IT programming books related reviews
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
The answer is yes. The very first page tells you what the book is good for and what to expect from it, and I quote...
"This book if for you if
*You are new to SQL
*You want to quickly learn how to get the most out of SQL
*You want to learn how to use SQL in your own application development
*You want to be productive quickly and easily in SQL without having to call someone for help"It does not say "if you want to be a SQL master" or "If you want to know everything about SQL from A - Z." Give the man his credit, he did what he set out to do.
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: Oracle8i Certified Professional SQL & PL/SQL Exam Guide
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
Authors: Jason S. Couchman
Rating: 1/5
Title: Oracle8i Certified Professional SQL & PL/SQL Exam Guide
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
Authors: Jason S. Couchman
Rating: 1/5
At the first glance, it covers both DBA and OCP. Contents are well organized. A sample test cd is also included. You may pass the first part with it easily.
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: MCDBA SQL Server 2000 All-in-One Exam Guide (Book/CD Set)
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
Authors: Dave Perkovich
Rating: 1/5
Title: MCDBA SQL Server 2000 All-in-One Exam Guide (Book/CD Set)
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
Authors: Dave Perkovich
Rating: 1/5
I bought this book because I couldn't find any others in my local bookstores. When I 'browsed' it, it seemed clear enough so I took a chance. Now that I've read all but the last few chapters (and done all the exercises, etc), I feel I would buy it again and, indeed, recommend it with a small qualification or two.Positives:First, it is not the bottom of the heap - far from it. I've read much poorer quality technical books before. I rated it at 3 stars but, if it hadn't claimed to be a test prep book, I would have rated it at 4 stars.Second, it is great for new people. So what if it misses a few of the finer points (even necessary ones?) Within two days of starting with it I was using DTS and replication and getting XML responses back through IIS. I found it very clear to get these services going.Third, I don't mind pictures and this book has quite a few. Nothing like a picture to show you what screen you *should* be looking at.Fourth, other than minor typos, the author is literate. Better than many other books out there.Negatives:First, this is *not* a test prep book. I've taken a number of cert tests (dozens) and I don't feel like I'm even close to ready for testing. However, I do feel a lot more confident about understanding the questions. A lot more.Second, there are some awful mistakes in some of the exercises. All of them are correctable and you have to correct them but it makes you suspicious whenever you start an exercise. For me, that isn't a bad thing. For a complete newbie, it could be a bit distressing.Third, the test banks don't work well. This doesn't make it a '1' in my opinion. I've not seen a test bank in a book that is representative of the real test. However, it does degrade my overall score for the book a little. Like I said when I started, if the book hadn't advertised it was a test prep book, I would have given it a '4'.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: The Teradata Database : Introduction and SQL
Publisher: Education In Parallel
Authors: Brian Marshall
Rating: 4/5
Title: The Teradata Database : Introduction and SQL
Publisher: Education In Parallel
Authors: Brian Marshall
Rating: 4/5
This book is good for both beginers and professionals. I recommend everyone working with teradata should have a copy of this for reference
Product: Book Paperback
Title: The Guru's Guide to SQL Server Stored Procedures, XML, and HTML (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Ken Henderson
Rating: 5/5
Title: The Guru's Guide to SQL Server Stored Procedures, XML, and HTML (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: Ken Henderson
Rating: 5/5
I have Henderson's other book and found this one to continue where it left off. Henderson elaborates on many of the topics covered in his first book (for example, stored procedures) and covers them in lucid detail. The book gets into XML and HTML from SQL Server in fine form and leaves no stone unturned. He also gets into T-SQL as a programming language and offers a number of best practices and strategies for achieving optimum performance. It's just what I would have expected from the author of GG T-SQL and, like that book, is already a classic.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Apache Administrator's Handbook
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Rich Bowen, Daniel Lopez Ridruejo, Allan Liska
Rating: 3/5
Title: Apache Administrator's Handbook
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Rich Bowen, Daniel Lopez Ridruejo, Allan Liska
Rating: 3/5
The book was alright, nothing spectacular. Everything appears to be beyond the scope of the book. I got more information from a one page online article, than I got in this entire book. Yes, yes I've been using apache for quite some time; I'm not a newbie by any means. I just felt it could have been written better, and with more detail, among other things. If you need a reference of some of the things apache could do, and how to do it this book is alright, but if you're looking for a complete reference, this is not it.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: High Performance Oracle8 SQL Programming and Tuning
