IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP Developer's Cookbook (2nd Edition)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Sterling Hughes, Andrei Zmievski
Rating: 5/5
Title: PHP Developer's Cookbook (2nd Edition)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Sterling Hughes, Andrei Zmievski
Rating: 5/5
A few years ago, I gave up on PHP because the books available were so terrible. When PHP4 came out, I decided to revisit both the scripting language and the available resources.First, the excellent Wrox books came out, and now PHP Cookbook, another excellent resource for PHP programmers. The code snippets are useful on their own, and the coverage of the language is very good. I find myself turning to it even to look up basic function calls, because the use of the function often points out approaches (and additional functionality) that I wasn't aware of.The book and code samples are well-written, my only complaint is that the source code for the recipes aren't available.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP Essentials
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Julie C. Meloni
Rating: 4/5
Title: PHP Essentials
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Julie C. Meloni
Rating: 4/5
This seems to be the only true introductory PHP book out there-O'Reilly missed the boat this time. It's a great way to learn thebasics before stepping up to a more advanced book such as Wrox"Professional PHP Programming." I was especially satisfiedby the tutorial on e-commerce, although there were some things missingin terms of design, security holes, etc. But this book isn't intendedto give you the ability to write a complete online store after writingit; despite this, I was able to use my knowledge from this book, alongwith another book on mySQL, to write a complete online store ... It'sa good book, and the only one out there if you want to learn PHP fromscratch.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP by Example
Publisher: Que
Authors: Toby Butzon
Rating: 1/5
Title: PHP by Example
Publisher: Que
Authors: Toby Butzon
Rating: 1/5
This book caused me a great deal of stress when scripts wouldn't work and the information was hard to understand. The mysql part of the book was no help at all. I have purchased a couple of other books which have been a whole lot better and user friendly......I really wish I hadn't wasted my money......
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 7 Administrator's Guide
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Ron Talmage
Rating: 1/5
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 7 Administrator's Guide
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Ron Talmage
Rating: 1/5
What is new in SQL 7 is the content of this book. I really like how the author highlight every important points that had changed from SQL 6.X. From its relational engine to data architecture to store procedures, all the essential points and new features of SQL 7 are clearly presented. This book is a good resource for DBA who has general knowledge of SQL 6.X and needs to get up to date quickly on SQL 7. Although on the back cover it said for user level of intermediate to advanced, it is also a good book for beginners too.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Oracle SQL Tuning & CBO Internals
Publisher: Rampant Techpress
Authors: Kimberly Floss
Rating: 1/5
Title: Oracle SQL Tuning & CBO Internals
Publisher: Rampant Techpress
Authors: Kimberly Floss
Rating: 1/5
This book contain obsolete information. Most of the text refers to Oracle 7 or Oracle 8 and mostly incorrect information.
Its not worth the money and time you spend reading it.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP and MySQL Web Development, Second Edition
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
Rating: 5/5
Title: PHP and MySQL Web Development, Second Edition
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
Rating: 5/5
I wrote a rave review of the first edition of this book. For this second edition, I would add that Welling and Thomson have updated extensively and improved slightly a book that may well be the classic text on the topic.PHP and MySQL are probably the most pervasive add-ons to Apache web servers across the web. Certainly they are both easy to acquire and common on a large range of web hosting systems, including several extremely low-cost ones. They also fit together extremely well.This book demonstrates just how well. It starts out with a quick course in PHP (OK, 160 pages is hardly quick but it seems to move along at a good pace), follows it up with a brief look at MySQL before a short digression on E-commerce leads into building authentication and secure systems with the two tools (a marvelous place to start when you're thinking about commercial-grade web systems).Then, after some more on PHP, the final section covers some large projects; a shopping cart, email service, mailing list manager and web forums. The final chapter in this section is new for this edition and covers XML and SOAP.The new edition has been updated extensively. All scripts work now perfectly in PHP 4.3I like this book a great deal. Even after a fair amount of time with the previous edition I still find it useful. It is well structured for finding what you need, well written, and has only a few typos. (Though there are still some, including ones in code examples -- when will authors learn to work straight off running code into the manuscript and keep godforsaken editors away from it? Brian Kernighan managed it twenty-five years ago.)This would not be the best book if you had little programming experience, nor would it be the best book if you had a fair amount of PHP experience.You will want to have some program design experience and preferably some experience with database design as these are given short shrift. The book also lacks examples and discussion of some of the less database intensive parts of PHP and some of the more obscure tasks you may need to perform. It covers what someone who has programmed before needs to know about both PHP and MySQL while informing on methods of using both to build practical and sturdy web applications. If that sounds like the book you want then I heartily recommend this volume to you.
