IT programming books related reviews
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 own all three of Ken Henderson's SQL Server books. They stand apart from the rest of the crowd as the best books available on their respective subjects. Henderson takes a fresh approach to teaching that other authors would do well to emulate. What do I mean exactly? I mean this: Every point of any significance that is raised is illustrated with code when possible. There are hundreds of code examples in each of Henderson's books - many times what you usually see in DBA or programming books. No details are glosssed over. If you really want to know how something works or what the best approach is to doing something, you need these books.Another thing that is great about these books is how easy to read they are. Complex subjects are regularly broached with explanations and teaching that practically anyone could understand. Topics that trip up other authors or that they skip altogether are discussed in terms that anyone can grasp. It is difficult to convey just how important this is, but suffice it to say that the books are simply easy to read.If you want to know SQL Server at an expert level, you need look no further. Get all three of Henderson's books and read them cover-to-cover.
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 was hard to follow in places and the code included with the book didn't seem to work half the time. Trying the simple examples given on page 506 (Listing 24.4) I spend good part of an 8 hour work day trying all kinds of things to make that simple script to work, but to no avail. I eliminated the if statement, the only code in the example, and it worked. This experience and the haphazard presentation and confusing explanations of the examples that followed I gave up on using the code in this book and found alternative examples elsewhere.On a positive note this book has a good introduction to SQL functions.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Resource Kit (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Microsoft Corporation, Microsoft Corporation
Rating: 4/5
Title: Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Resource Kit (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: Microsoft Press
Authors: Microsoft Corporation, Microsoft Corporation
Rating: 4/5
I don't have much of a need for the first few chapters of the book. They detail how to convert to SQL Server from another RDBMS platform. However, I know others have found the text useful. What I did find of value were the parts of the book which covered day-to-day operations, disaster recovery, and handling BLOBs. Security was decent, but not very fleshed out. It's a great addition to Books Online.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Apache: the Definitive Guide (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Ben Laurie, Peter Laurie
Rating: 3/5
Title: Apache: the Definitive Guide (With CD-ROM)
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Ben Laurie, Peter Laurie
Rating: 3/5
I am a computer professional and I got the book in order to install and run Apache on our company web servers. I do know my way around UNIX and NT, but I'm no system administrator.I was shocked at the bad reviews. I found this book to be a great read and organized as should be. The only reason I think someone would not like this book is if they are use to GUI tools in the Windows world. If you know UNIX/LINUX and aren't scared of OS command lines, this book is great. If you are a Windows geek, this book may not be that great, but let's face it, Apache and TCP/IP is UNIX at it's best.I found this book a good training source and reference manual.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Professional Apache Tomcat 5
Publisher: Wrox
Authors: Vivek Chopra, Amit Bakore, Jon Eaves, Ben Galbraith, Sing Li, Chanoch Wiggers
Rating: 5/5
Title: Professional Apache Tomcat 5
Publisher: Wrox
Authors: Vivek Chopra, Amit Bakore, Jon Eaves, Ben Galbraith, Sing Li, Chanoch Wiggers
Rating: 5/5
Development of the Apache project's Tomcat JSP and Servlet engine continues apace, and again, Wrox has done a good job in swiftly getting a book to market which covers the latest version.Wrox's earlier book by many of the same authors, 'Professional Apache Tomcat' covered versions 3 and 4. This book no longer contains any material specific to version 3, but has had a major overhaul and concentrates on Tomcat 5, though it's still useful and relevant to administrators working with version 4.1 and up.Like its predecessor, the book covers the installation and management of Tomcat in great depth on both Unix and Windows. Its Unix coverage is geared towards Linux in favour of any other version of Unix, but in practice there's nothing particularly Linux specific and users of other Unix variants will have no problems following the examples.As with the previous edition, the first two chapters provide background to the Apache project, J2EE and the evolution of web application technologies from CGI to JSP. Detailed chapters on installation and architecture follow. Only installation of the Tomcat binaries is here though; building Tomcat from source with Ant is not discussed at all (however, Ant is referred to throughout the book, mainly in relation to application building and deployment, and gets an appendix of its own). The architecture description is unchanged from the previous edition, but remains an excellent overview of Tomcat's internal components.And on to the nuts and bolts. A lot of space is given to the new web-based administration tool (itself a web application handled by Tomcat), but at all points the underlying affects on Tomcat's raw XML configuration files is made clear, so the command line junkies - or those who choose not to enable the Administration Tool at all - are catered for in parallel with the point-and-click brigade. Web application configuration and management is much expanded, now