No comments about Programming in Visual Basic 2008.

5 comments about Mastering Regular Expressions, Second Edition.

1. An incredible book. Absolutely incredible. It will take 200 lines of your code and reduce it to 1 or 2 lines. It will open your mind to search and replace possibilities. Your life will change (just kidding). It's a great deep book.
   
   However, I agree with the comment that one should not begin learning regex with this book. it's a little too advanced. Go on the internet, get an introduction. Or else, buy one of the introductory books on the subject first. But definitely get around to buying this book!



2. How deep down the rabbit hole do you really NEED to go? I had a serious need to get on top of regular expressions to solve one particular problem. I looked at several online tutorials which didn't take me where I needed to go, so I ordered Mastering Regular Expressions after reading the Amazon reviews. I always look at the negative reviews first. In spite of the negative reviews I ordered the book with an open mind.
   When the book arrived I began reading it with enthusiasm. In the preface there is a small section on "How to Read This Book". I bought into the author's suggestion to read the book's first six chapters first. I was captivated through the first three chapters, and then somewhere in chapter 4 I began to get very weary with information overload. After putting the book down for a couple of days I decided to skip the rest and use what I needed to write the one regular expression I had need of. The book did successfully help me accomplish this, so I gave it 3 stars. Not only did it give me the information I needed that the online tutorials didn't, it also gave me the confidence I needed. For that, which I am grateful, I would have liked to have given it more stars. I think many of those in need of learning about regular expression could be well served by a "lite-edition" of this book. Perhaps someday when I have the time and the need I may try to wade through the rest of the book, but as it is now Mastering Regular Expressions took me far farther down the rabbit hole than I really needed or wanted to go.
   If you need to get on top of Regular Expressions, I would recommend this book, however just be ready to be taken far deeper than the average coder probably needs to go.



3. Quite a comprehensive guide to regular expressions. Gets very detailed in the areas that it covers. However, definitely not a 'beginner's guide'. I highly recommend that you are already comfortable with the basis of regular expressions before picking up this book. You will get way more out of it if this is not your first introduction to it. Comfort and proficiency with Perl would also be a big help. Title is correct though, this is a guide to 'mastering' regular expressions, not learning them from the beginning.



4. I went through several books and online tutorials and never found anything that did a good comprehensive job of explaining regular expressions. This book does. If you are having trouble "getting it", I highly encourage reading this book. You will be extremely enlightened even after the first few chapters.



5. The book is robust and goes into alot detail. I liked the comparing and contrasting between the various RegEx implementations. I had a difficult time digesting some of the detail. In particular, the analogies confused me and I felt the author went overboard with them. Many times, I had to backtrack to understand what was being discussed. However, regular expressions is a complex topic and the author did a good job easing into the concepts. An additional plus was with inline page citation - this helped to find the page corresponding to the topic being discussed.
   I would have liked shorter chapters with chapter summaries and more diagrams in place of analogies. Ultimately, Mastering Regular Expressions is a good book referencing a complex topic.

1 comments about Visual Basic Express in Easy Steps (In Easy Steps).

1. Used to do VB in the past but got away from it. This is a great book to get back into the swing of things. Good examples and clear.

1 comments about Starting Out with Visual Basic 2005 (3rd Edition).

1. This item would have been great if the book would have come with it! that was the whole reason I bought this item. There was supposed to be 2 cds and a Textbook, well the cds were in perfect condition but there was no text. This item was sent back for the above reason, a replacement was issued and yet again, no book. was not happy with this item purchase!

3 comments about VBScript Pocket Reference.

1. I like the O'Reilly pocket reference series. They don't take up a lot of desk real estate, and you can generally find what you need to know in a hurry.

   From the perspective of a programmer who hasn't touched basic since he had a Sinclair Spectrum, I found this book got me up to speed reasonbly quickly. However I suspect it will attract a fairly small audience - a non programmer would find it too terse to be a good learning book, and an experienced VB programmer would probably be better off with a book specific to the environment they're using (eg, ASP) because this book does not cover any enviroment specific objects, and VBScript has no enviroment specific functions. It does however cover the filesystem objects and the dictionary object, which is handy.

   Every now and then I get frustrated with the book when I can't find a function that I want, but then I usually discover that the function doesn't exist in VBScript, which is really such a trivial language that a pocket reference can cover it more or less completely.




