IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Joe Celko's SQL Programming Style (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems)
Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann
Authors: Joe Celko
Rating: 5/5
Title: Joe Celko's SQL Programming Style (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems)
Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann
Authors: Joe Celko
Rating: 5/5
Style guides tend to be heuristics of understanding a hard-to-define -- consequently hard to defend -- criteria that will make your design effective. Strunk's "Elements of Style" would be an exemplary definition of a style guide. With all style guides, however, you can follow them religiously and still end up with an execrable book or living room.
Mr. Celko spends remarkably little time with style formatting, although he does delineate what constitutes readable and maintainable SQL code. Where the book finds its utmost utility is in the consistent and increasing reinforcement of thinking in sets. SQL is not about transforming data (although you can); SQL is about properly storing data, and then being able to find it again. Simple enough, but all-too-easy to get wrong.
The first two chapters talk about naming and actual SQL style. This is primarily what I'd expected, but Mr. Celko isn't about to let me off that easily. In discussing naming, he brings international standards into the mix. Right away, the standard of my existing SQL code falls away under this level of scrutiny. Throughout the book, Mr. Celko is bringing up a data discipine I have long-suspected existed but honestly never sought to embrace. Why should I develop a data model that adheres to standards, if mine will be the only model in the company even attempting it?
Therein lays the problem with this book: it can make a reader uncomfortable. Mr. Celko is writing about SQL and, more importantly, the data it will describe and manipulate, in far more depth and with far more rigor than I've seen elsewhere. He has an entire chapter on encoding data, another on scales used to measure data. Nowhere else will such treatment be gathered in one place, in the context of using SQL. Moreover, his conclusions are backed by years of experience *and* impressive references to back him. The bibliography will surely cause me to invest in yet more books.
Of course, the book can be dry in spots. Encoding data properly is important, but it's not as entertaining as seeing his effective SQL examples put to work. I think the balance between showing data as it is displayed and explaining the theory of the encoding (or modeling, or selection) is tricky to achieve, but I don't believe it ever broke down. The *density* of the book is striking; going into a 195-page book, you don't readily expect to re-read the same page three times to grasp something, but you must. At some point in the book, you will encounter an aspect of SQL development you've never come close to mastering, and it will give you pause. Take notes, work it out, and dig deeper. It'll be worth it.
Could I recommend this to newcomers to SQL programming? Qualified yes; you need to discipline yourself to work through much of it if you lack the experience in what's being presented. The book would make an excellent two-semester course in database development, one I suspect many would enjoy more than the typical relational database classes taught today.
Mr. Celko has again delivered an essential text on SQL, and it would serve as a springboard for a thorough introduction to all things data.
Fred
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL Server Query Performance Tuning Distilled, Second Edition
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Sajal Dam
Rating: 3/5
Title: SQL Server Query Performance Tuning Distilled, Second Edition
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Sajal Dam
Rating: 3/5
It is a very good book I have to say. It is for experience DBA on the field.
The issues I have are the source code download and errors in the book, but I can not contact to the author or publisher. The following are words from the publishers (Curlingstone.com) Web site (on 3/31/2003):
"I'm Reading Your Book, And..."
Curlingstone can no longer provide direct support for books. If you have a problem then please either consult the errata or try online user groups and forums.
For the book itself, I would give 5 stars. For the polisher support, 1 star (at least the site still there).
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL for eServer i5 and iSeries
Publisher: Mc Press
Authors: Kevin Forsythe
Rating: 5/5
Title: SQL for eServer i5 and iSeries
Publisher: Mc Press
Authors: Kevin Forsythe
Rating: 5/5
Any programmer can copy and modify code to make a workable program. The real programmer creates code to meet the needs of the project. In order to stand out in todays world, it is absolutely essential that every available tool be brought to bear in order to hone the skills of the programmer. This book is written to help every level of programmer to use SQL in order to take full advantage of todays Systems and todays and tomorrows data needs. Kevin writes in an easy to read and understand style so even the novice programmer can find it useful. He also provides plenty of technical information to expand the edge of the programmer who already knows everything and doesn't usually use references. This book is a must have for the programmer working in this environment.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL: From Novice to Professional
Publisher: Apress
Authors: W. J. Gilmore
Rating: 5/5
Title: Beginning PHP 5 and MySQL: From Novice to Professional
Publisher: Apress
Authors: W. J. Gilmore
Rating: 5/5
I've been programming with dozens of languages since 1974, but I was new to PHP. This book was exactly what I was looking for! I read the book cover-to-cover. Jason has the unique ability to introduce the subject completely without boring you to tears. He knows when to provide examples, and when to leave the reader to figure out the rest. This is an excellent book for programmers that have seen the patterns before and have experience with other languages. You will immediately "get" how to do things with PHP... and once you do, you may never go back to your "old" programming language.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: McSe SQL Server 6.5 Administration in 14 Days (Sams Teach Yourself)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Damir Bersinic, Brad McGehee, Chris Miller, Matthew Shepker
Rating: 5/5
Title: McSe SQL Server 6.5 Administration in 14 Days (Sams Teach Yourself)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Damir Bersinic, Brad McGehee, Chris Miller, Matthew Shepker
Rating: 5/5
Much more thorough and complete than the NR book and the questions/answers are correct. Well edited and well written. Very good source for SQL Server 6.5 exam but needs supplementation with additional questions such as Transcender.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Advanced PHP for Flash
Publisher: Wrox Press
Authors: Steve Webster, Matt Rice, Havard Eide, Jacob Hanson, Todd Marks, James Palmer, Kev Sutherland
Rating: 4/5
Title: Advanced PHP for Flash
Publisher: Wrox Press
Authors: Steve Webster, Matt Rice, Havard Eide, Jacob Hanson, Todd Marks, James Palmer, Kev Sutherland
Rating: 4/5
It's raining in Paris, which is sad.
