5 comments about Modeling Derivatives Applications in Matlab, C++, and Excel.

1. Derivatives are not simple things. It almost seems that complexity was a design goal when they were being set up. In order to determine their real value either today or in the future you almost have to model them on a computer.
   
   This book covers dozens of different types of derivatives, including the common ones and some of the new even more esoteric ones. It talks about the structure of the derivative, and then presents models of them. The models are presented in the most common modelling 'languages' in use today. There is a lot of code involved, but there is not a CD included with the book. Instead, an access code providing a one time download for the code. Note, a one time download. Be sure and save the code quickly and on several media. This procedure allows the models to be updated as needed without regard to the time it takes for the book to move from being written to being published, but if you have a disk crash....
   
   The biggest things this book provides are: first, you get to see what an expert in the field has done, and second, you get the code to run his models on your system, and of course you can modify them if you find some other aspect suits your needs better.
   
   This is a new book, first printed in December 2006, so it is current with the derivatives being marketing at that time.



2. Great book. But the code downloading process is a bit weird. Don't know why they just attach a CD.



3. This book was my ultimate go-to resource on several financial engineering projects (on the buy side). It covers many different derivatives and provides example MatLab and C++ code that is easy to modify and extend.
   
   The instructions for setup and downloading the code could be more clear, perhaps on a CD.



4. This book offers prebuilt, modifiable code that you can use for energy, power, weather and many other derivatives applications. The download process is fast and easy. For those who use Matlab, C++, or Excel, there is no competition. A great book with unique content and code.



5. I highlight two points:
   
   1. The inclusion of Matlab and Excel code in almost all topics of the book.
   2. All the content is new and more advanced, there is no recovered topics of his previous book.

5 comments about Flexible Rails: Flex 3 on Rails 2.

1. The author goes into great detail on how to efficiently get Rails and Flex working together. The book is updated for the latest version of Rails as well as the upcoming Flex 3 release. I've found the book easy to follow along with and enjoy the author's humor spread throughout the book.
   
   As a developer I'm often tasked with making "things talk to each other". Typically if I can I'll use a tool like Flex Builder for a project and if I have a choice I'll pick Java, .NET or Ruby for the server back end - whatever is the best fit. This book only backed up my belief that Rails and Flex really do work very well together. I've learned a lot going through the code both on Rails and Flex.
   
   I also liked how the author is continually refactoring the application (called "Pomodo"), that is where your learning kicks into overdrive. He uses the Cairngorm framework and even RubyAMF. I didn't have any experience in either up until this point. Now I can say I do and it all fits together nicely.



2. I wasn't sure whether a mixed-technologies book would be adequate for both reading and reference, especially with two technologies. As both a software engineer and a moonlighting instructor this book was an easy read from the start. Mr. Armstrong explores both Flex 3 and Rails 2 with enough background information on both technologies to get a reader ready to code--and that was just Chapter...err...Iteration 1. The second iteration begins with coding (Hello World) and it doesn't stop. This is a must for your coding library and makes a great textbook for students who enrolled in courses geared toward building web and Rich Internet Applications.



3. This is a great book. Peter is the #1 expert in Flex + Rails.



4. I have used Flex for about a year and I have only dabbled in Ruby/Rails development. I have been curious how I might back a Flex front end with a simple service layer that isn't hard to create, maintain or host. So far I have only worked with Java/Spring/Hibernate backend services which can take a little while to build and integrate (Grails is MUCH faster).
   
   After about 100 pages I'm in interation 4 building an interesting RIA with a Rails backend that I can host on relatively inexpensive server if I wanted to. My only struggles thus far was getting MySQL going properly. But that was only because I forgot a step in installing it.
   
   If you have little exposure to Rails and/or Flex and you feel at home on the command line as well as you do in an IDE like Eclipse, this is a great "project" book for you. I'd say you probably want a primer in Ruby, Rails and Flex before you get going but it is pretty easy follow and has a lot of free professional advice from someone that has obviously been around the block a few times. Peter is very upfront about some things that he has done in the book that should not be considered "best practice".
   
