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
If you study this book as I have for the last month or so, you'll find that it changes the way you code. You will write better stored procedures than you'd ever have imagined. You will write better adhoc queries. You will design better databases. You will build better applications. If you read and follow the techniques in this book, you'll see your skill level go up - perhaps dramatically.My time with SQL Server began seven and a half months ago. Before that, I was an Oracle DBA for some nine years. Since then, I've been reading every book I could to get a handle on SQL Server. This is easily the most helpful of all the books I've read. It gets down to business quickly and immediately immerses you in the technology. You have no choice but to either sink or swim - fortunately, I began to swim almost immediately.When I first came over from the Oracle team, I was really disappointed when I started writing stored procedures because T-SQL seemed so weak compared to PL/SQL. Turns out I was all wet on that. I didn't know just how powerful the language could be. Having digested this book, I'd say T-SQL is easily as powerful as PL/SQL, if not more so. Moreoever, I'd say that SQL Server is now in the big leagues -- it can hold it's own with Oracle, DB2 or anyone else. I wouldn't have said that before I read this book. It has shown me a lot of the power under the hood in SQL Server that I'd never have guessed was there. All I can say for Oracle is that they better watch out. SQL Server is definitely right up there with them.Back to the book. It's a wonderful book that will change the way you write code. Get yourself a copy, then mark off a couple weeks to do nothing but work through it. I hope it helps you as much as it helped me.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft SQL Server 7 in 10 Minutes (Sams Teach Yourself)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: William Robison, William Robinson
Rating: 5/5
Title: Sams Teach Yourself Microsoft SQL Server 7 in 10 Minutes (Sams Teach Yourself)
Publisher: Sams
Authors: William Robison, William Robinson
Rating: 5/5
This book actually lives up to its name. It gives a fast and relatively painless explanation of SQL Server 7. It assumes very little knowledge of databases. At most, the prerequisites are a little knowledge of SQL or of a simple database like Access. Web developers will appreciate the broad, yet helpful approach on everything from table creation to stored procedures. This book teaches by giving concise and well designed examples of queries and code. It will explain topics like cursors, triggers, stored procedures, basic SQL, Transact SQL, and even a little ASP. It even addresses some speed, security, and design issues. Any RDBMS or SQL Server 7.0 neophyte needs this book by his side. I would recommend reading this book first, before you tackle any of the other volumes of SQL Server references online or otherwise.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: MySQL and PHP From Scratch
Publisher: Que
Authors: Wade Maxfield
Rating: 1/5
Title: MySQL and PHP From Scratch
Publisher: Que
Authors: Wade Maxfield
Rating: 1/5
Like the first reviewer, I ordered this book while it is still not published. I have read the other PHP books and I was eager to get this book that will show me how to write a webbased email system.Imagine my surprise when I tore open the book and found that it was more of an installation manuals for Linux, PHP, MySQL and IMP rather than a programming guide. Chapter 1 was a diaster as I don't even know what's going on because it probably uses material in Chapter 3 to 5, Chapter 2 is where you are surposed to go and download the files, chapter 3 went off into never never land, 'explaining' commands of MySQL which I have no ideas what the author was talking about.And Half the book was Appendix A on PHP.If I wanted a history book and an installation manual and a quick reference to PHP I would have bought them seperately. Summary, the book did not even come close to what it promised. I hope the author or Que would at least accept a refund for publishing an outdated, useless paperweight
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP Essentials, Second Edition
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Julie C. Meloni
Rating: 5/5
Title: PHP Essentials, Second Edition
Publisher: Muska & Lipman/Premier-Trade
Authors: Julie C. Meloni
Rating: 5/5
I'm a big fan of this book. I used the first edition to put a modest web commerce site up in about three weeks of spare time (see it at www.privategalaxy.com). Using only this book, I learned what I needed of how to use the freeware language PHP and the excellent freeware database MySQL (in fact I learned SQL from this book). And these two programs are a great combination supported by a large number of web hosting sites using Apache (an extremely common if not the most widely used server software).I have just shy of a dozen other computer books--many of them are shovelware--full of glop because the publishers want thickness. And then there are some books where the authors seem to spend more time trying to show off how sophisticated they are than trying to explain things. This book has neither defect; its clear intent is to teach and it does so with economy and graceMeloni is a solid technical writer. For those who like examples, there are lots of them (in fact a whole e-commerce site (no-I wrote mine from scratch) and there are compact appendices on the commands and functions you will actually use in the back. PHP is a language to get stuff done and this book is in the same spirit. But even supposing you want to use PHP to calculate fast Fourier transforms (heaven forbid!) this book is a good starter and supplimented by the free PHP web site, will get you there fast.
