IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft SQL Server 7 in 21 Days
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Richard Waymire, Rick Sawtell
Rating: 5/5
Title: Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft SQL Server 7 in 21 Days
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Richard Waymire, Rick Sawtell
Rating: 5/5
Having to learn SQL 7.0 for my job, I needed something quick and easy. After being frustrated with two other books, this was a blessing. I can really relate to the authors style. The other books are so dry they are out of touch with the general reader.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: OCP Developer PL/SQL Program Units Exam Guide
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: Steve O'Hearn
Rating: 4/5
Title: OCP Developer PL/SQL Program Units Exam Guide
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: Steve O'Hearn
Rating: 4/5
I used this book to prepare for pl/sql exam and scored 49/57. It is a good study guide. I have not had difficulty going through the book since I was exposed to the pl/sql language when I was studying for the exam (1z0-001, Introduction to oracle 8i sql and pl/sql). This was a huge benefit for me and I only spent about three weeks reading the book. I will say that this exam (1z0-101) is built on the first one (1z0-001). I am not sure if it is also built on the exam (1z0-007). You will need to know the basics of pl/sql to fully understand this book.
The author did a pretty job breaking down all the information you need for the exam. There was no questions on Chapter 8 and Chapter 9 was barely touched with one question on debugging.
I will advice you to read carefully the book and make sure you master the concept before you go take the exam. If you do it the exam comes easy for you. You will be shown a lot of codes during the exam. My strategy was this: in order to avoid wasting time reading the entire code, I read the question first. That allows to me spot quickly the objective and see quickly what is being asked without reading the long code. Stuff you need to be carefull of:
-Parameter declaration in Function and Procedure header
-Function without a Return
-Public and Private Constructs behavior
-Triggers behavior
-Function and Procedure call
This strategy allowed to complete my exam in less than one hour. Good Luck.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Programming Microsoft SQL Server 2000 with XML, Second Edition
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Graeme Malcolm
Rating: 4/5
Title: Programming Microsoft SQL Server 2000 with XML, Second Edition
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Graeme Malcolm
Rating: 4/5
Let's see. SQL Server 2000 has been out for quite some time now. One of the neat features of SQL Server 2000 is XML. Yet, all of the tomes written so far offer nothing more than a cursory glance.Note, that I am not criticizing the authors of these works for this oversight. Much of the blame lies in Microsoft not having the XML features complete until the very latest betas (release candidates actually, but who is counting).One of the features with the most promise, updategrams, has not been covered at all (except a mention here and there and a snippet of how the XML is formatted).Also of note is the documentation of the FOR XML EXPLICIT mode. The 13 pages on this subject give a good intro to get up and going. You will still have to pound out the queries (and probably cuss a bit), but it is nice to finally have some documentation (even the books online were poor here).A word of warning. This is not a book about how to use SQL Server 2000. It is a very specialized work on SQL Server 2000 and XML. If you want to learn SQL Server 2000, it would be best to look elsewhere. I would like to give the book a five star rating, but there are areas where I feel the material is a bit too thin. On the other hand, this work is enough to be worth the money spent if you are developing in SQL Server 2000 and XML.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Beginning SQL Server 2000 for Visual Basic Developers
Publisher: Peer Information Inc.
Authors: Thearon Willis
Rating: 5/5
Title: Beginning SQL Server 2000 for Visual Basic Developers
Publisher: Peer Information Inc.
Authors: Thearon Willis
Rating: 5/5
I have used this book and it has proven to be a highly resourceful Visual Basic and SQL Server book, that I am anxiously waiting for the release of Beginning VB.NET Databases by the same author!!!.
