IT programming books related reviews
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Code Centric: T-SQL Programming with Stored Procedures and Triggers
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Garth Wells
Rating: 5/5
Title: Code Centric: T-SQL Programming with Stored Procedures and Triggers
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Garth Wells
Rating: 5/5
Garath Wells book is a unique guidance to T-SQL programming.In "easy to read terms" the book explains working with T-SQL and gives you the basic skills to write effective Stored Procedures and triggers.The book gives many, easy to understand examples that help you build your own code. I often use the book as a T-SQL-manual. Many of my existing SQL server applications has now been tuned to run mush faster with less code thanks to the skills I developed though this book.If you are new to Stored Procedures or just want to learn more - don't hesitate to buy "Code-Centric: T-SQL Programming with Stored Procedures and Triggers"
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP and MySQL Web Development
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
Rating: 5/5
Title: PHP and MySQL Web Development
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
Rating: 5/5
I have a pretty good collection of books on PHP. This is the best of the group. It covers both PHP and MySQL in a manner that a novice (who understands HTML) can gather but covers the subjects in a reasonable depth. I particulary like that the authors have managed to make the book both a reference and a tutorial and have done a good job of both. It's not the end all of books on the subject but it is probably the best single volume reference out there.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL: The Complete Reference, Second Edition
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: James R Groff, Paul N. Weinberg
Rating: 5/5
Title: SQL: The Complete Reference, Second Edition
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media
Authors: James R Groff, Paul N. Weinberg
Rating: 5/5
This is the best SQL reference I have come across. It covers all aspects of programming in SQL as well as how SQL works under the hood. The material is written in a lucid manner so every topic is accessible. It can be used as a beginner's text, too, but its strength is really in its complete coverage and accuracy.I found the CD-ROM excellent because it let me try out MS SQL Server 7, Oracle8, Sybase and IBM's DB2.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP Developer's Cookbook (2nd Edition)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Sterling Hughes, Andrei Zmievski
Rating: 5/5
Title: PHP Developer's Cookbook (2nd Edition)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Sterling Hughes, Andrei Zmievski
Rating: 5/5
I spent a lot of time reading reviews and thumbing books in stores before I decided to buy this one.I needed a good quality book that would extend my PHP knowledge without treating me like an idiot for the first four chapters or wasting my time with high end stuff I'll never use. I appreciate cookbooks, I have the Perl Cookbook, Perl CGI/Cookbook and a couple of similar C volumes and find they are useful to get me pointed in thie right direction in both method and style. Often, of course, the code I end up with bears little resemblance to the cookbook code but it saves me time. They also provide a large number of examples of how to perform real world tasks with a language which I find an easier way of learning a language than some dry textbook with short snippets of example code.In the 24 sections this book covers a huge range of tasks, from the simple, such as string manipulation, through to the highly complex such as drawing graphics with GD and outputting XML.Each section is broken down into a number (the average is about 8 or 9) problems, each problem comes with at least one solution and a discussion. The discussion will often mention other avenues of approach for variations of the original problem as well as detailing the various parts of the solution.This book is extremely well structured, well written and useful. I would recommend it for anyone already using PHP or intending to do so in the future.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Google Hacks
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Tara Calishain, Rael Dornfest
Rating: 5/5
Title: Google Hacks
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Tara Calishain, Rael Dornfest
Rating: 5/5
It seems like nary a month goes by that I don't learn something new about Google that hooks me ever more deeply into the site. After reading Google Hacks (2nd Edition) by Tara Calishain and Rael Dornfest (O'Reilly), I have enough "hooks" for the next year...
Chapter list: Web; Advanced Web; Images; News and Groups; Add-Ons; Gmail; Ads; Webmastering; Programming Google; Index
You probably know it by now, but the Hacks concept is built around 100 cool tips, tricks, and "hacks" related to the particular subject of the book. In this case, the subject is Google. I must have missed the first edition, because I don't remember ever reading any of this material in this form before. The first chapter deals with basic search tricks like mapping (#7 - Think Global, Google Local) and stock tracking (#8 - Track Stocks). Nothing incredibly new there that I haven't seen elsewhere, even though I may not always remember it when I need to. :-) The advanced section starts to pick up with things like #46 - Spot Trends with Geotargeting and #47 - Bring the Google Calculator to the Command Line. Learning how to "browse" the World Wide photo album in #51 was cool. For me, the book completely earned its keep with the gmail chapter. I didn't know about "plus addressing", which really rocks. And based on #79 - Use Gmail as a Windows Drive, I now have a 1 GB spare hard drive that I can use to transfer 10 MB files (or less) from home to work and back... Tres cool!
