IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Oracle PL/SQL Programming, Third Edition
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Steven Feuerstein
Rating: 5/5
Title: Oracle PL/SQL Programming, Third Edition
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Steven Feuerstein
Rating: 5/5
This is one of the best written and easiest to read of any technical book I've ever read. We've often provided this book to students in the Oracle classes that we teach. Furthermore, when I was on an Oracle consulting project a couple of years ago, working alongside consultants from Oracle Corporation, I noticed that the Oracle Corp consultants weren't using the Oracle Corp documentation on PL/SQL for reference - they all had this book.Steve Feuerstein presents a tremendous overview and in-depth analysis of the PL/SQL language with practical examples. He includes several design recommendations and practical real world examples and recommendations that make this a solid book for PL/SQL professionals who are serious about writing production code.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Learn SQL in Three Days (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Wordware Publishing
Authors: Jose A. Ramalho
Rating: 4/5
Title: Learn SQL in Three Days (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Wordware Publishing
Authors: Jose A. Ramalho
Rating: 4/5
The back cover of the book says that "Learn SQL in Three Days" is "introductory" and "ideally suited for programmers who have some experience with relational database software, but no specific experience with SQL." You should take this description seriously. The author will, for example, use words such as "predicates" and "unary" without defining them. He expects that you come to this book with a background sufficient to understand such terms. (I'd forgotten what these mean, but I still found this book to be a useful introduction to SQL--I just looked up unfamiliar terms in a computer dictionary.)Bear in mind that the book is an introduction to SQL: you won't find a "right outer join" explained in this text, nor will this book serve as a heavy-duty reference book for all your high-powered SQL questions. This book does not go into great detail about the design of database tables (e.g., don't expect a discussion of "a fully normalized data model.")Given the narrow audience for whom this book was written, I believe it to be effective. I studied the book and then obtained a certification in ANSI SQL from Brainbench. However, I *studied* the book (I didn't merely *read*) it, and I tried the author's examples on my own, and modified them, and thought about them. It took me more than three 8-hour days to get through this book, and I still didn't find the Brainbench test to be easy.The CD that comes with this book has a 60-day trial version of Centura SQLBase 7 and a sample database. Nice touch. This allows you to follow the examples in the book, and modify them, and experiment with SQL (and destroy things with no real harm done). The book has the usual assortment of typos that slip into written works (for example, the author sometimes refers to a table by two different names, perhaps reflecting a name change during the process of writing the book).I don't believe the author explained correlated queries very well, and I went to an Internet tutorial to understand them better.A couple of important words of advice ("corrigenda", if you will): If you copy the file "pubssqlb.dbs" to your own hard drive, make sure to change the "read only" attribute of this file to "off." If you don't (at least, this was my experience), you'll see a cryptic error message when you attempt to connect to the pubssqlb database: "Attributes not compatible." Also, be aware that the data in the "type" column in the "titles" table has extra spaces added to the data (e.g., "business" is actually "business <space> <space> <space> <space>"). Therefore, where the author has a select statement such as this: SELECT AVG(price) FROM titles WHERE type='business', try this select statement instead: SELECT AVG(price) FROM titles WHERE type LIKE 'business%'.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: The Practical SQL Handbook: Using Structured Query Language (3rd Edition)
Publisher: Pearson Education
Authors: Judith S. Bowman, Sandra L. Emerson, Marcy Darnovsky
Rating: 5/5
Title: The Practical SQL Handbook: Using Structured Query Language (3rd Edition)
Publisher: Pearson Education
Authors: Judith S. Bowman, Sandra L. Emerson, Marcy Darnovsky
Rating: 5/5
I'm a programmer with a casual knowledge of SQL. With this book, I was able to quickly create complex queries. It was a great timesaver! Very well organized with good examples. I highly recommend it to anyone who has a SQL programming project with only a little time to "spin-up".
