IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Professional PHP4 Programming
Publisher: Wrox Press
Authors: Deepak Thomas, Wankyu Choi, John Coggeshall, Ken Egervari, Martin Geisler, Zak Greant, Andrew Hill, Chris Hubbard, James Moore, Devon O'Dell, Jon Parise, Harish Rawat, Tarique Sani, Christopher Scollo, Chris Ullman, et al
Rating: 5/5
Title: Professional PHP4 Programming
Publisher: Wrox Press
Authors: Deepak Thomas, Wankyu Choi, John Coggeshall, Ken Egervari, Martin Geisler, Zak Greant, Andrew Hill, Chris Hubbard, James Moore, Devon O'Dell, Jon Parise, Harish Rawat, Tarique Sani, Christopher Scollo, Chris Ullman, et al
Rating: 5/5
Good book to start serious programming with DB (MySQL or other ones) outside of learning to do
real medium to large scale web app development with PHP.
Also notice that this book has been written by authoritative peers like Luis Argerich (i am a fan of
his phpbuilder articles), Thomas,Rawat and scollo(from the earlier Professional PHP Programming) and
James Moore (moderator on PHP-GTK) and reviewed by many memebers from the PHP quality team.I am mastering professional PHP knowledge undaunted.BUY IT NOW!
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL Server 2000 Stored Procedure Programming
Publisher: Osborne/McGraw-Hill
Authors: Dejan Sunderic, Tom Woodhead
Rating: 3/5
Title: SQL Server 2000 Stored Procedure Programming
Publisher: Osborne/McGraw-Hill
Authors: Dejan Sunderic, Tom Woodhead
Rating: 3/5
As an experienced SQL Server developer I have long lamented the number of books on the market that focused on Transact SQL programming. Most books on SQL Server tend to cover a little T-SQL along with a lot more on the administration tools and overall product architecture. When I saw this book (recommended on a newsgroup post for its SQL XML coverage) was available I ordered two copies the same day; one for me and another for a team member on my current project, which is our first production application using SQL Server 2000. When it arrived I sat down and started reading, and was quickly disappointed.First of all, the depth of coverage was severely lacking for a 700-page book. If the publisher had not used such a large font and not included so many redundant screen shots (although I do see the value in illustrating tool use, dozens and dozens of screen shots of SQL Query Analyzer showing the output of stored procedures could have been better served by several text excerpts) this could easily have been a 500-page volume, or had some additional details that would have given the non-novice user a little added value. Based on the size, the title and other reader's reviews I was expecting a much deeper coverage than the book provided.Second, the code samples that were included (please keep in mind that this is one developer's opinion, but those colleagues of mine who have reviewed the book have agreed with me) are among the worst examples of T-SQL code I've ever encountered. The font used (I hope that this is not consistent across this entire book series, as some of the other Osborne titles also look promising) may as well not have been a fixed-width font for how difficult it is to follow. The author's indentation and capitalization are inconsistent with any published SQL or T-SQL standard I've ever seen, and are even inconsistent with the "coding conventions" included in the book. If I were to submit these code samples to a peer code review I would be embarrassed to hand them out; I cannot imagine publishing them to an audience of thousands.Third, and perhaps most significantly, I got the distinct impression that this book started out as "SQL Server 7.0 Stored Procedure Programming" but didn't make it to press before SQL Server 2000 was released, and was hastily updated after the fact. Although there are certainly examples of new SQL Server 2000 features (such as User Defined Functions and the new Table data type) they are extremely lacking in detail; they receive coverage that is cursory even compared to other topics in this book, whereas one would expect them (based on the book's title) to receive more extensive coverage because of their newness. The most significant failure in this regard is the coverage of IDENTITY values, and the techniques used to capture and process them programmatically. The author spends seven complete pages (449-555) discussing different workaround techniques to capture the IDENTITY value generated by an INSERT operation (such as using sequence tables instead of IDENTITY or storing the IDENTITY value in a temporary table) where that value would be lost if a trigger on the base table also inserted into another table with an IDENTITY column. While this is certainly a valid topic (and a traditional sore spot for SQL Server developers) SQL Server 2000 provides two new system functions IDENT_CURRENT() and SCOPE_IDENTITY() that make @@IDENTITY and the author's workarounds obsolete. The fact that the author was (is?) unaware of this very relevant new functionality makes it very difficult for me to take the rest of the book seriously; how much else was he unaware of, and how many other serious omissions or errors did I miss when reading?Now with all of this said, I'm still giving the book three stars, although I was tempted to give it two. It's not an inherently bad book, but is certainly not (again, this is simply one developer's opinion) the "awesome" or "excellent" book that some of the other reviewers would have you believe. If you are a novice or intermediate SQL Server developer you will certainly benefit from reading this book. If you are an advanced developer, you will likely be better served by looking for another book. I've just ordered "Advanced Transact-SQL for SQL Server 2000" by Itzik Ben Gan and Thomas Moreau and "Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2000" by Kalen Delaney (if only I'd known that this one was out when I placed my order, as Kalen Delaney is simply the goddess of the SQL Server world) and am hoping that one of these books is what I expected "SQL Server 2000 Stored Procedure Programming" to be.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Building Microsoft(r) SQL Server(r) 7 Applications with COM
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Authors: Sanjiv Purba
Rating: 4/5
Title: Building Microsoft(r) SQL Server(r) 7 Applications with COM
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Authors: Sanjiv Purba
Rating: 4/5
I couldn't find source code for this book on publisher's web site. That mean to test those code I have to type all code myself. If I had know it I wouldn't buy this book. I thought this is commone scense for reader to expect the code is either come with an attached CD or can be downloaded.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Mastering Oracle SQL