But not as sad as the bad reviews here.
Apparently, some reviewers didn't take the time
to get familiar with the contents of the book
as stated here before buying it;
nowhere does it say the message board (Flash+PHP+mySQL)
is discussed in the Advanced book.
The sourcecode for that board was part of the "Foundation" book
and can be downloaded from the publishers site.
As to this one: it includes a working chat,
shows you how to build an e-commerce site
(including how to generate a pdf invoice from PHP),
talks about sessions (remembering user info with a handy shopping cart application),
how to let users upload files (jpg's for example to be pulled into Flash later..),
and many more.
Each and every php script has many usefull details
that you'll be able to integrate into your site;
and the Flash part takes full advantage of MX's new features
like loadVars, loading images etc...
Where is there another book integrating PHP and Flash
as closely as this one (and the Foundation one)?!
And best of all, if you ever get stuck,
the people on the support board are always ready to help.
So go ahead and get it.
Product: Book
Title: How to Use Google : The 30 Most Important Tips, Hacks and Tricks
Publisher:
Authors: Tod Sacerdoti
Rating: 2/5
Title: How to Use Google : The 30 Most Important Tips, Hacks and Tricks
Publisher:
Authors: Tod Sacerdoti
Rating: 2/5
I learned a few new things from this little guide, but nothing terribly new or more powerful or anything (that I couldn't find elsewhere online, for free). Five bucks is too steep for a twelve-page .pdf that's several years old now (when it was two bucks).
Product: Book Paperback
Title: MCSE Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Administration Readiness Review Exam 70-228 (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Irfan Chaudhry, Dean Bartholomew
Rating: 5/5
Title: MCSE Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Administration Readiness Review Exam 70-228 (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Irfan Chaudhry, Dean Bartholomew
Rating: 5/5
You can't learn much from this book. This book contains only questions and answers(with explaination). That's about all. Nothing much. Don't expect this book will teach you how to install SQL. It will only ask you to refer to book online.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 2000: A Guide to Enhancements and New Features
Publisher: Pearson Education
Authors: Rahul Sharma
Rating: 5/5
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 2000: A Guide to Enhancements and New Features
Publisher: Pearson Education
Authors: Rahul Sharma
Rating: 5/5
This is a very good book to have...He has the knack of explaining things in a very simple way. The examples in the book are very good. The advanced DBA chapters and especially the scripts chapter is excellent. I would have liked to see a chapter that talked about moving from SQL Server to Oracle since that is what we are in the process of doing. The chapters that explain the differences between the two RDBMS and the migration process from Oracle to SQL Server are very good though and did help me a lot. The SQL Profiler and performance debugging chapters are excellent. The improvements over SQL 7.0 features is written in detail and the examples are very good. The chapter on replication enhancements could have been better. A five star rating from my side. This is a good book for development as well as production DBA's and development managers.
Product: Book
Title: Joe Celko's Trees and Hierarchies in SQL for Smarties
Publisher:
Authors: Joe Celko
Rating: 3/5
Title: Joe Celko's Trees and Hierarchies in SQL for Smarties
Publisher:
Authors: Joe Celko
Rating: 3/5
I love and savor each of Celko?s books for their thoroughness, depth and surprises. However, with this book I am little disappointed because it showed his favorite solutions and omitted many common solutions that are better in various real-world situations. Most algorithms provided in the book are for overnight processing, not real-time update.
Omitted is the most common way hierarchies are represented in Data Warehouses using a "hierarchy bridge table". See Kimball?s book "Data Warehouse Toolkit" for more detail (yet not enough detail to give a Celko-like exploration of the topic). The bridge table solution trades away storage space for greater speed by creating a record for every path enumeration.
The book?s primary focus is on strict hierarchies. Not enough attention is given to convergent graphs and other arbitrary directed acyclic graphs, like bill of materials that reuse assemblies, where the nested sets model fails (p.164).
Also missing is maintenance of historical versions of the hierarchy, often required by financial applications.
Section 9.3 on the extremely powerful DB2 ?WITH? operator is too slim, especially since it is a SQL-99 standard and is now available with Microsoft SQL Server. If you work with hierarchies or acyclic graphs in DB2 or SQL Server take the time to learn how to use ?common subquery expressions?.
By all means if you work with hierarchies you must buy this book. No doubt the Second revison of this book will blow us away.