2. It you want to learn VBScript go elsewhere. However, if you just want a quick reference that you can take anywhere this is the only book for you. It is remarkably concise and very well written. Its perfect for the VBScritp programmer that needs a little help from time to time looking up a hard to remember command and its syntax.



3. The reference material seems accurate but I have found more detail in the free help file that comes with VBS 5.6. Return values and types and the actual values of the builtin constants, which I didn't find in the book.
   
   I apparently overlooked the note that this book was based on VBS 5.5 when I ordered it. I have several pocket references and this is the first that fell short of my needs.

4 comments about VBScript, WMI, and ADSI Unleashed: Using VBScript, WMI, and ADSI to Automate Windows Administration.

1. What a pleasure! This is a book written for technical administrators, by a technical administrator with a knack for writing. Don Jones demonstrates a talent for explaining the intricacies of monitoring and administering a Windows enterprise using WMI & ADSI scripting (et al) in a perfectly comprehensible manner without coming across annoyingly simplistic or condescendingly academic. Computer book writers take note!



2. I found this book to be very helpful and practical with the examples given in the book. The examples have come in useful for me for basic systems administration in my Windows Server 2003 network with Active Directory. The author breaks down the example codes line by line and explains what is going on, which I found to be very helpful.
   
   one thing I did not like was that some times the author purposely put mistakes in the code without initially telling you. Then towards the end of the section, he will ask you why the code did not work and will tell you what went wrong and why. He doesn't do this all the time, but a few times. It made me second guess myself and thought that the publisher had bad typos in the code, something familiarly seen in a lot of programming books. Good learning experience, I suppose.
   
   Even if you are a beginner programmer wanting to learn VBscripting, I think you would be able to get the gist of VBscript by copying the examples in the book and tweaking them for your needs. This is my first VBscript book and it's definitely a keeper for me. Highly recommended!



3. Hey all,
   
   I was a noob in all of this scripting stuff when I bought this book. Frankly it was not a bad purchase but it did leave me kind of disappointed. The first few chapters are a waste of time because there just like a huge sales ad for the author's company that sells a VBScript IDE, added to that you never get that feeling that he's fully convinced of what he is telling you, i.e. "You should learn VBScript but it doesn't matter because we have the impending doom looming over called Windows Powershell".
   
   Last but not least is the fact related to the title of my review, basically he stresses the point that to learn VBScript you should get the online documentation for it......then what the hell did I buy this book for? If I wanted to learn structured programming I would've bought a C++ book that will do a better job.
   
   All in all, the book has it's good points..I just can't remember them right now 'cause I'm hungry and it's Christmas Day. It does give you the basic knowledge what scripts can do, although if you been a windows admin for a while then this will only confirm to you that there are other ways of doing stuff....and that you need the VBScript online documentation (which by the way was hard to find on Microsoft's website) to do them.
   
   This is the only scripting book I've so sadly I can't give you an alternative to it or compare it against any but if you really are into self-learning I think that a little organization, time and all the documentation available at MS's website might do.
   
   If you have the bucks to spare buy it, if you have time on your hands don't buy and turn over to the Net to learn.



4. I had originally studied the Microsoft Press book "Microsoft Windows Scripting Self-Paced Learning Guide", but still needed more.
   
   VBScript, WMI and ADSI Unleashed is the book that I wish I had read first. It is a good choice for a system admin who wants to start scripting administrative tasks.
   
   Having never scripted before, I had many questions. This book started from the beginning, what editor should I use for programming, and took me all the way to my first scripted program....to search AD for all Servers at or below a specified OU, remotely attach to each server, determine if it is a physical or virtual computer, run a hardware configuration utility as appropriate, reconfigure the hardware as appropriate based on the utilities output and report back to me the results. I went from nothing to decent in about two weeks.
   
   This is a good choice for this type of book.

5 comments about The Book of Visual Basic 2005: .NET Insight for Classic VB Developers.

1. This is definitely not a complete work on VB or .NET. It does serve as a good walkthrough of the features of .NET and their use through Visual Basic. So as long as you know what you are buying you will likely be pleased.
   
   The writing is solid, and the graphics are used effectively. This is not one of the screenshot heavy tomes so often seen in the VB world.



