IT programming books related reviews
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
I really did not know SQL but after reading this book i passed the SQL MCDBA exams and got certified.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP and MySQL Web Development
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
Rating: 4/5
Title: PHP and MySQL Web Development
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
Rating: 4/5
This book, in conjunction with "Sam's Teach Yourself PHP4 In 24 Hours," taught me everything I know about PHP and MySQL. Without it, I wouldn't have been able to get my PHP-based website off the ground.However, I feel that, if I hadn't also ordered "...PHP4 In 24 Hours," I would've felt pretty confused; this book is definitely best used by people who already have some basic knowledge of PHP.
Product: Book Unknown Binding
Title: Special Edition Using Microsoft SQL Server 7.0
Publisher: Que
Authors: Stephen Wynkoop
Rating: 5/5
Title: Special Edition Using Microsoft SQL Server 7.0
Publisher: Que
Authors: Stephen Wynkoop
Rating: 5/5
This book is intended for the intermediate/advanced database user. If you are a begineer with database concepts, pass this one up. I have about 1 year of Access programming and this book is exactly what I need to get up to speed with SQL 7. What I like about this book is that it spends a lot of time with the Transact-SQL admin commands, as opposed to just listing the "point and click" method.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: SQL Server 2000 Stored Procedure Programming
Publisher: Osborne/McGraw-Hill
Authors: Dejan Sunderic, Tom Woodhead
Rating: 5/5
Title: SQL Server 2000 Stored Procedure Programming
Publisher: Osborne/McGraw-Hill
Authors: Dejan Sunderic, Tom Woodhead
Rating: 5/5
Everybody's talking about XML these days and now even SQL Server supports it. This book has a great introduction to XML for DBAs-everything you ever wanted to know about tags, elements, attributes, DTDs, schemas and XPath, but were afraid to ask. After introducing XML, the authors go on to describe how Microsoft has implemented it in SQL Server, and how you can use it to build simple Web applications for querying databases and returning recordsets as XML or processing/parsing information received as an XML string. The authors also promise to cover updategrams and SOAP on their Web site (trigonblue.com) as soon as information becomes available.
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: Ocp: Oracle8I Dba SQL and Pl/SQL Study Guide : Exam 1Z0-001 (OCP Study Guide)
Publisher: Sybex Inc
Authors: Chip Dawes, Biju Thomas
Rating: 5/5
Title: Ocp: Oracle8I Dba SQL and Pl/SQL Study Guide : Exam 1Z0-001 (OCP Study Guide)
Publisher: Sybex Inc
Authors: Chip Dawes, Biju Thomas
Rating: 5/5
The book is great for preparing the exam. Although it does not try to teach you every trick about PL/SQL, it outlines concept clearly for OCP exam purposes. I used this book and scored 52/57 in the exam in just a week period.Great job! But if you want every glory details about PL/SQL itself, you need to go on with another book.
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Kalen Delaney
Rating: 5/5
Title: Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Kalen Delaney
Rating: 5/5
This is a great book! As someone who also manages Sybase databases and Mssql 6.5-7-2000 databases I have a good understanding of the internals. None of the automatic configurations in SQL are in Sybase. This book really adds and takes away from the book of the same title for sql 7. This is all that Microsoft did so if you are looking for a book that is going to be ALL BRAND NEW LITTLE WORDS WITH ALL BRAND NEW FEATURES then ask yourself this question. Is SQL 2000 a complete rewrite of the 7.0 code? The answer is NO! Therefore stop belittleing the author this book gives exactly what you are promised... the internals of sql 2000. They are significantly different from sql7 but there are alot of similarities. READ THE BOOK COVER TO COVER!!! You will then see what the author is trying to get accross. For me and my team this book is an indespensible tool to optimize sql 2000 with. If you know how it works then you will not be surprised when a new physical and logical architecture works and the old one did not even though it may be very similar. Simply put in my opinion any DBA that snubbs his nose at this reference is just exactly why Microsoft certified personnel have a bad reputation. Sure you can pass a test but can you maximize the throughput on queries in a Data Warehouse when you are dealing with tables that are 20+ Gb. For that matter can you put together the architecture that best serves the hardware config that you have to deal with because someone else bought it. Understanding the internals is all here... I recommend to you also Professional SQL 2000 database design. While this review is not ment to offend anyone it is ment to awaken you to something so important that no DBA can afford to overlook. The internals. Got Milk? Get it here from Kalen.
