3 comments about Game Development Essentials: Game Story & Character Development.

1. As a student in interactive writing for video games, this book is a must-have!



2. This comprehensive guide is an excellent resource for anyone interested in game design and story writing. It systematically details all of the elements necessary to good storytelling, framing them in the context of various video game genres. The conversational style is engaging and easy to read, with numerous examples illustrating each concept. Review questions and prompts at the end of each chapter provide a variety of opportunities to work with the ideas and put them into practice. This is a must-read for all students of game development and anyone interested in honing their storytelling skills.



3. This book would have been nice if it had more practical tips on story and plot development and innovative examples on how to create interesting characters. But at least 50% of the book just describes what is common sense and stuff that you know already if you are interested in this topic. Also most of the thrown-in comments from people in the industry are just the obvious blather and no really useful tips. Everybody keeps telling you how storytelling for games is different from storytelling for film and TV but none of them give you any innovative examples on how to approach creating ideas for your game or creating intricate plot layouts and interesting character backgrounds.

3 comments about PL/I Structured Programming.

1. I needed a reference manual for PL/I and decided to go for this book. It is very good if you are new to the language or are trying to remember what a particular function does. It even has separate sections at the back of the book for ASCII and EBCDIC tables, how the different PL/I data formats are stored in records, and a good summary at the back showing which functions are supported by the various PL/I compilers and subsets. It is not a the cheapest (hardback) book on PL/I but is well worth the investment.



2. Robin Vowel's book compliments Hughe's book for a variety of algorithms and none-MVS platforms (emphasizing certain PL/I facilities well).
   
   NB.
   Caution with inexpensive used copies. They may not be the latest edtion. Previous editions are more verbose.



3. This book is utilized as a standard reference guide within our PL/I programming group. It doubles as a training reference for new PL/I programmers and as a general desk reference for programmers with more advanced PL/I programming skills. The overall content is well organized and easy to use.

1 comments about Enterprise Architecture at Work: Modelling, Communication and Analysis.

1. This is first in its kind book that tackles enterprise architecture modeling with a holistic approach. Book presents a unified modeling approach for enterprise architecture and simplifies the relationship between architecture domains with a simple Meta model. It also deals with communication and analysis aspect nicely.
   
   This does not provide any details about what architecture development process should be nor it gives any insight on choosing an architecture framework. So set your expectation before buying. AS book title says it is about modeling, communication and Analysis.

5 comments about MCSA/MCSE Self-Paced Training Kit (Exams 70-292 and 70-296): Upgrading Your Certification to Microsoft Windows Server(TM) 2003 (Training Kit).

1. This book covers the essentials skills to upgrade to your certification to Windows Server 2003. However, it does cover many topics that you already knew from your Windows 2000 experience, which sometimes are topics you don't want to read about because for the most part, you expected to read only about the improvements and changes from Windows 2000 to Windows 2003. In spite of this, it is a GREAT source of information for people with little experience with Windows 2000.



2. I used this book as a primary study guide for the 2003 upgrade exams and although it doesn't cover all the material, it is an excellent book and in my humble opinion the single best source of prepartion.
   
   From what I've gathered, the exams changed sometime in late 2005 and some of the content is dated. That however is not the fault of the authors and unlike many of the "Microsoft Press" books, I found this an enjoyable and easy read.
   
   The book is not indended to deeply review the "Core MCSE Curriculum". Its' audience is expected to be familiar with Windows 2000 engineering and administrative principles as well as a practicing administrator. The text will present content that is now covered under the exam (ie: high availibility services and certificate services)and features that are differential to the old product line. So do not expect this to be your sole source for content, at best it covers 80% of the exam's breadth. If you feel in the learch, I can only suggest brushing up on your 2000 or 2003 core infrastructure notes especially dealing with the subjects of GPOs and Site design\ AD-replication.
   
   Subjects that are missing from the book that require research are EMS (in-band\ out of band services), Role Separation for Cerificate services and WIFI GPO administrative practices. A list of references to supportive documentation can be found in the study notes at [...] . The webpage's host has done an admirable job of putting them together.
   
   In final preparation for the exam, I can only suggest Transcenders as a simulation software...accept no other. CBT nuggets has some great multi-media presentations available through their website to aid in reviewing the material and their content is first class.
   
   
   Good Luck



3. I've used two preparation guides, this one and the one from Sybex. MSPress is definitely the best of these two books. Covers it all, the sybex version is too superficial and just does not cover it all, it actually lacks some important material.
   
   This book contains lots of exercises, so you get hands on experience with all kinds of tools. Believe me, you are going to need it! The actual exam contains several simulations, so just reading about the available tools, options and functions is just not enough.
   
   Futhermore every chapter ends with a small case study with some questions all of course regarding to stuff outlined in the chapter.
   
   Without this book I would not have passed, both exams.



4. Having achieved NT, 2000, and now 2003 MCSE certification, I've found the Microsoft Press books to be mixed bags. This one, however, is excellent. Weighing in at nearly 1500 pages, it covers a lot of ground. If you read (and re-read) the entire book, as well as ALL of the test questions in the included Measure Up sample test, and follow up on unclear information/answers with the TechNet website, and of course have real-world experience, then you'll have excellent preparation for the exams.
   