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: MCSE Training Kit: Microsoft(r) SQL Server(tm) 2000 System Administration
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Microsoft Corporation
Rating: 1/5
Title: MCSE Training Kit: Microsoft(r) SQL Server(tm) 2000 System Administration
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Microsoft Corporation
Rating: 1/5
Very well organized. I am sure I will continue to use this book as a resource as my knowledge in SQL grows. This author knows how to present material so that a novice administrator can understand. Highly recommended.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: The Practical SQL Handbook: Using Structured Query Language (3rd Edition)
Publisher: Pearson Education
Authors: Judith S. Bowman, Sandra L. Emerson, Marcy Darnovsky
Rating: 5/5
Title: The Practical SQL Handbook: Using Structured Query Language (3rd Edition)
Publisher: Pearson Education
Authors: Judith S. Bowman, Sandra L. Emerson, Marcy Darnovsky
Rating: 5/5
This is the best book on SQL, period. The CD that comes with it allows the examples to be tried out on the sample database, which is crucial in understanding concepts such as outer joins. Much better than Celko's introductory SQL book.
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Kalen Delaney
Rating: 2/5
Title: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Kalen Delaney
Rating: 2/5
As a relative newcomer to the Microsoft SQL Server world, I have been very impressed with this introduction. I cannot comment on whether or not this SQL Server 2000 edition adds enough to the SQL Server 7.0 version to justify purchasing it if you already own the older edition, as I have never seen the earlier one. I found Delaney's discourse easy to follow, thorough, well-organized, and altogether the best introduction I have found. By all means, supplement this book with more specialized works on Transact SQL or DTS, but start here. The CD-ROM contains a 90-day evaluation version of SQL Server 2000, so with this book you can be up and running the software as you learn from the text. Definitely a best buy.
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: 4/5
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: 4/5
First, I have to say that I liked this book very much. It is clear and to the point. The examples and excercises are also extremely helpful. I particularly like the fact that they include several very different sorts of databases on the attached CD ROM.There are two things that keep me from giving it the full five stars. The first problem is that the autthors introduce a method for converting requests in english into SQL queries that is next to useless. It starts with a request for data (in english) and proceeds to a "translation" into something like SQL. Finally you are supposed to convert the translation into valid SQL by "cleaning it up" (i.e. deleting extraneous words). However, there is no explanation of how you get from the request to the "translation". Luckily this method is not necessary to follow the otherwise well thought out explanations in the book. The second problem is that the excercises in the book don't work out the way they are supposed to (i.e. the number of rows returned by the query is not always the number of rows they tell you it is supposed to return). This is because the excercise databases are slightly different than the solution databases. This caused me plenty of headaches trying to debug my SQL until I discovered the problem. Even with these problems, this is the best beginners book on the subject I've yet come across.
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
Julie is by far one of the best programming book authors that I've ever read! She writes in a manner that displays not only her understanding of the subject matter, but also her understanding of the students reading the book. She teaches PHP Essentials by building on previous information learned and doesn't just jump enormous leaps from one subject to another like so many other writers. I'm well into the 7th chapter and am totally enjoying the lessons. Thank You Julie!Oh - The only reason she got 4 stars instead of 5 is because I felt that more illustrations and/or screenshots would have been helpful. Either that or a CD-ROM to accompany the book.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Creating Interactive Web Sites with PHP and Web Services
Publisher: Sybex
Authors: Eric Rosebrock, Eric Rosebrock, Sybex
Rating: 5/5
Title: Creating Interactive Web Sites with PHP and Web Services
Publisher: Sybex
Authors: Eric Rosebrock, Eric Rosebrock, Sybex
Rating: 5/5
I ordered this book about a weeek ago. I have been doing nothing but reading it since. It is a great book and has way more then I expected. Eric Rosebrock wrote a great book that covers a vast area and owns and operate phpfreaks.com for all the code and examples you cna ask for!
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Oracle Database 10g XML & SQL: Design, Build, & Manage XML Applications in Java, C, C++, & PL/SQL (Osborne ORACLE Press Series)
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: Mark Scardina, Ben Chang
Rating: 5/5
Title: Oracle Database 10g XML & SQL: Design, Build, & Manage XML Applications in Java, C, C++, & PL/SQL (Osborne ORACLE Press Series)
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: Mark Scardina, Ben Chang
Rating: 5/5
This book covers everything on how to develop XML applications based on the Oracle XML infrastructure. It also provides the readers with a lot of samples on how to utilize the technology. No matter you are an advanced professional or a fresh graduate, if you are interested in XML-related Oracle application development, personally I think this is a must-have book.
