1 comments about Pro SharePoint 2007 Development Techniques (Pro).

1. This book contains the following:(programming code)
   1. asp.net into sharepoint
   2. web parts using ajax.net
   3. sql 2005 reporting services business intelligence
   4. building handprinted workflows(windows workflow foundation)
   5. building a domain specific language for connectable web parts
   6. reusing presentation layers for web services
   7. security- change code priviledges using impersonation etc
   8 infopath
   9 deep tranversal of sql extensions
   This book is for people wanting to know web parts,web services for
   moss. Programming code is interesting. I wish more people
   would give their review.....

4 comments about Pro .NET 2.0 Graphics Programming (Expert's Voice in .Net).

1. 
   Excerpt from C# Online.NET (CSharp-Online.NET) Review:
   "For those who might want a book dedicated only to topics directly related to custom control development, there may be disappointment.... The coverage of GDI+ topics is exhaustive. This makes the book an excellent introduction and reference to GDI+."



2. If you are looking for a book on how to create GDI graphics then this book is definitely for you. It covers every topic you need to create your graphic designs on forms and images. It does not go into detail on sending the image to a web page, but that is just serializing the image and there are many topics that can be found on Google that will show you that. The chapters are arranged by topic, it explains each sub topic with an example and at the end of the chapter it also explains how to improve performance! One extra thing this book has is a couple of chapters on how to write custom window forms controls. If you where ever thinking about designing you own controls this book is a must have on how to create custom controls from entry level through advance topics! One last thing don't think that this book is only for .NET 2.0 [...]



3. 'Pro .NET 2.0 Graphics Programming' by Eric White is a great GDI+ programming reference, first and foremost. With 400+ pages of content spread out amongst 14 chapters, the user will be able to get a solid look at GDI+ programming and learn how far Windows graphics programming has come.
   
   Chapter Overview
   
   01. .NET Graphics Programming
   02. Drawing Surfaces
   03. Pens and Brushes
   04. Text and Fonts
   05. Images
   06. GraphicsPaths and Regions
   07. Clipping and Invalidation
   08. Transformations
   09. Printing
   10. An Alternative Coordinate System
   11. Architecture and Design of Windows Forms CustomControls
   12. Design-Time Support
   13. Scrolling
   14. Mouse Events and Cursors
   
   There are no overwhelming book length examples which I think was a good decision made. Instead of building an app up step by step there are lots of little examples to drive the points home that the author wants to.
   
   The only gripe that I have (and have in the past with other Apress books) is the lack of color. With reduced printing costs and a book that has the title 'Graphics' to not have any color within is a poor choice by the publisher. Having said that, if you program with GDI+ and want to get a good handle on this technology, you will be hard-pressed to find a better book to learn from then this nice effort by Apress.
   
   **** RECOMMENDED



4. This book is for beginners and doesn't cover advanced materials related to real-world DGI+ programming. As an example, its matrix coverage is very limited. I don't know why the title of the book has "Pro" in it. Perhaps for its coverage of making custom controls. If the word "Pro" was not there, I would give it 5 out of 5 - a good book for for beginners.

1 comments about Model-Driven Software Development: Technology, Engineering, Management.

1. This book is practical and it has given me the knowledge to begin successfully the development of projects with this paradigm.

5 comments about A Complete Guide to PivotTables: A Visual Approach.

1. As an intermediate user, I found nothing new here. I must agree with the other reviews here that state that this book seems rushed. There was not alot of time spent on each aspect of pivot tables, and the examples provide no new information that you can't find on the web. May be good for beginners, but again, just do Google search on pivot tables an you'll find the same info.