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: OCP Introduction to Oracle9i: SQL Exam Guide
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: Jason Couchman
Rating: 1/5
Title: OCP Introduction to Oracle9i: SQL Exam Guide
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: Jason Couchman
Rating: 1/5
I've been doing hardcore plsql development in an HR system environment for about 5 years now, and have just decided to get certified. My oracle sql experience is advanced.Trust me when I say this book is garbage. How it made it off the editors desk is beyond me.Here are some of the flaws that simply make my blood boil:
FLAW#1:
The review questions are completely ridculous and often do not make sense. Heres a sample question:
"Q: This phrase represents a multi-table query where the WHERE clause is poorly defined.
A: Cartesian Product"
How ridiculous is that??? A poorly defined WHERE clause could mean anything! A cartesian product is the result of the absence of a join resulting in all rows from both tables being joined together which is actually supported in ANSI in 9i see:CROSS JOIN, and furthermore 9i introduces ANSI-SQL1999 joins, which are written in the FROM clause!! There are dozens of vague or incorrect q&a in this book.FLAW#2:
Table and row locks are covered in a single 10 line paragraph. Enough said? FLAW#3:
SET TRANSACTION is a powerful statement, but he gives absolutely no example of usage. He goes as far as to give you the syntax. WEAK!FLAW#4:
Subqueries have long been defined as "SCALAR" "NESTED" "CORRELATED" and FROM Clause subqueries are called "IN-LINE VIEWS". He doesn't define subqueries this way, and his definitions are very odd and vague, you'll especially like the review questions for which theres more than one answer, but he prefers one answer better than the other, but doesn't state why. Keyword: Multi-Column subquery.FLAW#5:
Where did all the functions go??? Oracle has a multitude of linear regression functions, NLS, timestamp, interval, etc etc functions that are not covered here. He doesn't even mention the new datatypes such as timestamp and INTERVAL types! To SUM() it all up, this book is a wretched piece of trash. Oracle apparently released it without editing it whatsoever. If this is your only study material god save your soul.Do yourself a favor and pick up the SYBEX book for this exam. Good luck!
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL: The Complete Reference, Second Edition
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: James R Groff, Paul N. Weinberg
Rating: 5/5
Title: SQL: The Complete Reference, Second Edition
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: James R Groff, Paul N. Weinberg
Rating: 5/5
This book covers the DDL and DML instructions of SQL. It also has a reference to brands like Sybase, Microsoft and Oracle. This a very easy book and the examples showed are very, very helpful. I use this book in all my Databases, SQL and Visual InterDev courses, 'cause it has a good introduction to the SQL standards. If you want a good reference to SQL, I recommend this book !!!
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Transact-SQL Desk Reference: For Microsoft SQL Server
Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR
Authors: Deac Lancaster
Rating: 4/5
Title: Transact-SQL Desk Reference: For Microsoft SQL Server
Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR
Authors: Deac Lancaster
Rating: 4/5
You know some SQL or you want to learn it? Otherwise why are you pondering this book and this review? But suppose you have never used Microsoft SQL Server. The title may then be puzzling. You see, Transact-SQL is Microsoft's name for the "Microsoft SQL Server SQL" [sic]. The latter quoted phrase is actually logically correct. It parses as Microsoft's extension of SQL2 or SQL3 that is implemented by its SQL Server. But the phrase looks ridiculous. Hence Transact-SQL. Like their database competitors, IBM and Oracle, Microsoft supplies online documentation and hardcopy. But the sheer complexity of all the SQL options and the proprietary extensions, plus the undoubted opacity of the official documentation has spawned an independent sideline of books that provide alternative and presumably clearer views of the databases. Ideally, therefore, this book should not exist!It assumes you already know the theory of SQL and relational databases. But that at times you will be casting around for the precise syntax of a command. So the book emphasises quick easy lookup of commands. Numerous examples are provided in bold font, to help you quickly get there. By contrast, the full syntax of a query is written in regular font, in BNF. [So you need to know BNF, but that is easy.] This may differ from some texts, where the full syntax is visually emphasised instead of its examples. Logically, the latter formulation makes sense. But the pragmatic pedagogy here is actually often more useful. Most of us will understand a few examples far quicker than perusing the abstraction of a full BNF description of a command. A simple display decision. But you may find that this is a nice usability feature that gives the book utility to you.
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 7 Administrator's Guide
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Ron Talmage
Rating: 1/5
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 7 Administrator's Guide
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Ron Talmage
Rating: 1/5
What is new in SQL 7 is the content of this book. I really like how the author highlight every important points that had changed from SQL 6.X. From its relational engine to data architecture to store procedures, all the essential points and new features of SQL 7 are clearly presented. This book is a good resource for DBA who has general knowledge of SQL 6.X and needs to get up to date quickly on SQL 7. Although on the back cover it said for user level of intermediate to advanced, it is also a good book for beginners too.