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Sanjay Mishra, Alan Beaulieu
Rating: 5/5
Title: Mastering Oracle SQL
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Sanjay Mishra, Alan Beaulieu
Rating: 5/5
As a value for the dollar, I give it 5 stars. I think it is most useful to people who have some SQL experience with Oracle and want to take their skills to the next level. I agree with some of the other reviewers that "Mastering" is a bit of a marketing stretch, particularly since there is limited coverage of Oracle optimizer issues. I would also have included some further discussion on how to read and use "Explain Plan" results. With those cavaets, however, I think that almost any SQL programmer will find something in this book to improve their skills. I found the discussion of subqueries to be very useful, as well as the OLAP queries. I read the book cover to cover. It is well written and the concepts are generally presented clearly.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Teach Yourself Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 in 21 Days
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Lance Mortensen
Rating: 2/5
Title: Teach Yourself Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 in 21 Days
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Lance Mortensen
Rating: 2/5
Sams' Teach Yourself in 21 Days series of books often has authors scrambling to cram and organise a whole field of information into three weeks, no more no less. This offering on the MS SQL Server 6.5 succumbs to that same fate.Clearly, in order to follow the schedule religiously one must have a relatively firm footing on SQL and free time on his or her hands as well, as some chapters are intensive, to say the least.Although the four authors adopted an lighter style of writing, the layout nullifies most of their good intentions.Now most SQL operations could be carried out within the command line or the GUI-enabled Enterprise Manager, and I had a frustrating time ruling out the command-line sections as I solely wanted to use the GUI interface.What would make this book more friendly would be to have a short introduction on a particular feature, and to expound the individual methods through intelligent indentation or icon usage along the sidebar.It would also be appreciated if the Transact-SQL commands peculiar to MS SQL 6.5 be emphasized.I am sure that with better attention to details the book would have been a good introduction to the SQL 6.5 Server. As it is I would advise readers to scour for a more suitable offering.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Understanding Relational Databases with Examples in SQL-92
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Authors: Fabian Pascal
Rating: 5/5
Title: Understanding Relational Databases with Examples in SQL-92
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Authors: Fabian Pascal
Rating: 5/5
If you work with relational databases, and if you do not have a good grip on the relational model, then you will benefit beyond belief. This is a very serious book for serious study. If I could, I would buy this book for you, its that important.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP Black Book
Publisher: Coriolis Group Books
Authors: Peter Moulding
Rating: 2/5
Title: PHP Black Book
Publisher: Coriolis Group Books
Authors: Peter Moulding
Rating: 2/5
I was disappointed with purchasing this book.It has a very diverse coverage on PHP and is the not the best books to begin
PHP scripting with. i found it difficult to wade through the examples presented in the book
and also ended up finding several bugs in the code presented in the book.
I was disappointed that this book didn't deliver my money's worth
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL Server 7 Developer's Guide
Publisher: Osborne Publishing
Authors: Michael Otey, Paul Conte
Rating: 5/5
Title: SQL Server 7 Developer's Guide
Publisher: Osborne Publishing
Authors: Michael Otey, Paul Conte
Rating: 5/5
This is an excellent book. It covers the access techniques to the databases of SQL more common Server 7 as DAO, RDO, ODBC, ODBCDirect, DB-Library, SQL-DMO and ADO among others. The chapters that are about the administration, implementation of SQL Server 7 and the related topics are very good. This book well could be good as preparation for the exam 70-029. (Not only of course). The chapter that covers the material of SQL-DMO is one of the best of the book. The example that comes in the CD is very excellent. The chapter that is about MS Access connection with SQL Server is excellent. The final part of the book outlines the capacity of SQL Server to convert you paginate from results of consultations to the format HTML to be used in an intranet or internet. In the CD some example projects come. 1 in Access, several in Visual Basic and 1 in Visual Interdev. All examples are very instructive, without exception. The examples in Visual Basic 6 are all magnificent ones, without caring the experience that one has. I am relatively new programming in Visual Basic and I have already been able to make a very interesting program thanks to the content of the book. Buy it! It is wonderful. If you are intelligent the book will be very useful. If not, you will need something very elementary.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Transact-SQL Programming
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Lee Gould, Andrew Zanevsky, Kevin Kline
Rating: 2/5
Title: Transact-SQL Programming
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Lee Gould, Andrew Zanevsky, Kevin Kline
Rating: 2/5
This book needs an update. It uses old techniques like system table queries and *= joins which have been discouraged by Microsoft. Also, the continuity could be much better. Sometimes it feels like three or four separate books rather than one. I give it 2 stars for being so out of date.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Writing Apache Modules with Perl and C
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Lincoln Stein, Doug MacEachern
Rating: 3/5
Title: Writing Apache Modules with Perl and C
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Lincoln Stein, Doug MacEachern
Rating: 3/5
The book in and of itself, is great. Typical O'Reilly fare. But this book is 99% Perl.. anyone writing Apache Modules, isn't writing them in Perl. Perl is great since it works as an add-on thats written in "C"! This book is more a mod_Perl users guide.