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: MCDBA SQL Server 7 Certification Boxed Set
Publisher: Osborne Publishing
Authors: Syngress Media Inc
Rating: 3/5
Title: MCDBA SQL Server 7 Certification Boxed Set
Publisher: Osborne Publishing
Authors: Syngress Media Inc
Rating: 3/5
This boxed set is a pretty decent help for the test if you have some experience with SQL Server 7 already.The two textbooks cover the exam objectives, but tends to treat certain areas a little superficially. They are well laid out, though, and easy to read. For the most part they do a good job of explaining concepts, although it is evident that different authors have written different part of the books, as some sections are excellent, and other do the joob less impressively.Overall, the textbooks are somewhat mediocre - they do a good job of explainging things, but they are too superficial to cover all you need to know on the tests. Also, the test questions in these books are ridiculously easy, and are in no way representative of the real tests. The CDs are useless, as they just assemble these questions; and there are also lots of errors in the answers.The Self Test book, on the other hand, is excellent! The questions in this book are generally VERY hard (harder than on the test), and the answers include good and thourough explanations to both correct and wrong ansers.From this book, I learned a lot of details that weren't covered in the textbooks.With a year's experience of developing web applications against SQL Server 7 and this boxed set, I passed both tests in one try.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Lan Times Guide to SQL
Publisher: Mcgraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: James R. Groff, Paul N. Weinberg
Rating: 2/5
Title: Lan Times Guide to SQL
Publisher: Mcgraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: James R. Groff, Paul N. Weinberg
Rating: 2/5
I was introducted to this book as a student at DeVry Institute of Technology in Dallas, TX. I found the book to be a great introduction into the SQL language. The books presents a detailed (yet non-exhaustive) history of the language, along with a good solid introduction to the methodology of SQL. It also provides practical examples of relational DMBS scripting, history and methodology. I would recommend those with absolutely no database experience check out the Modern Database Management book (ISBN: 0-8053-6054-9) before purchasing this book.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Complete SQL Server 7 Training Course, The
Publisher: Prentice Hall
Authors: Jeffry Byrne, Steve Correia, John Deep
Rating: 4/5
Title: Complete SQL Server 7 Training Course, The
Publisher: Prentice Hall
Authors: Jeffry Byrne, Steve Correia, John Deep
Rating: 4/5
I have not had much experience with SQL Server (as an administrator). Also I was not aware of some tricks defined in this book. Moreover I learnt about the various fancy joins and how to use them.GOOD book for beginners to intermediate readers!!
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Google Hacks
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Tara Calishain, Rael Dornfest
Rating: 4/5
Title: Google Hacks
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Tara Calishain, Rael Dornfest
Rating: 4/5
A chance glance read,'Google Hacks' at a local Bookstore, this one's not the cup of tea for a casual surfer. If one is an HTML expert and excel in scripting language, here's a pick and a cool read. It helps trying new ways to innovate, charges a hacker for productive and constructive use of web enhanced applications. I have a Google Developer Key for 'sambhaav' but never really knew how to use it and this book has tremendous info on the API application. Web Developers would benefit greatly with this book, no doubt, with tips on how to build and modify scripts that can be custom based application on google. This book, not for surfers or casual web designers like me but who indeed aware of Programming and using codes n scripts n perl n xml n what not! Google is an ultimate research tool and a great search engine with good ad words links I like - my fav nex to 'yahoo' search and sure, my websites feature top with key words 'net newspaper for kids' and sure, you find all stars. Google Hacks - a great read for all Web Developers.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes, Third Edition
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Ben Forta
Rating: 5/5
Title: Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes, Third Edition
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Ben Forta
Rating: 5/5
Having read several pre-release chapters of Ben's upcoming book, I can recommend this book to both beginner and sequel "old-timers" who might have gotten a little rusty in their SQL skills. The book outlines in plain English some of the most commonly used commands from the SQL language-and leaves out the rocket science that confuses most new comers.While not a definitive treatment on the language (as Ben himself notes in the text), with this book in hand, anyone should be up and running with the fundamentals of SQL in no time. Having said that, there is still plenty of coverage concerning some of the more in-depth features of SQL such as aggregate functions, joins, grouping, etc. A must read for anyone wishing to get up and running with SQL quickly and painlessly!
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP and MySQL Web Development
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
Rating: 3/5
Title: PHP and MySQL Web Development
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
Rating: 3/5
This book is very practical, it starts from ground zero for php and mysql. Then it goes all the way to web securities, session management api, shopping carts, email list manager and web forum. As a professional Java web developer, I think it is a very practical book for PHP and mySQL. The quality is similar to the Oreily Servlet book, but it covers a lot more complex web applications thant the Servlet book.
I used it to build serveral very convient real-world web utilites
for my websites. Highly recommand it.
