IT programming books related reviews
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
What this book does is teach you Transact-SQL, then you teach more about Transact-SQL *using* Transact-SQL. In other words, half way into the book you realize that you're now conversing and thinking in Transact-SQL. The author is really subtle in this. He sneaks up on you with it. It reminds me of my French class where they made us converse in French 100% of the time. This guy *teaches* in Transact-SQL. It works like a shorthand for the reams of English it would take to explain the same concepts. Brilliant indeed. My new top drawer computer book.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Apache Jakarta-Tomcat
Publisher: Apress
Authors: James Goodwill
Rating: 1/5
Title: Apache Jakarta-Tomcat
Publisher: Apress
Authors: James Goodwill
Rating: 1/5
I've read a quite a few technical books and by far, this one tops the list as being THE worst book I've ever read. Too much information missing, makes many assumptions that you know what you're doing. (If I knew what I was doing with Tomcat, why would I need the book?) Unbelievable. HORRIBLE is a word that comes to mind (among many others that would be "bleeped" off of here.)
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Core PHP Programming: Using PHP to Build Dynamic Web Sites (2nd Edition)
Publisher: Pearson Education
Authors: Leon Atkinson
Rating: 2/5
Title: Core PHP Programming: Using PHP to Build Dynamic Web Sites (2nd Edition)
Publisher: Pearson Education
Authors: Leon Atkinson
Rating: 2/5
I bought this book despite the overall warnings posted here. And indeed, they were right: this book is pretty weak. I'm moving an application over from Cold Fusion, and hoped this book would at least show off PHP in a good light. Instead, it's very disjointed -- a series of function calls with poor examples.I had expected to be impressed with PHP over Cold Fusion -- PHP supports Object Oriented programming, real function calls (CF's user-defined functions are weak), etc. I don't believe this book shows off PHP very well.So why did I buy it, despite the bad reviews? Because at the time, it was the only PHP book on the market.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: MDX Solutions: With Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services
Publisher: Wiley
Authors: George Spofford
Rating: 5/5
Title: MDX Solutions: With Microsoft SQL Server Analysis Services
Publisher: Wiley
Authors: George Spofford
Rating: 5/5
Let us begin by acknowledging that MDX is a nontrivial topic. With SQL Server 2000 and Analysis Services, Microsoft is providing arguably the most powerful OLAP solution at perhaps the lowest price. But with power comes complexity. Much of this complexity is to be found in the OLAP query language: MDX. Developers will welcome any assistance in climbing this learning curve, and Spofford's book was quick to fill this gap. This is a thick book, and it is not padded with screenshots of wizards. More than half of the book deals with the syntax and semantics of MDX. It provides a new OLAP sample database for those of us tired of playing with "Foodmart". There are also chapters on local cubes and client programming in ADO. The last quarter of the book is reference material. The MDX function and operator reference in Appendix A includes easily comprehended graphical explanations of function behaviors.This is not a book geared towards administrators or end users or casual developers. Expect to sweat the details here and to do so from chapter 1. This is a book to read at your computer as you learn the power of MDX by running the examples queries. This author's experience is apparent in the examples, which demonstrate real-world OLAP use cases. Examples range from simple to sophisticated, so this book will useful to both intermediate and advanced MDX programmers.One weakness of the book is that, since it was written prior to the final release of Analysis Services, there may be some inconsistencies. But the book's web site should post updates and corrections. Also, the book mentions but does not cover the XML for Analysis technology that was released by Microsoft last month (July). XML for Analysis allows SQL Server tables and cubes to be queried using SOAP and XML. Using the WebService Behavior, Internet Explorer can directly make MDX queries and present the results with HTML or graphically (see intrasight.com).Since MDX has emerged as the defacto standard for OLAP query, all product developers and report developers will want to add this book to their library.Chris Harrington Active Interface, Inc.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Professional PHP Programming
Publisher:
Authors: Jesus Castagnetto, Sascha Schumann, Harish Rawat, Chris Scollo, Deepak T. Veliath
Rating: 2/5
Title: Professional PHP Programming
Publisher:
Authors: Jesus Castagnetto, Sascha Schumann, Harish Rawat, Chris Scollo, Deepak T. Veliath
Rating: 2/5
This book might be worthwhile as a classroom workbook where you go through each and every chapter in order. As a book for somebody who wants to get things done this book is terrible. You have to wade through entire chapters to find what you want and the index is useless.For my real world projects I have never found what I wanted to know in this book. You are better off just looking at online documentation. It is also out of date and lacks coverage of sessions (there is a newer edition of the book that might include this but I am not going to buy it).