Publisher: Coriolis Group Books
Authors: Pete Cassidy
Rating: 5/5
Title: High Performance Oracle8 SQL Programming and Tuning
Publisher: Coriolis Group Books
Authors: Pete Cassidy
Rating: 5/5
I have other tuning references, but this is my favorite. The real-life examples and results have saved me hours of frustration. I especially like the chapter on EXPLAIN PLAN, which contains an excellent explaination of the results. I highly recommend it to other DBA's/Developer's.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL Server 2000 Stored Procedure Programming
Publisher: Osborne/McGraw-Hill
Authors: Dejan Sunderic, Tom Woodhead
Rating: 1/5
Title: SQL Server 2000 Stored Procedure Programming
Publisher: Osborne/McGraw-Hill
Authors: Dejan Sunderic, Tom Woodhead
Rating: 1/5
This book was a complete waste of my time. There's nothing here that you couldn't get from the BOL - nothing. It's a badly written rehash of the BOL - nothing more.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Programming Microsoft SQL Server 2000 with Microsoft Visual Basic .NET
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Rick Dobson
Rating: 3/5
Title: Programming Microsoft SQL Server 2000 with Microsoft Visual Basic .NET
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Rick Dobson
Rating: 3/5
First, the book starts with a pretty thorough coverage of SQL Server. It then gives you an overview of the different ways you can utilize SQL server from .NET. It talks some about Windows applications, some about ASP for Internet and closes with XML and Web Services.Personally, I thought the SQL coverage was really good - including security and stored procedures, but that the VB.Net coverage didn't provide as much detail as I had hoped. The main reason I bought this was to try to find some answers to holes I felt other authors had left - deployment strategies and examples (including the SQL portion), dealing with text and binary objects and maximizing application performance. These topics were covered very lightly or not at all in this book.I also thought the author spent too much time on details that aren't really useful. Its pretty interesting that you can modify table structures on the fly, but how many production applications actually do that? I would have appreciated much more time on reading and updating data than all of the stuff surrounding manipulating the schema. My normal mode of operation is to modify the table in the Enterprise manager and let it generate a SQL script for me to build the database. I don't plan on writing programs to modify the database structure; I'd rather program to modify its contents. He also spends a chapter on views from SQL, but views aren't used in any VB code anywhere in the book.My final criticism is this - the SQL material and VB material are too separate. For instance, he spends a lot of time on stored procedures and their power. He mentions some of the ways they can be used in VB. That would have been a great time to show VB and utilize the procedures he just developed. Instead, the utilization happens about 200+ pages later. I think the author could have developed a great book, but instead we just got a good one.Here's the summary - it is a thorough treatment of SQL. If you're looking to understand SQL Server there is a lot of good material here (a little too much sometimes, but I'd rather have that than fall short). You will learn all about views, stored procedures, user defined functions and even security. This stuff makes it worth the price of the book. But if you are looking to figure out how to develop for SQL Server from VB.NET, there are better books - try ADO.NET Step by Step instead or Beginning Visual Basic .NET Databases. In the mean time, I'm going to keep looking for something that answers my specific questions better.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL Server Query Performance Tuning Distilled, Second Edition
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Sajal Dam
Rating: 4/5
Title: SQL Server Query Performance Tuning Distilled, Second Edition
Publisher: Apress
Authors: Sajal Dam
Rating: 4/5
Dam starts off by describing quite general problems that might arise in any relational database. He also wants you to inject some rigour into your efforts, by defining fundamental baseline metrics for your system usage. Then, when trying ideas described later in the book, you can get objective quantitative feedback on their efficacies.
Of course, the bulk of the book is specific to SQL Server. But you should keep in mind that Dam is not primarily offering a bunch of quick tips on performance improvement. To be sure, the chapters do indeed give specific suggestions that you can try. But a more sophisticated reader can get an understanding of the broad constraints of SQL Server and a rough but good idea of its internal workings. You don't need source code for this.
It sbould also be said that you need a good knowledge of SQL and the theory of relational databases, before venturing into the book. Some chapters (like on blocking and deadlock analysis) will considerably test this background.
But the last chapter may be welcomed by some of you. It summarises the book by offering a detailed list of best practices. If you want to quickly gauge what the book has to offer, read the last chapter first.