   I am hoping to get some good insight how I might do something similar for Flex and Grails. Regardless, I am confident this is going to be a fun journey!



5. I found it best technical book till date but you should know Flex & Ruby before you can jump into this..

5 comments about Ajax Security.

1. Ajax Security was the last book I read and reviewed in 2007. However, it was the best book I read all year. The book is absolutely compelling and every security professional and Web developer should read it. It's really as simple as that.
   
   I am not a Web developer. I was not very familiar with Ajax (beyond its buzzword status and a vague notion of functionality) when I started reading Ajax Security. I attended the authors' Black Hat 2007 talk and was thoroughly impressed and disturbed by the security implications they presented. I expected Ajax Security to be a good book, but one can never be sure if talented hackers and presenters can transfer their skills to the written word. Ajax Security gets the job done.
   
   Despite being a traditional network security guy who prefers inspecting traffic to analyzing JavaScript, I had no problem understanding Ajax Security. The authors do a superb job leading the reader through the issues surrounding modern Web applications. They start by introducing a technology, which is critical for someone like me who doesn't deal with Web development issues. Next they describe how it is broken. They continue with defensive recommendations and summarize their findings in the conclusion. This is a perfect technical writing style that is too often lost on other authors.
   
   Ajax Security makes very good use of case studies (both large stories like ch 2 and small ones throughout the text). The book also integrates code, diagrams, and screen shots. The text itself is very clear and the authors keep the reader's attention throughout. Histories for various technologies provide a welcome background, showing readers how we've ended up in our current Web 2.0 predicament.
   
   If you'd like a positive critique of the technical components of the book by someone who is a Web expert, I recommend reading Dre's review of Ajax Security in the TSSCI-Security blog. Otherwise, I give my highest recommendation to Ajax Security, as my Best Book Bejtlich Read in 2007 award.



2. Anyone involved in developing/testing AJAX should read "AJAX Security." It covers preventing a hacker from attaching your application. The audience includes developers, QA and penetration testers. While there are code snippets, they are explained well. While managers aren't in the target audience, I think they could benefit from understanding the concepts presented in the book.
   
   The book begins with a brief review of AJAX architecture with an emphasis on security. The writing style is quite engaging including a chapter walking you through an attack from a hacker's point of view. All the major known categories of attacks are included including resource enumeration, parameter manipulation (with SQL and XPATH injection), session hijacking, JSON hijacking, XSS, CSRF, phishing, denial of service, etc.
   
   I particularly liked the analogies to things that happen in the physical world such as resource injection into a roommate's "to do" list and hijacking another customer's paid order in the deli. These made it easy to visualize the problem even for people who don't code often.
   
   The authors were realistic and included the limitations and drawbacks of each tool/framework mentioned. I liked the chapter analyzing two major JavaScript worms including the source code. This really hit home on the importance of certain practices!
   
   All information was up to date as of printing including comments on all four major browsers (IE, Firefox, Opera and Safari.) They even mentioned the HTML 5 specification. The book is not server side language specific, which was nice.



3. Are you a web developer? Do you believe you can ensure that your client-side code will function as expected? Well, you are wrong. In Ajax Security you will find out why.
   
   Ajax changes the game in that it moves business logic to the client. In doing so it increases the attack surface of the application. The authors get curious with some real world Ajax frameworks such as Prototype, Dojo, and Microsoft Ajax. They demonstrate with these frameworks how developers might be unknowingly building vulnerabilities into their applications. If you're home brewing Ajax, the authors cover important security considerations you'll need to know so that you don't make the same mistakes the industry leaders have made.
   
   I learned a lot about JavaScript from reading this book. I learned even more about how JavaScript can be used maliciously. The authors describe techniques for function clobbering, JSON hijacking, storage attacks, and presentation layer attacks. One of my favorite parts of the book, not to mention one of the scariest, is an explanation of how to hide malicious JavaScript from signature based anti-virus software.
   
   The authors explain why the Same-Origin Policy is broken and how it can be subverted. Also covered are security considerations for offline applications. An in-depth analysis of Ajax worms is covered. If you are curious about how Ajax is changing web security you should read this book. If your are a web developer or a security professional you should read this book, even if you aren't using Ajax. If you don't believe cross-site scripting is a "big deal", I dare you to read this book and maintain the same opinion.