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
The material is well based around the Microsoft requirements, however the examples are skimpy and don't reflect the difficulty of the actual exam. You need to do lots and lots of programming examples to be adequately prepared for this one.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Programming PHP
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Rasmus Lerdorf, Kevin Tatroe
Rating: 4/5
Title: Programming PHP
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Rasmus Lerdorf, Kevin Tatroe
Rating: 4/5
An excellent intermediate level book, the authors in depth knowledge of the inner working of PHP make the difference, especially when they suggest better practices. After a brief introduction to the language (too brief for most beginners), it covers many topics, from strings and array, to the more advanced chapters on XML, PDF and image generation.
Buyers must be aware that the database section is pretty limited and focus on using PEAR and around 100 pages are dedicated to a function reference that may be somewhat redundant for many developers
Product: Book Paperback
Title: A Programmer's Introduction to PHP 4.0
Publisher: Apress
Authors: W. Jason Gilmore
Rating: 2/5
Title: A Programmer's Introduction to PHP 4.0
Publisher: Apress
Authors: W. Jason Gilmore
Rating: 2/5
Not for newbies to programming but if you know the basics
of html and javascript and basic database stuff but want the
heads up on PHP then this book is great !!!... Just the facts described short, sweet and to the point. Examples are perfect
without being overly complex. Good stuff.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP and MySQL Web Development, Second Edition
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
Rating: 5/5
Title: PHP and MySQL Web Development, Second Edition
Publisher: Sams
Authors: Luke Welling, Laura Thomson
Rating: 5/5
This book is simply great. I read the first edition about 10 months ago when I was a total beginner to PHP and MySQL (although I had taken a database course and knew some Java). This book basically got me up to speed on how to program in PHP. What's better, my database skills were packed with a lot of theory and not too much practical application and this book had a chapter that gave an excellent overview of general database concepts.The first half of the book--basically teaching you PHP and MySQL--is great on its own. But then the 2nd half is excellent, too. They have tutorials on how to program the most common web applications: a shopping cart, a message board system, a content management system. I used this book as my primary referecne when developing my first versions of a content management system and e-commerce system and the results turned out quite well.It's a shame that no one has reviewed the 2nd edition of this book because if you look at the Amazon.com entry for the first edition, you'll see it received over 100 reviews giving it 4.5 stars. One word of caution about this book: they seem to forget to mention the concept of superglobals, but just look it up through Google and you'll easily get up to speed. Also, for advanced users, this book might be a decent reference but is probably a little too elementary. Maybe Professional PHP4 might be better for advanced users, although that book has some problems of its own.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: PHP for the World Wide Web : Visual QuickStart Guide (2nd Edition) (Visual Quickstart Guides)
Publisher: Peachpit Press
Authors: Larry Ullman
Rating: 5/5
Title: PHP for the World Wide Web : Visual QuickStart Guide (2nd Edition) (Visual Quickstart Guides)
Publisher: Peachpit Press
Authors: Larry Ullman
Rating: 5/5
This is the third PHP book I read and covers PHP versions 4 and 5. I worked through all its examples without any problems. Somebody reviewing it said there were errors, but I did not find them using PHP V4.3.2. Following the examples were a lot easier than in other computer books, like Visual Basic 6 by Petroutsos, which I had to abandon three years ago for lack of error-free exercises.The VQS format appears to waste a lot of space, but it has its advantages. There is never any doubt what the script has to be, because it is repeated in its entirety even when only a few lines change. Some books cut this short, and give frugal explanation for what the clear script should be. In the end, one often wastes time in such cases. I have the PHP Manual on my hard disk, and consulting it aids in extending the applications on hand. Once I learned the examples in the book, I was able to extend the scripts, make them more versatile and produce more attractive displays.I started out stating it is my third book on PHP, and reading this book serves as an in-depth review. This book clarified some of the features I thought I learned before. This does not imply that one must have used other PHP books previously. It is an excellent first book on PHP. Of course, one should know some HTML before using this book.Because of the VQS format I would like to rate this four and a half stars, even though the format improves on clarity. Even with this view, the book deserves five-stars.
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
If only I had purchased this book two months ago, I would have saved myself some headaches. The PHP/MySQL combination is both powerful and popular for creating dynamic, data-driven sites. But not many resources explain this combination so thoroughly. I have plenty of PHP books that touch on databases briefly and other resources that concentrate on MySQL, but don't delve into PHP. But this book fills the need of developers for a thorough and clear guide to using the PHP and MySQL combination.I have primarily been using the book as a reference guide - browsing entries of interest via the index; however, someone needing an introduction to PHP/MySQL applications would be well served by starting at the beginning and reading straight through the book.As I would expect from any competent development guide, example code and screenshots are sprinkled liberally throughout the chapters. Accompanying explanations are succinct and written to be understandable to novices and experts alike. This is a good book to pick up the moment you decide your site needs to be powered by PHP and MySQL. It will be useful from the moment you create a table to the day your first customer uses your homemade shopping cart application successfully.