If you have a background in programming, you'll get even more out of the book. There are plenty of scripting examples using Perl, Python, and other languages that allow you to manipulate the Google API to integrate Google features into your applications. But even if that's not your forte, you'll still benefit a lot from the non-programming tips. Especially if you've never taken a lesson in the search syntax that Google provides.
If Google is your search engine of choice but you've never gotten beyond the basic search interface, you need this book. There's a whole world out there you know nothing about... Highly recommended.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Professional SQL Server 2000 Database Design
Publisher: Wrox Press
Authors: Louis Davidson, Wrox Author Team
Rating: 5/5
Title: Professional SQL Server 2000 Database Design
Publisher: Wrox Press
Authors: Louis Davidson, Wrox Author Team
Rating: 5/5
I find this book much better than most other wrox books. Most DB design books were either unweildy college textbooks, or don't go in much detail. This book takes all the details of college textbooks and makes it all easy to learn. He even deals with 4th, 5th, and domain key normal form and gets into guidelines with complex (beyond the ability of simple constraints) integry enforcement and ideas on how to implement business rule enforcement for those certain companies that like to put their business logic in the back-end. He also goes through in detail of the transition from the logical model to the physical model. I also learned that columns like category1, category2, category3... violate the lowest of normal forms - first normal form . I still think I would rather deal with legacy schema with this problem than designs that duplicate the rows and double up the PK with an index number (JobID, CategoryNumber). But anyway, this is a great DB design book and I suggest you get it. I will be hunting down more books from this author.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Foundation PHP for Flash
Publisher: Friends of Ed
Authors: Steve Webster
Rating: 5/5
Title: Foundation PHP for Flash
Publisher: Friends of Ed
Authors: Steve Webster
Rating: 5/5
Great book for the Flasher who wants to add some cool dynamic server side processing to the game. With little previous programming experience, i was able to get the apps runnimg in a matter of minutes; something the working designer will appreciate. The code is well documented and easy to understand, Steve Webster does an amazing job of making this stuff make sense.Buy two copies, one for you and one for your Mum!
Product: Book Paperback
Title: A Guide to SQL Standard (4th Edition)
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: C. J. Date, Hugh Darwen
Rating: 4/5
Title: A Guide to SQL Standard (4th Edition)
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: C. J. Date, Hugh Darwen
Rating: 4/5
Not a beginners book, I choose it never the less. It helped me not to use nonstandard SQL features, so that my code runs with different databases. Still there seems to be no standard of how to get data about the database engine or the table configuration, so some code seems to remain individual. The book is from a standards thinking author, which means very formalistic. One nees to like this to like this book. But anyhow, the book is very profesionally written and to recommend. One needs serveral books about the same topic anyway.