2. I was familiar with Excel, knew nothing about pivot tables ( a really great tool for analyzing data from spreadsheets), but with a new job where people do use pivot tables I wanted a book to teach me and to keep as a desk reference. This book was very rough going in the beginning, frustrating, and unclear. It wasn't until I got past chapter 3 things started to clear up, in fact chapter 3 should have been chapter 1 as it explains the basics. Furthermore the author has a tendency to switch database examples in mid lesson so that it is very confusing while trying to follow along learning an aspect of pivot tables. The book should have been edited better, someone unfamiliar with pivot tables should have tried to learn from it before the book was sent to press. There are mistakes in the examples that can make one think one has screwed up somehow (listed as ascending but is descending, columns missing or with different data, the wrong name of a chart type so that reader is creating a different chart from the one shown). It did come with downloads to use as examples and by the time I was through it I had learned pivot tables. It could have been better done. I did not bother with the programming section so I cannot speak to that.



3. Save yourself time and money. If you know the fundamentals of pivot tables and like to learn by playing your time would be best spent experimenting in excel. The book spends much of its space telling you things you should be able to deduce by looking at the excel menus.



4. If you just have a basic understanding of Excel, like I do, this is an excellent guide. Very understandable for non-technical types. Gives you step-by-step instructions. If you are an expert programmer, this book is probably not for you. I thought the screen shots and demo data was particularly helpful in understanding the basics of how to use Pivot tables. Of course, like anything else, you have to apply your own practical experience to it.



5. If you are an excel or access user who does not make use just yet of pivot tables and charts, this book is for you. It explains at a very basic level how to use pivot tables. Why is a matter of what you do and your math and imagination abilities.
   
   I recommend it for people who do not use them, because many people are still unfamiliar with the power of these tools and they truly are powerful and time savers.
   
   Power users purchase this book expecting too much for their level, I believe, so stick to it if you don't even know what they are or do not use them at all for your data analysis.

1 comments about Requirements Engineering.

1. This book presents in the space of some 200 pages, split into 9 chapters, a clear and concise introduction to a state-of-the-art approach to requirements engineering (RE). It starts out by introducing a generic RE process, which is then instatiated, later in the book, into concrete processes for generating stakeholder requirements (i.e. user requirements) and system requirements.

   The beautiful thing aboout this generic process (and the concrete ones to follow it) is that V&V and change management are intrinsically part of it. The authors are particularly strong in their treatment of traceability. They have gone into an unusual depth. The book has some good advice on writing better requirements . In particular, I find the idea of requirements boilerplates (i.e. templates for each class of requirements) extremely useful. The book concludes with an introduction/demonstration of the DOORS RE tool, from Telelogic (the affiliation of two of the authors).

   Overall, this is an excellent book that every requirements engineer, should have on their desk.

3 comments about Software Radio: A Modern Approach to Radio Engineering (Prentice Hall Communications Engineering and Emerging Technologies Series).

1. This book is a one-stop source for everything you need to know about Software Radio. So, this is an excellent text-book for a 1-semester course on software radio. Some of the concepts such as analog-to-digital conversion are discussed in detail, although the relevance of a 70 page chapter on smart antennas in a Software Radio book still eludes me. A good introduction to RF implementation issues is provided. There isn't too much Math in this book, which is both good and bad. My only complaint is that there are lot of errors, both conceptual and typographical, in this book and many of these errors are not addressed in the webpage maintained by the author. Otherwise, it is a very good book.



2. I give this book a 5, despite the errors, because of how well it covered such a broad topic. The reviewer above mentioned the chapter on RF implementation issues, which was very good. The chapter on smart antennas is pretty good also. I think that it is included because the "software" part of a software defined radio is where beam-steering and space-diversity algorithms are implmented. It's not totally out of place and provides for some breadth. All of these VT profs (Reed, Durgin, Rappaport) tend to put out books that facilitate understanding and then, when you are ready for the underlying mathematics, they'll cite you the places to go for that. IMHO, that's a good approach- otherwise, they might as well not write books and just slap together a bunch of papers, bind 'em and call that a rigorous text.



3. I usually expect any book coming out of a university to be highly theoretical and math-centric, but this book is neither. It's a clear exposition of software radio concepts and issues, with a great deal of attention paid to signal generation and processing. Unlike another reviewer, I was happy to see 70 pages devoted to smart antennas, since any multi-protocol transceiver operating in the GHz range is going to need them. The exposition is clear, well developed and well written. More editing would have helped, but overall highly recommended.

