IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP Cookbook
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: David Sklar, Adam Trachtenberg
Rating: 5/5
Title: PHP Cookbook
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: David Sklar, Adam Trachtenberg
Rating: 5/5
There's really no other way to describe "The PHP Cookbook" than to point out that Trachtenberg and Sklar are obvious experts in their fields. Easy to read, concise and simple to understand, this coding cookbook provides a soup-to-nuts approach to PHP. With just an average understanding of computer code and the will to learn an exciting new approach, "The PHP Cookbook" is a choice guide for those interested.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Advanced Transact-SQL for SQL Server 2000
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Itzik Ben-Gan, Tom Moreau
Rating: 4/5
Title: Advanced Transact-SQL for SQL Server 2000
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Itzik Ben-Gan, Tom Moreau
Rating: 4/5
This book has lots of worked problems and solutions. For example, the authors show how to remove duplicates, handle hierarchies, auditing, pivot tables, password encryption, case sensitive searches, opening a cursor on a stored proc call, doing your own sort order, etc. It would be nice to have the code on CD, instead of downloading.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Professional PHP Programming
Publisher:
Authors: Jesus Castagnetto, Sascha Schumann, Harish Rawat, Chris Scollo, Deepak T. Veliath
Rating: 4/5
Title: Professional PHP Programming
Publisher:
Authors: Jesus Castagnetto, Sascha Schumann, Harish Rawat, Chris Scollo, Deepak T. Veliath
Rating: 4/5
This book's good, but only for learning PHP properly in your own time. Its not that great as an on-the-job reference book since it does not cover everything from all angles(few books do or should). The authors all help out at phpbuilder.com and I find the search facility there more helpful for day to day programming needs. So with the book and the free, searchable, online help these guys deserve every penny they get from sales of this book.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL Server CE Database Development with the .NET Compact Framework
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Rob Tiffany
Rating: 1/5
Title: SQL Server CE Database Development with the .NET Compact Framework
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Rob Tiffany
Rating: 1/5
Having done a fair amount of development with the .net compact framework, I bought this book hoping for insights into how to make the best use of SQL CE. As such it is a big disappointment. As another reviewer has pointed out the author spends most of the book explaining T-SQL which may be of use if you are new to databases, but for the experienced programmer this is a complete waste of space. What I wanted was design guidelines and tips that address the real issues you have in deploying SQL CE databases in resource constrained environments (eg when to denormalize tables on the server for replication purposes, how to get the best out of the query analyzer, tips for optimizing joins that are performing poorly, when and how to use web services for syncing etc. etc.) None of this is dealt with in any useful way.If you are looking to learn about SQL CE then the experienced programmer will get a lot more from the SQL CE chapters in Building Solutions with the Microsoft .net Compact Framework by Dan Fox and Jon Box - a book which I would strongly recommend as a guide to all aspects of compact framework development
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Professional PHP Programming
Publisher:
Authors: Jesus Castagnetto, Sascha Schumann, Harish Rawat, Chris Scollo, Deepak T. Veliath
Rating: 5/5
Title: Professional PHP Programming
Publisher:
Authors: Jesus Castagnetto, Sascha Schumann, Harish Rawat, Chris Scollo, Deepak T. Veliath
Rating: 5/5
I got this book becuase I wanted to start using PHP to interact with my MySQL database, so I was depending on this book to lead me through it, and it did. This book is an essential learning tool for those who what to learn PHP without much of a hassle. The book is clearly written and moves along at just the right pace so as not to make you bored but also not so fast that you are bewildered. The reference sections are great for the more advanced PHP programmer who needs to look up all the different aspects of the language. The great thing about PHP is that is doesnt require as much dedication to learn as Java, C++, or VB and yet can be just as effective for web programming becuase of its power and ease of use. I highly recommend this book to those of you who can benefit from knowing PHP.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Transact-SQL
Publisher: Wiley
Authors: William C. Amo
Rating: 1/5
Title: Transact-SQL
Publisher: Wiley
Authors: William C. Amo
Rating: 1/5
I like the book. If I had to teach a class to experienced developers without Transact-SQL experience, this is the book I would recommend.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: MCSE Administering SQL Server 7 Exam Cram (Exam: 70-028)
