want to know the inside and outside of SQL tuning read this book.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Steven Feuerstein
Rating: 3/5
Title: Oracle PL/SQL Best Practices
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Steven Feuerstein
Rating: 3/5
I've been feeling guilty for giving this book only one star, so here's a second try.
I was disappointed by this book because I was able to speed read most of it. In other words, it did not present much that I had not seen before.
Some parts of the book seem to be a direct (literal?) translation of OOP design methodology. It would have been interesting if the author had spent some effort examining the OOP language features which are lacking in PL/SQL, in order to adapt the methodology.Ex.1: OOPL compilers can make small function calls `inline', meaning that they are expanded as if they were macros, to avoid the function call overhead. I do not believe this exists in PL/SQL. If it does, the author should mention it when he suggests using wrapper functions. If it doesn't, then he should make the reader aware of the performance cost, which in some cases might still be ok, anyway.
Ex.2: The methodology he proposes leads to a proliferation of methods and classes. OOPLs have language structures to make them manageable (e.g. namespaces in C++, packages in Java). PL/SQL has the further disadvantage that it does not allow you to re-group your logic inside executables, DLLs, component objects, or even inside directories.
Still, this book should be quite beneficial to someone who is new to structured programming. It also isn't very expensive.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Microsoft® SQL Server 7 Secrets®
Publisher:
Authors: David K. Rensin, Andrew M. Fedorchek, William C. Amo
Rating: 1/5
Title: Microsoft® SQL Server 7 Secrets®
Publisher:
Authors: David K. Rensin, Andrew M. Fedorchek, William C. Amo
Rating: 1/5
From the very beginning this book has accuracy problems, on the cover it says "900 plus pages packed with ..." well the book is only 714 pages long. Looking up anything in the index is futile, because the page numbers do not match up at all, if you're lucky it will only be a few pages off.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Apache: The Definitive Guide (3rd Edition)
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Ben Laurie, Peter Laurie
Rating: 5/5
Title: Apache: The Definitive Guide (3rd Edition)
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Ben Laurie, Peter Laurie
Rating: 5/5
Now you may think that there are better books out there. And there maybe. However this book is a "five star" book. I bought this book for a beginning apache class. We were able to follow the instructions and down load the Apache server from the Internet. The only problem we had was with the NIS system that was not anticipated in this book. It was a lot more important to use this book to read the flat files and see how they were related to each other. The section on Extra Modules (chapter 12) gave a way to improve the server and go outside the scope of this book. This book covered more details than I was looking for; this ways different people can use the book to target their particular needs. You can safely say:
"This book has everything you need to set up an apache server."
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 7.0
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Ron Soukup, Kalen Delaney
Rating: 5/5
Title: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 7.0
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Ron Soukup, Kalen Delaney
Rating: 5/5
This is an "Inside ..." book and it goes quite far to show you the insides of the Microsoft product SQL Server 7.0. It doesn't show you the source code, but you can see the data layout in the pages of the server data etc. Sometimes this is even more than you would like to know. Sometimes I'd like a little more detail even on the basic stuff. Like how are time outs handled internally.Anyhow its well written, as far as I can judge accurate and important for an understanding of the database. It also shows you lots of basics applicable to other vendors database products as well. What is missing is a solid description of the associated tools and the OLAP services. So for understanding the Data Transformation Services or the Remote SQL Server Agent one needs another book (any good recommendations out there?).In total its a very amicable and worthwhile book. But even with its 948 pages you still have to read others too.