5 comments about Software Factories: Assembling Applications with Patterns, Models, Frameworks, and Tools.

1. First, the Software Factories concept is great in some points while it combines model driven design and domain specific languages. If it is a real future for software development you have to read and take your conclusions.
   
   But..this book is too Microsoft biased. As written by a MSFT emplyee this is kind of expected but the fact is that the guy makes everything to say C#/.Net is the future of Java. This includes saying that JIT compilation was first introduced by .Net, that JavaBeans are a convention that are evolved in C# by delegates and properties and lots of other tries to make people believe that .Net is an evolution of the Java platform. I think this really compromises the book and would be much, much better if it just used C# and forgot all comparisson.
   
   I'd suggest that people intersted in MDA, DSL and new trends read this book but just skip all the Java bashing.



2. With four authors the writing is a bit varied toward the middle to the end, but overall this book is just plain boring; I find this to be a fascinating subject and even I was bored. Go figure.
   
   My main gripes about this book (boredom aside) are:
   
   1) The coverage of DSL's (domain specific language): the authors repeatedly state that the cost of dsl developement can be prohibitive. I dispute this arugument as languages such as ocaml make the implementation of arbitrary languages realatively straight forward to people with the know how.
   
   2) They claim domain specific languages are more powerful than general purpose languages. Their concept of 'power' seems to be skewed toward some weird metric I'm not familiar with.
   
   3) The Microsoft bias is just annoying. Doubly annoying because if anything happens in this space it will be from the open source crowd, imho.
   
   4) There's alot of repetition; every other page the authors are remaking the case for increasing abstraction in developement tools because 'compilers increase abstraction from assembler'. Okay, I got it the first time, you don't have to repeat it fifty times.
   
   I think it's inevitable that something like software factories will emerge in time. This book gives an overview of the authors vision of where things are going. But they're academics writeing to an academic crowd and that's how the book reads.



3. This book provided insightful coverage of what I think is a fascinating topic. THe author organizes the material in a logical manner making it easy to transition from one topic to another. I would have liked more illustrations, but what was supplied was enough for me to understand everything. Very recommended!



4. Wow! I bought this book a long time ago and it lived on my "bibliophile" stack of bought but unread gems. It's a stunning book if you seek to understand the decomposition of complexity in modern software applications and the complex deployment architectures they work in. My only concern is the book is not an engineering book - there are no mathematical models of scale and performance for distributed decompositions. It has a excellent description of aspect oriented programming which I learned from. The authors could also benefit if they discovered the ideas in Carliss Baldwin's superlative "Design Rules" book and brought those ideas into their own discussion of the software construction domain. This is a WONDERFUL book for enterprise architects.



5. This book is interesting but it is poorly organized. It seems that ideas are mixed, and chapters repeat the same ideas again and again, sometimes calling them in different way.

3 comments about Ajax and REST Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach.

1. I bought this book thinking I'd have a practical approach on building web applications using REST and Ajax.
   
   From the start, this book almost does not explain what is REST. The book starts verbosely talking about AJAX, DHTML and Web Services with no clear insight. The first steps are testing REST hadn't developed anything yet, it shows code snippets with neither explanation nor context and awful graphics. Two hours after starting reading the book, I feel very dissapointed: no practical advice, no way to build a sample application, a demo, anything like "My First REST Webapp" to have a gratification.
   
   I'm an Appress fan, but this book, from my humble point of view, is horrible.



2. I cam really close to not buying this book based on the single review that was available. But, poking around the web, reading other reviews, and looking through the table of contents, it appeared to be exactly what I needed to help me complete my current project. When I got the book, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it will indeed fit the bill.
   
   I do agree with the other review that the diagrams are pretty horrible, but they do get the point across.
   
   This book goes a lot more in depth than most "recipe" books, with deeper explanations of solutions, and why the solution was chosen. So there's more learning than simple cut-n-paste solutions.
   