Product: Book Textbook Binding
Title: McSe: SQL Server 7 Database Design (The Training Guide Series)
Publisher: New Riders Publishing
Authors: David Besch, Sean Baird, Chris Miller, Denis Darveau, Wayne Smith, Deanna Townsend
Rating: 4/5
Title: McSe: SQL Server 7 Database Design (The Training Guide Series)
Publisher: New Riders Publishing
Authors: David Besch, Sean Baird, Chris Miller, Denis Darveau, Wayne Smith, Deanna Townsend
Rating: 4/5
Like a visit to the Wizard of Oz, every exam candidate sees a different 70-029 exam. The main thrust of my 3 hour exam was (pretend there is no SQL 7 Server GUI) recognizing how various tasks and procedures are accomplished in T-SQL, and their uses and consequences. This is in sharp contrast to 70-028, which tests your facility with the GUI. And there are data structures to interpret, and maybe some ugly BCP and more practical DTS questions.Besch, et al. do a good job of focusing on T-SQL approaches, while mentioning the alternative GUI tools. I found the text comfortable and readable. Their treatments of data modeling and creating physical storage are excellent. Physical design is a little tougher reading, but the material is covered fairly well. The chapter on indexing is comprehensive, except for the discussion of Full-Text searches.While the BCP (Bulk Copy Program) is a powerful, but horrid thing to learn and use, with its dozens of optional parameters and flags, the book's explanation of it is about as lucid as you are likely to find. It will make you grateful for the new DTS (the GUI Data Transformation Services), which is not covered in sufficient detail, though just as likely to show up on the exam.The several chapters on structures of the SQL language cover a vast amount of territory, and cover it fairly well. Database maintenance is addressed in a cursory way.WEAKNESSES: The SQL language chapters (and some other areas) rely too heavily on formal syntax diagrams -- the kind that show all the possible choices of required and optional parameters of a given statement. While these are great for future reference, they make some pretty difficult reading when you are first learning SLQ. You'll have to expend some calories to translate the diagrams into reality. In some areas the subsequent examples provide adequate clarification. In others, the reader is left with the vague malaise of fuzzy theory. Replication and security are significantly slighted. The details of the workings of DTS are inadequate. The "Review Questions" (different from the "Exam Questions") often expect knowledge that has not yet been (and sometimes never will be) covered. But the info is usually useful in the answers provided.The examples contrasting Full-Text predicates vs Full-Text functions are not sufficient. The important series of steps required to set up and use Full-Text search are left unclear. A numbered list of essential steps would have been useful.Coverage of optimization of execution plans and Server Profiler is only marginally adequate.IF YOU ARE NEW to SQL Server, the condensed nature of any exam book will leave gaps in your understanding. I would strongly encourage you to read a second, smaller book, like Exam Cram, after completing this one. It will clarify the fuzzy spots and provide a different perspective on the material. Regardless, you will need to take notes and maybe do some flash cards (home made) to congeal all the knowledge. But take heart in the certainty that you'll be able to apply much of the data structure knowledge to exam 70-100 (Solutions Architectures).STRENGTHS: In addition to the good things mentioned above, the Fast Facts final review chapter is wonderful. The end of chapter exam questions do a good (though slightly buggy) job of reviewing the types of information that will be tested, though the format is not quite right.CONCLUSION: Despite its shortcomings, I really liked this book. Consider a "small" book as an adjunct. Take notes. Look up fuzzy syntax in the Books On Line. And, by all means, run the SQL exercises in Query Analyzer.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: The Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Ken Henderson
Rating: 5/5
Title: The Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Ken Henderson
Rating: 5/5
The best thing about this book is that it doesn't follow the example of most of the other SQL Server books out there -- it doesn't settle for merely repeating the Books Online. Instead, it fills in the details the BOL leaves out and provides expert advice that only a guru could.I've been a certified SQL Server DBA since Microsoft first offered the certification, and I can say that this book is hands down the best T-SQL book around, as Joe Celko says in the book's Foreword. Beyond that, it's the best book I've seen on _any_ SQL dialect - Microsoft or otherwise. The best parts of the book are the early chapters. The Data Types chapter, for example, provides an expansive tour through the many nuances of the SQL Server data types, including the new ones introduced by SQL Server 7.0. The new GUID type, for example, is covered in detail, and expert comparisons with other similar types are offered.The Nulls chapter is also a gem. Most database writers avoid getting drawn into the sometimes philosophical debate over missing values. Henderson handles the subject adroitly and succinctly -- recommending a course of action without sounding religious.The DDL Insights and DML Insights chapters are also quite good. The book could have stooped to merely regurgitating the BOL, but this book doesn't do that. So, instead of a 100 pages each on DML and DDL, with have two chapters of about ten pages a piece that focus on the things not mentioned by the BOL -- things only a guru would know.The chapter titled The Mighty SELECT Statement is the crown jewel of the book. I was well aware of most of the things SELECT could do before I ever read this book, however, this book takes the subject to a new level. It exposes features and power even veterans like myself would normally miss. It showed me ways of making SELECT work for me that I'd never even dreamed of. I used one of the techniques it illustrates just yesterday and blew my coworkers away. Like many of the techniques in this book, that one tip alone was worth the price of the book.All around, I'd say this is the best investment you can make with your SQL Server $$. If you want to know Transact-SQL like the gurus do, read this book and learn it inside out.