4. A lot of examples shows how absolutely everything could be attacked and corrupted in the chain of components used for building ajax applications, from css (yes even css) to html, from javascript to http, from browser to server ... Sometimes there's too much lines about evident things and sometimes things seems more proof of concept than real possible attacks. But these guys know what they are talking about. This is an excellent book that every serious ajax developer must have read, specially if they plan to make mashups or let their users bring and share things using their applications.



5. This is very good book. I've created so many websites using AJAX techonlogy. This book provided me to check how secure the websites are. I am glad that I fullfilled all the details without having the through knowledge of AJAX security. But this book has collected all the security check point at one place.

5 comments about Mastering the Requirements Process (2nd Edition).

1. The cost of undetected errors in software requirements can be extremely high. To start with, it could happen to build the wrong product.
   So, any care must be taken to have strong foundations in place; this is still the case if you plan to go Agile.
   If you like Steve McConnell's 'Rapid Development' and 'Code Complete', this book is a perfect complement covering the early phases of the software process.
   In a sentence, this book is a must for anyone dealing with software engineering, from the developer to the manager.



2. I found this book very practical, it's an excellent source of examples and cases. Even I would recommend it as a text book for university students.



3. this book has not only the flaws identified below by F.C.Passavant - in addition it has inconsistencies in terminology, lots of ambiguity. it was difficult to map described precesses to those regarded in the field (i.e. IATF Release 3.1)
   
   I found "Requirements Engineering" by Elizabeth Hull, Kenneth Jackson, and Jeremy Dick a much better choice.



4. The first chapter should be read and re-read by every engineer out there. The bood provides a near turn-key requirements elicitation / engineering process.



5. I recommend this book to anyone interested in discovering and documenting requirements whether the target is automation or not. It is comprehensive and very readable, but it is not dogmatic. The ideas it expresses can be used effectively with a wide range of methodologies.
   
   I've been doing requirements for more than 20 years and I learned things from this book. The notion of the "Blast Off" (hate that term, love the concept) as a key political event reinforced and expanded ideas I had before. The extensive checklist for the "Blast Off" is much more thorough than anything I've ever put together myself. The idea of "Trolling for Requirements" also expanded my horizons. The Volare snow card is an excellent starting point for collecting requirements that emphasizes the point that understanding the rational behind a requirement is as important as understanding the requirement itself.
   
   Over the years I've used this book as the basis for a series of brown bag lunches to help junior analysts better appreciate the nature of the requirements process. It has been generally well received. I've probably purchases over a dozen copies of this book to give to others, some of them with my own money. Along with Exploring Requirements: Quality Before Design this is one of the first two books every business or system analyst should read.

5 comments about Murach's Visual Basic 2005: Training & Reference.

1. My perspective on this book is that of a true beginner. I know a lot about programming and languages, but have no experience designing or writing programs/code beyond following the bouncing ball in books such as this.
   
   This book is great...and not so great at the same time...for a true beginner. It is exactly as advertised, "No other book teaches so much, so fast, so thoroughly," but therein lies the problem for we experience-challenged readers. The pace is quick, i.e., topic-to-topic, and many times I had lingering questions about what I'd just read while finding myself halfway into the next topic. The book assumes a certain level of knowledge and/or experience that is somewhere between novice and expert...and I'm still at the 'step-by-step book' stage...so I expect to get a lot more from it in the months ahead than I have thus far. I know enough now to know that what I will need is in there...
   
   That said...whatta book! It will be among the most used of my reference books because it covers such a wide range of topics so well and because it covers those topics comprehensively. As my understanding of the language progresses, I'll have this book to refer to when I need to learn more about specific aspects of the language and its implementation.
   
   I've wasted some money on VB2005 books, but not on this one. Anne Boehm and Mike Murach delivered the goods.