Product: Book
Title: Getting The Search Engine Ranking Your Website Deserves: : META Tags Yield To Google's PageRank As Search Engine Standard
Publisher:
Authors: John Henderson
Rating: 5/5
Title: Getting The Search Engine Ranking Your Website Deserves: : META Tags Yield To Google's PageRank As Search Engine Standard
Publisher:
Authors: John Henderson
Rating: 5/5
Search engine ranking is about content not keyword META tags. Search engine ranking is about ranking pages not ranking sites.
John Henderson's e-doc explains how the Google Search Engine has changed the way rankings happen. Looking at the overall thought process of his e-doc and the technical side, this article explains what I need to watch as I redesign my site. He explains how Google's PageRank system produces search engine results based on page content and offers solid information for improving your postioning within that system. Since Google is the #1 engine and now provides results for Yahoo searches, everyone will benefit from Henderson's e-doc.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Transact-SQL Programming
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Lee Gould, Andrew Zanevsky, Kevin Kline
Rating: 5/5
Title: Transact-SQL Programming
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Lee Gould, Andrew Zanevsky, Kevin Kline
Rating: 5/5
Kline, Gould, and Zanevsky do a great job of teaching programming with the Transact-SQL language. They review best practices and present techniques in a practical manner that enhances the learning process. This is the most satisfying book I have read in the SQL world.This is a book about programming and does not touch upon server management. It is largely a Microsoft SQL Server book and while it does cover Sybase Adaptive Server it organizes the information in such a way that if you are interested in just one version you can easily stick with that.There were a number of typos that were disconcerting at times and sometimes you had to really work with material to actually get it to work and I suspect that was about editing problems. The book is based upon the 6.5 version of Microsoft SQL Server and the 7.0 material is only treated in an appendix. This was disappointing as it forces the reader to do more work than would otherwise be necessary to put all the programming concepts together.I look forward to a revised edition of this book that is based upon SQL 7.0 but I would advise anyone who is ready to improve his or her programming skills not to wait. This volume is easily the best value I have seen in technical books.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Professional SQL Server 7.0 Programming
Publisher: Wrox Press
Authors: Rob Vieira
Rating: 5/5
Title: Professional SQL Server 7.0 Programming
Publisher: Wrox Press
Authors: Rob Vieira
Rating: 5/5
Over the past four years, I have purchased several SQL Server books, and this definitely one of the better ones. While not an advanced book, the concepts presented here will most certainly allow the reader a better understanding of core SQL Server concepts. This is particularly true; if the reader is well versed in ether SQL Server 6.5 or the Sybase 11.00 family. This book, coupled with the Microsoft training kits, will definitely give the reader a comprehensive understanding of SQL Server 7.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP Fast & Easy Web Development, 2nd Edition
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Julie C. Meloni
Rating: 5/5
Title: PHP Fast & Easy Web Development, 2nd Edition
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Julie C. Meloni
Rating: 5/5
PHP Fast & Easy Web development is an ideal introduction on setting up your own local Apache server, complete with PHP and MySQL support, for Windows and Linus alike!! This book focuses on developing locally, which is a bonus for those of us who don't have acces to a PHP-enabled shared-hosting account. Meloni helps you get started quick, and holds your hand along the way, all the way: if you are really stuck, you can send her an e-mail and you will get a brief, but to the point, answer. This book is meant for beginners, and it shows: it is quite thin on content and will provide too little information for getting a proper grounding in programming languages. Stuff like Arrays, Variables and Database Design are NOT explained in detail. Instead, this book showcases the basic possiblities of PHP and MySQL by guiding you through examples of database connections, user authentication, sessions and more. As such it is a great way to get a grasp of the things you can do with PHP, and the time and experience required to do them. I forgive Meloni for glossing over EVERY SINGLE PROGRAMMING CONCEPT THERE IS, since almost all other books will cover those in detail. However, I would ask of her to at least explain debugging PHP (What to do if your script doesn't work).
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 Database Implementation Training Kit (Training Kit)
Publisher: Microsoft Press Rating: 5/5
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 Database Implementation Training Kit (Training Kit)
Publisher: Microsoft Press Rating: 5/5
I used this as my main resource for studying for 70-028 (along with practice tests by STSWare and the online books). This was my last test for my MCSE and I passed first time, but only just. The test requires much more detail than this study guide (or STSWare) supplies. You really need to get down to the mechanics of how the various features of SQL Server work. This book just didn't supply it.My advice is either to use this and spend a lot of time reading the online books or wait until there are better third party study guides that are based on the release version of SQL Server (not the beta as most of them are at present) and the actual tests.