   Please also note that the user level for this book is "intermediate-advanced". If you are just learning about RESTful Web Services, check out RESTful Web Services. Ajax and REST Recipes is more for folks that already have a pretty good handle on REST and want to learn how to put that knowledge to work.



3. My title says it all. Hard to read, difficult and poorly chosen examples, bad editing (mistakes all over the place... in code, there's a big difference between a ',' and ';'), have NO IDEA why in a book with this subject, the author discusses table-based layouts (for a NUMBER of pages), the "javascript recipes" section which is just a bad javascript tutorial where the author actually recommends using eval()... I could keep going on, but save yourself the .49c I spent on this book, really, it isn't even worth that. Too bad Amazon requires at least one star.

5 comments about Microsoft .NET Compact Framework (Core Reference).

1. I have some .NET C# experience, and this book is great. If you were new to C# it would probably be difficult, but for those with some .NET experience this book is perfect.

   I expected the book would come with a CD containing code samples, but you have to download them from Microsoft.
   http://www.microsoft.com/mspress/books/companion/5960.asp <-, then click on Companion Content.

   -Matt
   Listening to: 'God Fearing Man' from 'Fight For Your Mind' by 'Ben Harper' on Media Center 9.1




2. This is definatley the most comprhencive and infomative book about pocket pc out there.

   Buy this book first, you will not regret it.




3. Chapter 17, UsingSQLCESample. First, the buttonAdd_Click() event wasn't added to the button, so you click away and nothing happens, until you figure it out yourself & fix it. Then, the section in the book dealing with parameters is missing from the sample code, and the DataGrid never does fill with data. This job is difficult enough without having to spend time debugging some "expert's" sample code!



4. I have learned a lot about the .NET compact framework. It has been a great first-book to begin my understanding of this topic. The examples in the book really help to advance my understanding. I highly recommend it for anyone looking to begin a project on the .NET compact framework.



5. As the first Compact Framework book on the market, it helped light the way for all that followed. As a mobile developer, this book has helped me tremendously and I refer to it all the time. This book belongs in the collection of anyone who has to tackle the nuances of embedded development on the Windows Mobile platform.

5 comments about BIRT: A Field Guide to Reporting (The Eclipse Series).

1. Every once in awhile, I get to review a book on a technology or software package I've not heard of before. That was the case with BIRT: A Field Guide to Reporting by Diana Peh, Alethea Hannemann, and Nola Hague. I'm stunned at the quality and depth of this open-source Eclipse reporting tool. Oh, and the book's pretty good, too... :)
   
   Contents:
   Part 1 - Installing BIRT: Prerequisites for BIRT; Installing a BIRT Report Designer; Updating a BIRT Installation
   Part 2 - Getting Started: Learning the Basics; Planning Your Report
   Part 3 - Connecting to a Data Source; Retrieving Data; Binding Data
   Part 4 - Designing Reports: Laying Out a Report; Displaying Text; Formatting Report Content; Sorting and Grouping Data; Aggregating Data; Writing Expressions; Filtering Data; Enabling the User to Filter Data; Building a Report That Contains Subreports; Using a Chart in a Report; Displaying Data in Charts; Laying Out and Formatting a Chart
   Part 5 - Enhancing Reports: Designing a Multipage Report; Adding Interactive Viewing Features; Building a Shared Report Development Framework; Localizing Text; Glossary; Index
   
   BIRT stands for Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools, and it runs on the Eclipse platform. Running as a plug-in or using the Rich Client Platform, BIRT will allow the user to create reports from various data sources like JDBC-enabled databases, text files, and XML files. The authors start out with the basics on how to download and install the software (it's dead simple). Then using a few tutorial exercises and plenty of screen prints, they walk you through the basics of connecting to a data source and building a report. The features available in BIRT seem endless, and I was completely amazed at the quality and depth that the software offers for both simple and complex report generation. Throughout the entire read, I kept thinking about a number of applications I wanted to try this out on. Normally to get something of this magnitude, you have to buy reporting packages that cost thousands. Peh, Hannemann, and Hague have completely twisted my world view when it comes to reporting. Great job!
   
