IT programming books related reviews
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
This is the best T-SQL book around. I have them all. Everything you'd want in a T-SQL book is here. The book is very concentrated, so don't be surprised if you have to work through an example to really understand sometimes, but have no fear, it will eventually make sense. The things I like the most about this book are: 1. It uses the standard "demo" databases that ship with SQL Server (no need to create your own) 2. There's a boatload of sample code (several hundred SQL scripts) 3. The sample scripts are self-contained (you don't have to go back three chapters and create a table so that you can test a query). I'm glad I found this book. It was exactly what I was looking for.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Professional Linux Programming
Publisher: Peer Information Inc.
Authors: Neil Matthew and Richard Stones, Brad Clements, Andrew Froggatt, David J. Goodger, Ivan Griffin, Jeff Licquia, Ronald van Loon, Harish Rawat, Udaya Ranawake, Marius Sundbakken, Deepak Thomas, Stephen J. Turnbull, David Woodhouse, Richard Stones, Christopher Browne
Rating: 3/5
Title: Professional Linux Programming
Publisher: Peer Information Inc.
Authors: Neil Matthew and Richard Stones, Brad Clements, Andrew Froggatt, David J. Goodger, Ivan Griffin, Jeff Licquia, Ronald van Loon, Harish Rawat, Udaya Ranawake, Marius Sundbakken, Deepak Thomas, Stephen J. Turnbull, David Woodhouse, Richard Stones, Christopher Browne
Rating: 3/5
The biggest problem I have with this book is its weight. It's just too big and clunky to hold up to read. Splitting into two bindings would have been nice. But it does cover a lot and it needs to be large to do so.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Programming PHP
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Rasmus Lerdorf, Kevin Tatroe
Rating: 2/5
Title: Programming PHP
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Rasmus Lerdorf, Kevin Tatroe
Rating: 2/5
When I bought this book, I purchased it for 2 reason's:1) Its an ORA book and they have in the past published high quality technical references. 2) It was "authored" by Rasmus Lerdorf, the father of PHP. I figured it must be a definitive guide.When I bought this book, I felt a bit swindled. First of all, it seems that Rasmus only served as an editor type, not really writing the book, just supervising. Most of the content was written by the other author(s). He gets top billing on amazon, no doubt, because O'Reilly is betting that name recognition is what is going to make you purchase this book.On top of that the book is really only mediocre. While some of the writing is lucid, at points the author does seem to depart into fairy land (not that there is anything wrong with fairy land, I just have better things to do with my time than take a visit). Furthermore, "Programming PHP" misses a lot of what php is about, and how you can harness PHP. The coverage of PHP's core components (numbers, arrays, strings, objects, oh my!) is pretty good, but once they get into the nitty gritty, they seem to ignore the gritty. Leaving you with a taste for the subject, but no real substance.Furthermore, they neglect many of the topics that make PHP what it is today, including, ldap interaction, compression, snmp interaction, mail handling, system integration, RPC, COM and Java integration and a sleuth of other features.In summary, if you want a nice pretty ORA reference, this is the book for you, if you want substance, I reccomend either "The PHP Developer's Cookbook" or one of Wrox's series (all are pretty good, choose according to your competency level).
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL Queries for Mere Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Data Manipulation in SQL
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Michael J. Hernandez, John L. Viescas
Rating: 5/5
Title: SQL Queries for Mere Mortals: A Hands-On Guide to Data Manipulation in SQL
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Michael J. Hernandez, John L. Viescas
Rating: 5/5
I've got five years experience in the IT industry, but had virtually no SQL experience when I started learning about Databases and the SQL Language. So, I was having a bit of difficulty following some of the other great texts on databases and database programming. I looked for tutorials online, and for tutorial type books. There aren't many. "SQL Queries for Mere Mortals," is an outstanding tutorial for beginners. Not only will you learn how to query databases, you gain a solid understanding of how to use the language to also begin learning how to program in SQL. But, this isn't an SQL programming book. The authors first explain concepts, show you examples and then provide hands-on exercises. Then, they provide problems that you attempt to solve, to test your comprehension, and ability to execute simple and complex (to me) queries. The answers are provided so you can compare your results. It's a confidence building process when you see just how well you're doing. The authors have done an exceptional job. I can only surmise that the few disappointed reviewers have extensive experience (or prejudice) and so are unsatisfied with this great book. I highly recommed this book if you're interested in learning the SQL language and how to query databases (or create views).
Product: Book Paperback
Title: McSe Readiness Review Exam 70-029: Designing and Implementing Databases With Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 (Mcse Readiness Review)
Publisher: Microsoft Pr
Authors: Robert Sheldon
Rating: 3/5
Title: McSe Readiness Review Exam 70-029: Designing and Implementing Databases With Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 (Mcse Readiness Review)
Publisher: Microsoft Pr
Authors: Robert Sheldon
Rating: 3/5
This book is good for providing a list of necessary topics but does not achieve the level of detail/depth that the exam does. EXAM IS TOUGH, especially if you are not already functioning as a database developer!