covering Servlet 2.4 descriptors as well as those for 2.3.Tomcat's HTTP connectors, employed when Tomcat is set up as a stand alone web and application server are described in a single chapter, but new to this book are details of using the SSI and CGI servlets which are new features of Tomcat 4.x and 5.For non-trivial installations, one would wish to integrate Tomcat with a web server, creating an environment in which the web server delegates dynamic content to Tomcat which otherwise no longer handles HTTP directly. There are a number of protocols available for Tomcat which provide the connection to a web server. As these protocols have stabilised in Tomcat, so the book no longer covers the older, largely deprecated connectors beyond a brief description of each. It then concentrates almost solely on the JK2 implementation of AJP.This whole area is a lot clearer than it was in the earlier book: a short chapter provides the background and describes the protocols used to connect the web server and Tomcat, followed by a chapter devoted to each of Apache (for both Unix and Windows) and Microsoft's IIS web server using the JK2 connector. I was a little disappointed to find that Sun's web server gets no mention at all, particularly as up-to-date official documentation in relation to it appears to be non-existent. Nonetheless, what's here for Apache and IIS is very good; Apache users get a better deal than their IIS counterparts though - the load balancing and SSL integration sections are far more complete in the IIS chapter.That completes the first half of the book, and for many uses will provide more than enough information to get a good understanding of Tomcat and a working service. Six more chapters go into great detail about Tomcat's other features. Separate chapters exploring JDBC connectivity, the new JMX features of version 5 and Java class loaders really earns the book its Professional tag. Arguably more useful (in my case at least) are the chapters dedicated to security, clustering for fail-safe operation and embedding Tomcat within an application - absolutely everything is here. The chapter on server load testing proved to be a great help to me just for the inclusion of the use of JMeter, another Apache project which is useful for all manner of web server benchmarking.Tomcat's documentation is more than adequate for quickly setting up a Tomcat server, but dig much deeper and it quickly becomes difficult to find what you're looking for. Having a book like this with everything to hand makes life a lot easier, and in any case it's worth much more than the official documentation.Criticisms? I'd like to have seen an appendix or two giving a summary of the main Tomcat configuration files workers2.properties and server.xml; as it is not quite everything is covered and what is spread across different chapters. At the moment I'm working with Sun's web server and Tomcat and it would have been great to have a chapter dedicated to this particular setup, particularly as far as JK2 is concerned.Wrox had some difficulties last year when its parent company collapsed, but now that Wiley have taken over, it's good to see them back on their feet and continuing to produce books like this, complete with their familiar red covers (...and dodgy author photographs). Highly recommended.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Oracle SQL*Loader: The Definitive Guide
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Jonathan Gennick, Sanjay Mishra
Rating: 4/5
Title: Oracle SQL*Loader: The Definitive Guide
Publisher: O'Reilly
Authors: Jonathan Gennick, Sanjay Mishra
Rating: 4/5
This is a good book for anyone needing or wanting to learn more about SQL Loader. The book begins by laying the foundation for SQL Loader and discussing "The Mysterious Control File". After that it discusses the two types of files that can be loaded - fixed lenght and delimited files. With the basics covered, the authors turn to error recovery and advanced features such as selective loading and direct path loads. After reading this book, you should have a good idea of what SQL Loader can and cannot do along with some of the finer points of when to and not to use SQL Loader. A knowledge of Oracle SQL is really all that is required to understand the material presented. This book is a must have for any shop using Oracle for their database.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Apache Server Administrator's Handbook
Publisher: Hungry Minds
Authors: Mohammed J. Kabir, Kabir
Rating: 4/5
Title: Apache Server Administrator's Handbook
Publisher: Hungry Minds
Authors: Mohammed J. Kabir, Kabir
Rating: 4/5
This was a good book to get started with Apache and to use as a quick reference. Well written, more examples would be nice.
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
I do not normally give five star reviews. For one thing, most books, regardless of genre, don't deserve them. For another, computer books are especially prone to being thrown together, barely publishable hacks. Not this one, though. It's easily the best database book I've ever read and one of the best computer books I've ever seen. It it a compendium of tips, insights, and deep technical knowledge that only an expert would have. Get your copy and get it today.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: A Guide to SQL Standard (4th Edition)
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: C. J. Date, Hugh Darwen
Rating: 5/5
Title: A Guide to SQL Standard (4th Edition)
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
Authors: C. J. Date, Hugh Darwen
Rating: 5/5
With so many different DBMS products on the market it is very important to be able to write database applications easily portable from one to another. The key to this portability is writing in compliance to the ISO/ANSI SQL standard. This book has been able to answer almost every my question! I can hardly say that for any other computer book.