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: Ocp: Oracle8I Dba SQL and Pl/SQL Study Guide : Exam 1Z0-001 (OCP Study Guide)
Publisher: Sybex Inc
Authors: Chip Dawes, Biju Thomas
Rating: 3/5
Title: Ocp: Oracle8I Dba SQL and Pl/SQL Study Guide : Exam 1Z0-001 (OCP Study Guide)
Publisher: Sybex Inc
Authors: Chip Dawes, Biju Thomas
Rating: 3/5
I have a small amount of experience writing PL/SQL. When I used this book to study, I found many good points within. However, I found a few areas difficult to understand and other areas discussed, but not explained. One other problem I found with the book is that certain areas on the exam were not even mentioned in this book. I used an old DBA 8 (Oracle Press) guide, and that helped. I also signed up for the SelfTest practice exam, which was a lifesaver.I am sure that I would have passed the exam (well, probably) by using only this book as a study guide, but I surely wouldn't have passed with such a comfortable margin. In my case, there were several areas that were covered in great depth in this book -- subjects that were not included in the exam at all. I will not buy a book from this series again (for the other 4 tests).BTW: I got 50/57, so I passed with an 87.77 percent score. I am sure that this book helped with that.
Product:
Title:
Publisher: Rating: 5/5
Title:
Publisher: Rating: 5/5
I found "Oracle8 Pl/Sql Programming" to be worth my time and money. Reading the "Oracle8 Pl/Sql Programming" book was like being in the Oracle Education course without paying $2000. Here's why - each chapter has short narrative descriptions of the topics followed by a lab you can do. I like the learn by experimentation approach. Beneficial topics were: Oracle Objects, Collections, DBMS_OUTPUT, TEXT_IO, cursors, and Dynamic cursors. I found "Oracle8 PL/SQL Programming" far superior to the Oracle documentation.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Professional PHP4 Programming
Publisher: Wrox Press
Authors: Deepak Thomas, Wankyu Choi, John Coggeshall, Ken Egervari, Martin Geisler, Zak Greant, Andrew Hill, Chris Hubbard, James Moore, Devon O'Dell, Jon Parise, Harish Rawat, Tarique Sani, Christopher Scollo, Chris Ullman, et al
Rating: 4/5
Title: Professional PHP4 Programming
Publisher: Wrox Press
Authors: Deepak Thomas, Wankyu Choi, John Coggeshall, Ken Egervari, Martin Geisler, Zak Greant, Andrew Hill, Chris Hubbard, James Moore, Devon O'Dell, Jon Parise, Harish Rawat, Tarique Sani, Christopher Scollo, Chris Ullman, et al
Rating: 4/5
For those that want to learn how to do all aspects of web development using PHP, this book for you. As co-author and technical reviewer or 3/4 of the book, I can say from experience that this book does indead cover everything you'll need to know when making dynamic websites.This book is great for beginners as well as professionals since the introduction material can offer a good beginning to learning PHP and some of the later chapters on Internationalization, databases, xml, optimization, etc. will be suitable for experts.I wish the book contained more object oriented examples and that some chapters contained more depth, but for a book of 960 pages, it certainly covers a lot of material.If you are starting to learn PHP and want to expand your skills or are an expert and want some more indepth material, add this book to your collection!
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL/400 by Example
Publisher: 29th Street Press
Authors: James Coolbaugh
Rating: 4/5
Title: SQL/400 by Example
Publisher: 29th Street Press
Authors: James Coolbaugh
Rating: 4/5
This is the only book that I have found which provides reasonably comprehensive coverage of the SQL capabilities which have been introduced on the AS/400 since V4. It provides a good reference for the AS/400 syntax of functions such as CASE, CAST, and various date functions that aren't covered will on other books that I have seen. This book is better as a reference tool than as an introductory tutorial.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Database Administrator's Guidebook
Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR
Authors: Carl H. Speshock
Rating: 5/5
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Database Administrator's Guidebook
Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR
Authors: Carl H. Speshock
Rating: 5/5
This book was recommended to me from my new DBA manager. I have been a DBA for 3 years now and had no idea of what the complete SQL Server DBA role encompassed. Well, now I do! This book is very explanatory on the different areas that should be understood and what a DBA should be proficient in to be completely well-rounded in the DBA role. I am pursuing some additional training due to the tips given in this book and have already seen results in what I can offer as a DBA. My manager is happy and so am I!I recommend this book very highly!!