2. Very well written and organized. I've read it once and am re-reading it again. Highly recommended.



3. The focus of this book is to take a traditional Visual Basic developer who is already experienced writing Visual Basic programs and use that as a base to move them to the .NET platform. One of the problems of the traditional Visual Basic program has been that it has its own way of doing things and is built on a platform that is different from other object-oriented languages such as C++ and Java. Of course this is not the only problem but if you program in more than one language then Visual Basic's dlls would often replace and create problems for the other language and vice-versa. The vision of .NET was to create a common language runtime with common classes that can be used for all languages. The problem is that this meant a complete rewrite of Visual Basic and many of the expressions used before no longer work. This need to relearn how to do so many things has slowed the adoption of the .NET framework for Visual Basic. This book comes to the rescue by providing a convenient learning pathway that starts with the familiar for the Visual Basic 6 programmer and moves them from there to the correct use of the .Net framework to accomplish the same goal. For the Visual Basic programmer making the move to the .NET platform The Book of Visual Basic 2005 is highly recommended.



4. Are you a Visual Basic 6 developer? If you are, then this book is for you. Author Matthew MacDonald, has done an outstanding job of writing a book about Visual Basic 6 developers who want to shed some of their current habits and start learning more about how the .NET platform works and thinks.
   
   MacDonald, begins by showing you why Microsoft decided to create a whole new framework for programming and what it threw in. Then, the author provides an overview of the design environment. Next, he looks at the .NET world, with an overview of language changes, an exploration of the class library, and an introduction to namespaces. The author also provides an overview of Windows Forms. He continues by showing you the basics of object-oriented development, the most modern and elegant way tosolve almost any programming problem. Then, the author explores VB 2005's object oriented features and advanced class construction techniques including interfaces nd inheritance, the most anticipated Visual enhancement ever. Next, he shows you how to make your own components and get the essentials you need to know in order to transfer your applications to other computers. The author also describes debugging in the IDE, outlines some tips for making bug-resistant code, and introduces structured exception handling. He continues by showing you how to deal with Data: Files, Printing and XML. Then, the author presents an overview of databases and ADO.NET. Next, he provides some advice about when to create threads and how to use them safely. The author also describes the basics of ASP.NET, Microsoft's all-in-one solution for creating web-based applications. He continues by showing you how to create web services and, best of all, let .NET take care of all the plumbing. Finally, he shows you how to deploy your application: the streamlined web-based ClickOnce model, and the more comprehensive Visual Studio setup project.
   
   Throughout this most excellent book, the author strives to give you the essential facts and insights. More importantly, the emphasis here isn't on becoming a "language nerd," but on gaining the insights you'll need in order to understand .NET development and to continue learning on your own.



5. 'The Book of Visual Basic 2005: .NET Insight for Classic VB Developers' by Matthew MacDonald is another fantastic book written by the busy author Matthew MacDonald. Presented in a very entertaining and fun format thanks to the No Starch line, this book will cover Visual Basic 2005 from top to bottom and show you why it's one of the most popular and easy languages to develop in. With ~500 pages of material and 14 chapters, this book doesn't skimp on any of the good stuff (plenty of whip cream and jimmies for everyone).
   
   If you are a VB programmer and want to learn about how far it's come and why the .NET framework makes RAD ever more RAD than ever before, pick up this book, read it, and enjoy it.
   
   Easy to read and even easier to recommend, this is a solid best buy.
   
   ***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

5 comments about Beginning Visual Basic 2005.

1. I recently purchased this book used here on Amazon. As I read it, I find that the material is very easy to pick up and I even find that I'm jumping ahead of the lessons and making my own code to do different things. This book is not the usual boring droning on type tech manual that I thought it would be. 5 stars.



2. Visual Basic has now been around for some fifteen years. Through several versions it has progressed to be a fairly complex, fairly powerful language having been extended into the .NET family of languages, database connectivity, web functionality with both HTML and XML.
   
   At 800 pages, this is a large book. It starts quite simply doing a little program where you type in your name and it comes back with a 'Hello' statement. From there it goes step by step to fairly complex programming using Microsoft's ADO.NET interface to talk with SQL Server.
   
   Microsoft has established this programming evironment where everything about the language, the editor you use to program it, the utility routines you call on, the database you access has to be Microsoft product. This book fits into the 100% Microsoft environment. If your database is MySQL, this may not be the way you want to go. On the other hand, Microsoft rules the desktop environment so it may not be a bad idea.