2. I've been a self-taught developer off and on for ten years and I've relied on books primarily for learning new languages. And the Murach series are consistently the very best texts for self-paced learning. The latest VB offering carries on the tradition with very clear and consise explanations, along with helpful real-world application demonstrations and exercises at the end of the chapter. And none of the pages and pages of errata you must sort thru with many companies (Wrox ... God, don't get me started. :o( ). I'm giving it a FIVE to offset some of the ridiculous assertions made elsewhere about this excellent text.



3. This is good for people with no experience on VB programming. The step by step coding and explanations are the best of this book.



4. As a beginner, This book is very easy to understand and to follow the instruction in building the case study.



5. This is a good book, but many of the assignments are confusing. There were many assignments where the instructions could be interpretted in several different ways.

No comments about Microsoft Visual C# 2008 Express Edition: Build a Program Now! (PRO-Developer).

5 comments about Ruby for Rails: Ruby Techniques for Rails Developers.

1. I am new to rails. Before we can do any exercises or practices that come with the book we need to setup the environment correctly. There is no help for this part but instead the author asks you to search the answer on the internet. I read many technical books before but this is the first time I get very frustrated only at chapter 2.



2. There are some core books one should have when working with Ruby and Rails. This is one of them. Many reviews have already been written about this book, some good, some not so good. Regardless, I won't rehash what they said. The two cents I'm throwing in is this: I like the way David explains things. It gives you a better understanding of the topic, and the more you *understand*, the less you have to remember.



3. This is primarily a book about Ruby, very little Rails content, and certainly nothing at a deep-dive level about Rails.



4. Another review for this book uses the perfect word: Wordy!
   
   The book reads like it was written for, either somebody completely new to programming, or somebody who can't read. My gripe isn't so much the content, but how it is presented. I found myself skipping many paragraphs because the author goes over the same thing multiple times, not trusting that the reader got the point the first time around.
   
   I'd give this book 4 stars if it was half as short, and there's no reason it couldn't be. Why not 5 stars? Because the content is, like other reviews say, primarily centered around Ruby, with too little about Rails to comfortably use 'rails' in the title.
   
   It's a good Beginning-Ruby book, and it has some good info about both Ruby and Rails, but I would have preferred getting a book dedicated specifically to Ruby, and another book dedicated specifically to Rails.



5. Approaching this book, I wasn't quite sure where the emphasis lay, and who this was aimed at. To be clear then, I recommend this book to an intermediate Ruby programmer, who is interested in using examples from Rails to help cement their learning. It would also probably help to have the vaguest idea of what Rails is, and the sorts of web apps it's useful for. If you're an existing Rails developer, this is a great way to get a better understanding of what's going on, but it's not a tutorial on Rails for a complete newbie, nor does it provide advanced Rails practices.
   
   Unlike many programming books, which focus on procedural programming before building up to classes, RfR is admirably object oriented in focus from the word go. It's quite impressive that conditionals aren't introduced until about 200 pages in. Also notable is the chapter on metaprogramming, which is very good. If you felt a bit short-changed by the coverage of this subject in The Pickaxe, this is much better.
   
   Material on Rails top and tail the book: the first part introduces Rails by building a simple web app, and the final chapters rejig it with enhanced models, views and controllers, based on the Ruby material in the middle.
   
   In short, this is more of a Ruby book than a Rails book, and I was very happy with that. This is well worth getting even if you have no interest in web apps.

5 comments about Essential COM (The DevelopMentor Series).

1. All vetran C++ programmers should learn this along side MFC, it assumes a minimal knowledge of COM so it is easy to pick up, and gets you familiar with the common elements of this widely used standard (CLSIDs, IIDs, COM Functions, etc) Shell programmers will want to read this first. See my other reviews for more good books in COM.



2. I have learned a lot with this book. I would not qualify the book an introduction book because unless you have some background knowledge and practice, you are going to find the last chapters hard to digest. What the book does is to covers the essential principles of COM with great details. This will make the first reading very interesting and it will make you come back from time to time to seek back specific detail.



3. I read Essential COM almost 10 years ago, and revisited it recently, out of curiosity. It's tough sledding, but if you *must* know this stuff, this is probably it.
   