   The only thing that wasn't covered too much was how to roll this out to an end-user base without having to make your audience experts in Eclipse. It seems as if there must be some way to package these reports up to shield the user from the internals. There's a follow-on book that covers integration and extension of BIRT, and I'm hoping that deployment is covered more there. But that in no way takes away from the value and quality of what the authors did here...
   
   This is subject matter that has me excited for some potentially cool applications. If things work the way I hope they will, I'll owe a debt of gratitude to this book...



2. Purchasing this book is a great way to reward the authors and publishers. While this may be a noble cause, it is not necessary for you to understand BIRT. The software is so powerful and easy to install and use, that a user guide is not necessary for most developers. After installing BIRT you'll find most of the contents of this book in the Help documents under "BIRT Report Developer Guide -> Field Guide To BIRT". Here's how the TOCs line up:
   
   Book TOC only:
   Prerequisites
   Installing
   Updating
   Planning your Report
   
   Book TOC and Help TOC:
   Learning the Basics
   Connecting to Datasource
   Retrieving Data
   Binding Data
   Laying Out a Report
   Displaying Text
   Formatting Report Content
   Sorting and Grouping Data
   Aggregating Data
   Writing Expresssions
   Filtering Data
   Enabling User to Filter
   Reports with Subreports
   Using a Chart in a Report
   Displaying Data in Charts
   Chart Layout / Formatting
   Designing a Multipage Report
   Add Interactive Features
   Shared Development Framework
   Localizing Text
   
   Help TOC only:
   Scripting in Report Design
   JavaScript Event Handlers
   Java Event Handlers
   Scripting Reference
   
   If you would rather read this information on paper than the help documents, I recommend this book. If you can install it and use a help page, don't bother.



3. So Eclipse is migrating slightly... Hitherto, much of Eclipse was used by programmers. Mostly Java programmers, at that. A very nice development and runtime environment. But this book shows that some Eclipse developers want to extend the scope of who can use Eclipse.
   
   The extensive reporting abilities in this book can be implemented by someone who wants to write a report, that will have tables or graphs derived from some data source, typically a database. Unlike most previous books in this Eclipse series, there is less need for the reader to program. BIRT is more akin to a layout or declarative language, like HTML. Not everyone has the aptitude or inclination to be a programmer. And just as HTML is considered easier to understand than C, say, so too is BIRT to outreach to a broader crowd.
   
   However, BIRT is not quite a complete declarative approach. There is indeed scope for programmatic customisation, using scripting languages. Though the only such language described in the text is JavaScript. Most BIRT users won't have to go to this extent, but it is available for special needs.
   
   Unlike other reporting packages, BIRT's output is written as an XML file, with a particular set of XML tags. Instead of being in a proprietary binary format. Much easier to fit into other processing for some extended workflow, if desired.
   
   The blurb on the back cover is a little intriguing. It says that the authors have a combined 165 years experience in various technical fields. But with 3 authors, that amounts to 55 years each?! Really? Is there some double counting going on?



4. "BIRT: A Field Guide to Reporting" is a great tutorial for learning how to use BIRT. BIRT (Business Intelligence and Reporting Tools" is described including its relationship to Eclipse. After covering how to install BIRT, the book goes into great detail on how to use the report designer.
   
   The target audience should be familiar with HTML, SQL and JavaScript as stated in the introduction. The book describes functions used, but you are expected to know the basic syntax.
   
   As expected, the book covers how to use each of the features of BIRT. They are all described with step by step instructions. There are also a few tutorials walking you through the process from start to finish. I liked the "how to" style for tasks.
   
   The book includes tips on how to plan a report and what to consider. It also includes common code snippets that you may want to use and lists available functions.
   
   I was particularly impressed with the abundance of screenshots and the excellent glossary. If you are thinking about using BIRT, this book is a valuable addition to your library.



5. The book arrived in a timely manner. It was just what I needed. It help me develop reports and graphs that impressed my boss right away. Birt will be very competitive to high cost vendor solutions for business intelligence reporting. Right now it is a sleeper, best kept secret.