Product: Book Paperback
Title: Professional Apache Tomcat
Publisher: Wrox
Authors: Chanoch Wiggers, Ben Galbraith, Vivek Chopra, Sing Li, Debashish Bhattacharjee, Amit Bakore, Romin Irani, Sandip Bhattacharya, Chad Fowler
Rating: 5/5
Title: Professional Apache Tomcat
Publisher: Wrox
Authors: Chanoch Wiggers, Ben Galbraith, Vivek Chopra, Sing Li, Debashish Bhattacharjee, Amit Bakore, Romin Irani, Sandip Bhattacharya, Chad Fowler
Rating: 5/5
Tomcat is a subproject of the Apache Software Foundation's Jakarta project, its purpose being to serve Java Servlets and JavaServer Pages. It's a complex piece of software and though the documentation is very comprehensive, it helps to have a good reference work to hand. There aren't many books on the subject to choose from, so a publisher could make a fast buck putting out an incomplete work lacking in depth. Fortunately Wrox Press has excelled itself with its new publication Professional Apache Tomcat.The book covers every aspect of installing and configuring Tomcat in a great deal of detail, detailing its every aspect. From standalone use (where Tomcat is used as a general web server as well as for serving Java content), to integration with the leading web servers Apache (both Unix and Windows versions) and Microsoft's Internet Information Services, nothing appears to have been left out (however, integration with Netscape's Enterprise Server is mentioned in passing early on, but doesn't appear again).Being only a month old, it's pretty much bang up to date, covering Tomcat 3.x, 4.0.x and 4.1.x with Apache 1.3.x and 2.0.x and IIS 4 and 5.The book starts with an introduction to the Apache project, and Tomcat's place in the wider scheme of things. The historical progression in serving dynamic web content from CGI to Servlets and JSP is charted, and there's an overview of JSP tags and general web application architecture. This is interesting enough and useful as background, but as this book is intended for administrators, it's covered quickly in the first two chapters, and the main business of installing Tomcat gets underway in chapter 3.Installation is discussed with both Windows and Linux users in mind, from both binary and source distributions. As the Tomcat source is usually built with Ant, build and installation of this tool is also discussed (Ant and Log4j, both also part of Jakarta, get chapters of their own later in the book). From there, basic configuration of the standalone server followed by detailed examinations of the components that make up Tomcat's architecture fill the next 200 or so pages.Serious users of Tomcat will wish to employ Tomcat with an existing web server, and four chapters concentrate on this job. Though there is inevitably a certain amount of detail aimed at Apache and IIS configuration, and a basic knowledge of both is assumed throughout. However, any necessary information is included in detail; for example the (Apache) connector modules mod_webapp and mod_jk/jk2 are given a thorough treatment, describing their use from source installation to configuration, together with the pros and cons of the various connectors available. Beyond that, we learn how to design larger-scale setups, with an explanation of load balancing techniques and scaling of the system, and performance testing with JMeter, yet another Jakarta project component.As ever, security is a major concern and gets a lot of emphasis. Before client authentication and the use of SSL are discussed, there's an overview of basic system security with Unix and Windows..... More interesting are the sections on security realms and user/client authentication. We are presented with examples of authenticating against a MySQL database with JDBC (database connectivity with JDBC is a big enough subject in its own right, and so gets a separate chapter too), and digest authentication. We then move on to encryption with SSL: using Tomcat itself with the JSSE and PureTLS Java SSL implementations, then later with Apache and SSL (setting up mod_ssl with Apache gets a very useful appendix of its own, taken from Professional Apache 2.0, another Wrox book). Again, there's lots of detail, right down to how to get hold of signed certificates for your server. Here the book's general emphasis on Apache over IIS is most apparent, as SSL with IIS is not discussed at all. However, I have no experience with IIS, so I can't say for sure how important this omission might be.With nine co-authors (though only four got onto the cover photograph - ...one might expect wildly different styles throughout the book, but each chapter is consistently and clearly laid out with diagrams and relevant configuration file fragments where necessary. At each stage, variations between different versions of each component are made clear.Professional Apache Tomcat is surely the definitive book on the subject. I recently used it to integrate Tomcat 4 with an existing Apache 2 installation, and everything went very smoothly. More than just a set of tutorials it offers a thorough description of the whole architecture, and makes an excellent companion to Wrox's Professional Apache.