3. I am a seasoned programmer learning the .NET platform. At first this book seemed okay...the layout was pretty good and I found their presentation methods easy to learn from. Then I started running into some serious coding problems. Their ASP code examples are outdated and riddled with errors. No error errata on the website either to fix anything I saw. I spent more time trying to fix their stuff than I did acutally learning. It would be a good book if it wasn't for all the errors. They desperately need some technical editors... I wouldn't recommend this book at all.



4. I looked this book over pretty well at Borders before buying it from Amazon, but was unpleasantly surprised once I began to read it straight through. Critical information is omitted from some topics. Continuity seems illogical. And the website, though expertly administrated, has a small subscriber base. The book is not very well organized and is carelessly written. For twice the price, the Deitel offering is ten times the tome.



5. This book is excellent for beginners; it explains all steps in details.
   It is definitively a must have!

5 comments about Access 2003 Power Programming with VBA.

1. This is the best book I have found for VBA programming on Microsoft Access.



2. This is the best book I have found for VBA programming I have found. It provided answers to a lot of my questions that I couldn't find in other books.



3. Here is a solid introduction to programming in Access, including how to use some of the built-in features that make VBA easier to use. If you've been using Access to make forms and run quieries you should be able to pick up this book and start programming. Power Programming tells you how to create procedures and functions. The code isn't very useful by itself, but the book explains how things work so you should be able to write your own procedures.
   
   You can learn how to customize menus using built-in dialog boxes or build them programmatically (pretty useful.) There is a long chapter on database connectivity and there is about twenty pages about XML support. There's also a couple of pages about Access backwards compatability (or lack of!)
   
   There isn't a CD with the book and I keep trying to find a place in the book that gives a website with the code. It would be helpful to have the code available for cutting and pasting since it's so easy to make a typo.
   
   If you are an expereienced VBA programmer, You probably want to find another book. I was looking for a book that would help me transition from Access 2000 to Access 2003. This book does not do that. I wish I had read the editiorial review more closely especially the part that says "a resource for programmers (particularly novice ones)" Another good quote from the editorial review is "the odds are small that you'll get all the information you need out of this book, unless the application you want to write is super-simple." But then you can never get everyting out of one book anyway.



4. This book is fairly decent, except that the template code for "Connecting to Databases with ADO" (Chapter 15) is riddled with errors. Most of this is probably due to problems with Access versions and configuration, but in any case, templates that don't work are frustrating and useless. There is absolutely no errata information for this book on the Wiley web site, and Wiley doesn't take inquiries, regardless of the notes in the front of the book. Find a different book for Client/Server study.



5. This is a good reference book for those of us who are not the best at programming.

5 comments about MCAD/MCSD Self-Paced Training Kit: Developing XML Web Services and Server Components with Microsoft® Visual Basic® .NET and Microsoft Visual C#(TM) .N (MCSD Self-Paced Training Kit).

1. It is at a very basic level. It can be useful for starting in XML webservices, but not enough for the exam.
   Some information is outdated.
   It has errors. So does the practice test.
   Doesn't cover at least one topic which is in the practice test.
   The practice test doesn't tell you what is considered the correct answer.
   If you find this book useful, you're not yet prepared for the exam.



2. Judging by the positive reviews, this book must have some merit but it is certainly not in the quality of its writing or its accuracy. Perhaps the editor was reassigned to Longhorn duties. Here are some examples of what you can expect in the first two chapters:
   
   "A COM+ component exists in three states: exists and activated, exists and not activated, and nonexistent."
   
   "The pool objects are not destroyed even after their release from the client application. COM+ retains the destroyed object in the pool for recycling..."
   
   " If the value of the CanStop property is set to False, the SCM does not pass the Stop command to the service application."
   
   It's main value to me is as a syllabus. You can use it to direct your search for better explanations on MSDN and, of course, everyone should have Troelsen's "C# and the .NET Platform" which is the best textbook I have read. Ever.



3. I was reading it as first book for most of the topics, It was total waste of time to read it.
   
   Might help if you are already well expreinced with .NET but not for beginner



4. I have found "Developing XML Web Services and Server Components with Microsoft VB.NET" an invaluable tool in XML editor development. It is quite detailed about accessing and manipulating XML data.



5. Messy. I have been reading lessons; I haven't got any big picture. I did not know why it worked like that. The only place I could look for "big picture" was usually lab, at the end of each chapter. This book also lacks reference to ADO.NET object and interface model which is essential in multi-database engine applications. The most disappointing part is so-called "advanced" web service programming. What author thought was advanced level was really a basic level...