Product: Book Hardcover
Title: Ocp: Oracle8I Dba SQL and Pl/SQL Study Guide : Exam 1Z0-001 (OCP Study Guide)
Publisher: Sybex Inc
Authors: Chip Dawes, Biju Thomas
Rating: 5/5
Title: Ocp: Oracle8I Dba SQL and Pl/SQL Study Guide : Exam 1Z0-001 (OCP Study Guide)
Publisher: Sybex Inc
Authors: Chip Dawes, Biju Thomas
Rating: 5/5
This is the best book for exam IZO-001. If you read this thoroughly and answer all the questions, you will be ready for anything on the exam. I just passed the first exam today at the first attempt, and have no prior experience in either oracle or programming.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: XML and PHP
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Vikram Vaswani
Rating: 2/5
Title: XML and PHP
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Vikram Vaswani
Rating: 2/5
After all the flaky reviews this book has received, I was unsure if I was reading individual marketing campaigns sponsored by the various publishers or actual reviews. It seems that people cannot simply agree that this book is good or is bad as there is just nothing in between. Even in all the review cases, many people didn't find the reviews helpful, both positive and negative. It all seems complex from the consumer's perspective when deciding to buy this book. So given all these statements, I thought I'd present a true review - one from an actual reader rather than from someone else. I think it's pretty safe to assume that this book is good for some people and bad for others. The problem is that the reviews already here have so much fluff that they didn't even begin to describe themselves, thus they could be ambitious or lazy, smart or dim, and hobbyist or entrepreneurs. There is simply no way of telling. Personally, I think many of these concepts can be learned in PHP in about 2-3 days of trying the APIs out if you already know a great deal of XML. So if I'm going to buy a book on PHP and XML, I expect that it will provided added value information as well as design decisions, business concerns and best practices. Examples are not what I care about as much as the rich and deep information because there are many examples already on the web - no point acquiring the book just for those alone. That makes me question the reviewers who say the examples are clear and concise - the examples on the web already do that. Books are supposed to provide added value to these APIs and examples to make the topic complete and valuable to the reader. The book should also scale well to both beginning audiences (this book does very well) to expert audiences that want to drill through the basic information like APIs and examples and learn more advanced techniques, best practices, etc. This book doesn't deliver on these areas very well unfortunately. So, for a person like me: This book receives 2 stars. I didn't learn all that much from it and I was disappointed to say the least. He's a good writer, funny at times, and knows what he is doing, but he also catered to a specific audience and it shows. Is that the goal? Probably. But I think the expert people shouldn't have expected too much (as I did) - that's the truth. Although I personally give this book 2 stars, I believe that many beginner PHP programmers who have a little idea to what XML is will benefit from it. If you've already read some XML material on the net and even read a book or two, this book won't exactly help you out too much. However, this segment is rather small I would believe. I'm still looking for a book that I can give to my employees for reference as well as added value information. When I find it, I'll put a review there as well so you can compare.So there you have it - an honest review. I hope it helps people out in their purchasing decisions.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Web Database Applications with PHP & MySQL, 2nd Edition
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Hugh E. Williams
Rating: 5/5
Title: Web Database Applications with PHP & MySQL, 2nd Edition
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Hugh E. Williams
Rating: 5/5
You know a little HTML. You know a little programming. Perhaps you've used Perl to create a simple CGI form handler so that you can get feedback from a website. Williams and Lane methodically guide the reader through the steps needed to create a MySQL-driven web application written in PHP. Readers will get a solid introduction to using PHP, SQL and a deeper understanding the HTTP protocol than they may have had already. Williams and Lane use the practical example of building a retail website to highlight such issues as taint-checking user input and automating application maintenance with cron. Sure, veterans of web application design may not learn many new tricks here, but for those that want to become veterans some day, this book provides an excellent launch pad.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Create Dynamic Webpages Using PHP & MySQL
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: David Tansley
Rating: 2/5
Title: Create Dynamic Webpages Using PHP & MySQL
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: David Tansley
Rating: 2/5
For a beginner like me the book was just great and I appreciated having the CD so I could easily copy and paste the code snippets.
It could have assumed more than just a linux audience as there were one or two difficulties I faced as a windows user.