   However, throughout the book the phrase "the source code that accompanies this book" occurs repeatedly. As far as I could ascertain after an hour or so of googling and searching, there *is* no such source. I assume it stopped working 5 years ago or something, and rather than continuing to provide it somewhere on the web with a disclaimer -- which I assume would be embarrassing to Mr. Box -- it has been silently "disappeared". I consider this mildly unethical, and certainly annoying, since many perhaps minor points are supposedly demonstrated by this non-existent source.



4. If you want to learn COM I dont think this book is a good start. It is a great book and I think every COM developer should read it, however; it is not a step-by-step into. It also doesn't have small projects which let's your get feet wet w/COM. I would recommend "Inside COM" by Dale Rogerson to start learning COM.



5. I read this book about ten years ago first time. When I have to deal with a COM problem, I still find it useful.

5 comments about Java(TM) Design Patterns: A Tutorial.

1. The author should not even be trying to write about Java, let alone about applying patterns using Java. Abysmal book - I read it in the local library and thought, wow a Java patterns bookk based on Gof. More like Goof. Stay away, stay far far away.



2. I've been trying to learn design patterns more than two years.
   In the beginning, I read (TRY to read) GOF's book, but I had no idea how to apply it in my code. Then I learn a few tricks only AFTER I create & compile the code snipets presented in the book.
   That was a big learning curve since GOF doesn't come with pre-compiled code, and to me, you can only learn it by running it and see how it happens. I copied & pasted all of maze quesions into my project & and ran (what a pain!!).
   The accompanying CD for this book is worth 4 1/2 stars (with some better examples it would've been 5 stars). I would rate the book itself probabaly 3 1/2 stars. Too many typos and lack of clean-cut explanation.
   HAVING SAID THAT, is there any better book(& sample code) out there in the market that's better? NOT that I know of.
   Don't get disappointed that the lanauage used is Java. I don't really like Java. If you're a hard core C++ programmer, you can EASILY convert the sample programs in C++. More code but it can be done (since Java already incorporates some of design pattern's idea into the language).
   The most important thing that you need to do in learning design pattern is LEARNING IT BY DOING IT (not just reading it).
   Follow each example very closely and memorize the usage. If the example is outrageous (like swimming/seeding one), just skip it.
   When someone talks about a particular pattern, just recollect what you learn in the sample code.
   I believe this is by far the best way to learn design patterns.
   THEN you can read more about the topic in GOF.



3. This book misses the point of patterns. It explains patterns as if they are solutions to recurring problems. Gee, I thought that's what they are? Well, they are - to some extent. They are more about a way to think. The problem with patterns as design solutions is that they don't help you until it is too late. Design Patterns Explained talks about why patterns are good solutions. You can then use this information on any project.



4. The author tried to explain design patterns by using Swing. However, not every reader understand Swing. Compared with Head First Design Patterns, this book didn't well explain how, when, why to use design patterns.



5. I did not like this book.The examples are so unnecessaryly long and boring that you are missing the main concept.
   I strongly recommend Head first design patterns for every java developer.Don't waste your money on this.

5 comments about Sun Certified Enterprise Architecture for J2EE Technology Study Guide (Sun Microsystems Press).

1. I primarily purchased this book for Review for SCEA exam.
   
   It provides a complete review of Architecture, J2EE Overview, Documentation, Design Patterns, Security, Internationalization, Protocols, and impotantly, Case Study.
   
   Reading these chapters and working the Case Study, helped me understand the entire overall concept as well as, enough details so I could understand my short commings. Therefore the references listed in this book to other books with more details are very useful.
   
   I think that this book is very important for the technical people getting ready for SCEA test, but it is MORE:
   
   1. It can be great help for managers to get an excellent understanding, and
   2. It is also great help for detail code developers to get a good taste of the overall and higher level view of the entire J2EE!
   
   I hope that the authors are working on the next revision.



2. This is a good book to show you the basics for the exam. You will need to read the additional reading suggestons to be fully prepared.



3. This book was helpful as review, but not overly helpful as a start to finish guide.



4. Its a good book..but is very short....its more like a review of things rather than expanding knowledge..



5. Yes, this book seems to be quite simple and informative,Just has what you wanted to get certified as an Architecture for J2EE.