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 7 Administrator's Guide
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Ron Talmage
Rating: 3/5
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 7 Administrator's Guide
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Ron Talmage
Rating: 3/5
Not a very good book...Indide SQL Server by Ron Soukup is much better. The index in the back doesn't have hardly anything in it; I can never find what I'm looking for. When I do find it, there is never very much content on the topic, just a little fluff and some screenshots.There's the occasional nugget, but I wouldn't search through all the junk to get to it.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Secure PHP Development: Building 50 Practical Applications
Publisher: Wiley
Authors: Mohammed J. Kabir, Mohammed J. Kabir
Rating: 5/5
Title: Secure PHP Development: Building 50 Practical Applications
Publisher: Wiley
Authors: Mohammed J. Kabir, Mohammed J. Kabir
Rating: 5/5
When I saw this book at the local bookstore (one of only 10 PHP related books in stock), I thought, "Awesome! I've been looking for some more securing applications techniques." It turned out to be a big let down.The book is roughtly 750 pages (large print), the first 50 or so was an introduction and gave a few bad examples vs. good examples of code (which was good, and actually made me think the rest of the book was going to be good), then jumped directly into "here's 650 pages worth of class based applications for you to use". The last 40-50 pages of the book was a chapter called something to the effect of "Optimizing and Securing PHP". Of the whole book, this was the most dissapointing aspect, split equally between the 2 topics. I thought the whole book was going to be about writing secure PHP, not just 20 pages.Even the sample code they gave was in my opinion, poor. The author encouraged a strong misuse of OOP, having every single script have its own class dedicated to it. For example, one of the 50 "ready to use applications" was for handling users for their intranet. They wrote a class with methods for updating the user's information, adding a user, selecting the user's email address from the database, etc. The goal of OOP is to be abstract so that it can be used in more than one area, something the author didn't bother to learn before he wrote this book.Even the optimizing portion of the last chapter was a big let down. It felt like there was really only one example of code optimization. The rest of the pages explained how to make a particular PEAR script do a speed test on your code. How is that supposed to help me if I'm not even certain how to write it more efficiently?I'm not interested in a book that shovels me a bunch of code the author wrote. If I wanted free code, there's tons of sites out there for that. I want a book that's going to teach me how to think more securely and write more securely and think about the best/most optimized way to write a particular portion of code. Sadly, this book isn't it.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL: From Novice to Professional
Publisher: Apress
Authors: W. J. Gilmore
Rating: 4/5
Title: Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL: From Novice to Professional
Publisher: Apress
Authors: W. J. Gilmore
Rating: 4/5
I reach for this book when I want to get up to speed on something about PHP 5 quickly. With it, I can start coding and seeing results right away. The book covers a range of topics, the practicality of which can be best appreciated when you are faced with a real life project. For example, pp. 660-665 in Chapter 27, "Practical Database Queries", covers creating paged output (that is, spreading query results across several web pages) and listing page numbers which was just the thing I wanted to learn last night. My wife's database needs that sort of output. You can download Gilmore's example code and quickly start using it and then applying the lessons learned to build your own code.
This book is geared to people who want to get their hands on real code, wring the juice from it, make mistakes with it, learn all they can from it, and then tap out fresh code that does the same things with a little more oomph. Such people do not like long, dreary tracts of reading before being able participate in the elusive action. It is a good learning format because the only useful way to learn programming is to dive right in and do it. The book is a blend of brief discussion and quick code snippets with the expected results shown right away. This is a very good way to learn programming.
The section on SOAP, starting on page 450, makes me realize I had better experiment with this interesting technology. I'd certainly like to be able to find the temperature for a given postal code -- and other things of greater interest. Chapters 12, "PHP Authentication", 14, "Networking With PHP", and 15, "PHP and LDAP", look into core internet services that every programmer should know how to exploit, but too often don't. For example I've learned how to authenticate a user with LDAP.
The author, W. Jason Gilmore, is cheerful and most helpful in his responses to reader inquiries. He responded quickly to my questions and I am impressed with his ability to courteously point me in the right direction.
Be sure to download Gilmore's example code. There are 30 chapters worth of programming stuffed into that zip file.
The book has a few rough edges. The most obvious is that some sentences are a little wordy. That's all right, you can move on to the next paragraphs, and will soon be trying out a new example. I wish Jason had discussed MySQL 4.1 and the mysqli interface, especially since there are other books around that cover MySQL 4.0.x. Perhaps if he had added another chapter to cover that? We can always look forward to a second edition.
This book should be near every serious programmer's desk. You, dear reader, will reach for it a surprising amount of the time.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Microsoft SQL Server(TM) 7.0 Administrator's Pocket Consultant
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: William R. Stanek
Rating: 4/5
Title: Microsoft SQL Server(TM) 7.0 Administrator's Pocket Consultant
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: William R. Stanek
Rating: 4/5
I would say that this is a good addition to a DBA's library. It is small and light yet includes a lot of information. You can read it from cover to cover to get an overview or use it as a reference. It gives an overview and then the syntax and steps for doing each of the major DBA activities. I was able to find some information that I have not found anywhere else, viz., the role of log files for the tempdb database. I would recommend this book.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 24 Hours (3rd Edition)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Ryan Stephens, Ron Plew
Rating: 3/5
Title: Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 24 Hours (3rd Edition)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Ryan Stephens, Ron Plew
Rating: 3/5
As usual for this series, lays out stuff step by step. Problem here is that the explanations are often unclear, or even nonexistent. Plus, there's a lot of typos and other errors, in the examples, and in the quiz/exercise sections. I can't find an errata list online, and the publisher didn't answer my query. An experienced person can figure out the errors, but a real beginner might be very confused. I wouldn't depend on this to be my first or only guide to SQL.