Publisher: Coriolis Group Books
Authors: Jeffrey Garbus, David Pascuzzi, Alvin Chang
Rating: 1/5
Title: MCSE Administering SQL Server 7 Exam Cram (Exam: 70-028)
Publisher: Coriolis Group Books
Authors: Jeffrey Garbus, David Pascuzzi, Alvin Chang
Rating: 1/5
The book contains lots of a probably useful info but its coverage of exam topics has a very weak correlation with actual exam questions. It's more than surprising because Exam Cram 029 by the same authors is not bad.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Understanding SQL
Publisher: Sybex Inc
Authors: Martin Gruber
Rating: 5/5
Title: Understanding SQL
Publisher: Sybex Inc
Authors: Martin Gruber
Rating: 5/5
As a full-time student, I was after a book to compliment course notes that I recieve and get a better understanding of more advanced SQL. The other customer reviews swayed my decision to choose this book and it was everything and more than I expected. Keep those reviews coming.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Sams Teach Yourself PL/SQL in 21 Days (2nd Edition)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Jonathan Gennick, Tom Luers
Rating: 5/5
Title: Sams Teach Yourself PL/SQL in 21 Days (2nd Edition)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Jonathan Gennick, Tom Luers
Rating: 5/5
This is a great beginners book for pl/sql syntax, and it is also useful as a quick reference. I found it very helpful when doing advanced pl/sql as well. Overall, an excellent text.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL E-Commerce: From Novice to Professional
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Cristian Darie, Mihai Bucica
Rating: 5/5
Title: Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL E-Commerce: From Novice to Professional
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Cristian Darie, Mihai Bucica
Rating: 5/5
I have bought numerous programming books in the past and have always wanted a thorough book that covers detailed development of an e-Commerce website. I've bought several that claim to be indepth in this area but they have all fallen short of being what I was looking for. I've never bought a book without reading the reviews on it first....but this book was so new when I bought it that there were no reviews available for it. It sounded like it contained what I was looking for so I took a chance and bought it. I'm really glad I took that chance! "Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL E-Commerce: From Novice to Professional" is THE ABSOLUTE BEST BOOK available that details, step-by-step, how to build a full-fledge e-Commerce website...and believe me, I have bought every PHP/MySQL book (plus many more) that can't hold up to their claims....but this book delivers what the others can't. This is truly a ONE OF A KIND book.
Firstly, this books covers the ins and outs of installing PHP, PEAR, MySQL, and Apache on your Unix based machine (installations for Windows systems are also covered).
Secondly, the book shows you detailed code that performs different functions and then explains step-by-step what each bit of the code is doing.
Plus, this is THE ONLY book that will show you how to do database queries that return images from a product catalog and lay out the images with a description and link to a product page. The other PHP / MySQL books only go as far as showing you how to build a page header and footer with text only query results.
Also, the book helps you set up your site for future expansion. It uses Smarty Templating for page layouts so that your site is easy to modify and maintain and Darie shows you how to use PEAR DB abstraction to allow for changes in the type of database you might decide to use in the future (ex. , migrating from MySQL to Oracle). That being said, the title of the book is a little misleading in the fact that MySQL is used very little in this book. The book uses PEAR to perform the MySQL functionality.
I have bought books in the past that end up being written hastily with poor writing style and code errors galore. Cristian Darie and Mr. Bucica have taken the time to write a near perfect book. If you don't believe me look at the erata for this book at Apress.com....there are almost no coding errors at all. And, their writing style really makes the book fun to read.
Lastly, and definitely worth mentioning, I ran into a PHP problem that I couldn't solve. Cristian Darie listed his website and e-mail address in the front of this book and I thought I'd try e-mailing him to help me. I didn't expect to receive a reply, especially since having e-mailed other authors in the past with no reply. Within three hours Cristian Darie had replied to my e-mail with the solution to my problem. He was very nice and polite and even offered his help if I ran into future problems as I was working through the book! This is absolutely amazing and UNPARALLELED CUSTOMER SUPPORT.
If you want to know how to develop your site the right way and learn a lot in the process, then this is the book for you!