   When reading this book, I kept admiring the editing. Most tech books have some serious editing problems - unclear wording, dubious or flat-out incorrect information. With this one, I was continually impressed with how each sentence was written to say precisely what was intended, with not too many or too few words. That's not to say it's pithy - writing "Windows Server 2003" repeatedly takes up space - just that it's very well written.
   
   The glossary and included ebooks are helpful as well. Only bummer is that you can't print from the ebooks, so when you're studying, you'll need to apply pen to paper, or go to TechNet and do some printing.
   
   The Measure Up practice test is not nearly as well written as the book - some dubious wording, typos, and incorrectly scored questions (like the answer is A, you put A, and the test scores it wrong). However, the practice test covers topics not included in the book (!), so it's worthwile to go through it.
   
   Oh, and Microsoft even managed to inject a bit of humor here and there.
   
   If Microsoft Press continues publishing books like this, they'll be a strong alternative to Sybex and others.



5. Good training book to upgrade the MCSA or MCSE 2003 certificate. Easy to use and comprehensible. I recommend this book to prepare for the MCSA or MCSE Upgrade

5 comments about Web Word Wizardry A Net-Savvy Writing Guide.

1. This book helped shape my view of how to write online, and it's done wonders for the web site I manage. The site has boasted about a 50% increase in customers, and I feel a large part of that can be traced back to principles learned in this book.

   Of special importance is the weight McAlpine places on being International-sensitive, because though it goes without saying, the Web is accessible to the entire world economy. And there are people who speak English in nearly every country in that world economy. So, of course, everyone is taking advantage of this fact, right? Don't count on it.

   Read this book, and enlighten yourself.




2. I purchased this book with the intention of improving my ability to write for the internet. I was disapointed to discover there was very little coverage of writing copy for the web. Much of the book covered outdated search engine optimization techniques. Avoid this book if you want to learn how to write online copy.



3. This book really is not a web savvy guide to writing web content. Do no believe the title.



4. A previous reviewer stated that this is not a book on writing content for the web. I strongly disagree. Proving that presentation is only half the battle to good web design, this book is a thorough analysis of good web content. Even if you are having someone else do your web pages for you, I would highly recommend reading this book.



5. When looking for something to help with writing articles for the web, I came across Web Word Wizardry here at Amazon. Behind every great website of any type needs content or there is no traffic. Web Word Wizardry is a older book from 2001 but the information was helpful in its ideas of how to do it. If you don't know how to correctly write ezines, articles or blogs this book would be for you. This book was written before blogs became big news but the ideas will work for them as well.
   Its more for beginners but as someone who has been writing for the web for over 4 years now even I found helpful tips. Its easy to read and easy to follow its tips and tricks.
   Its not just writing articles, there is helpful tips for search engine submission and optimizing web sites.
   Its a good book all the way around and worth adding to your collection of books for writing anything for the web today.

1 comments about The Definitive Guide to Apache MyFaces and Facelets (Definitive Guide).

1. While most existing JSF books focus on teaching readers how to use the Faces framework, this book instead looks specifically at Facelets and the component libraries within the Apache MyFaces project, viz. Tomahawk, Trinidad, Orchestra, and Tobago.
   
   After spending a weekend with this book, here are my impressions:
   
   * The book is fairly short, and so seems very diminutive when stacked up against other books on JSF. You can imagine reading this from cover to cover over a long weekend.
   
   * With four main authors, and six contributing authors, this book reads like a series of articles on JSF. Fortunately, the articles are well written for the most part, and you can read the chapters out of order without loss of continuity.
   
   
   MyFaces Core:
   =============
   The chapter on MyFaces Core (the actual JSF implementation) is only about 20 pages long. So while it works as a decent refresher, it is absolutely not a first introduction to JSF. I suspect newcomers to JSF will find this book rather daunting unless they've already read some of the other excellent books on Faces (see my review for Kito Mann's JSF in Action.)
   
   Tomahawk:
   =========
   This chapter is very well written and focuses on some important components (like tree2, schedule, inputCalendar, etc.) The explanations are clear enough to make you feel you should be able to get these working after a reading. However, I was disappointed to find marginal treatment of the t:saveState component - especially as there are multiple references to it in other chapters (as in the discussion of Orchestra, and in JSF pitfalls).
   . . . . . .
   As an aside, this book's index is the gold standard for tech books - about 30 pages for a 285 page book. When I went looking for saveState, for example, I was able to quickly zero in on all its references.
   . . . . . .
   
   Facelets:
   =========
   I got a strange sense of deja vu when I read the chapter on Facelets - turns out it is lifted almost verbatim from APress's Facelets Essentials - along with the surreal Bird Store example. If you have read that book, you won't find many surprises here. This chapter and its Facelets appendix take up 58 pages which turns out to be over two thirds of the content of that other book. Fortunately its the best two thirds - so you really get two books in one here.
   . . . . . .
   What really bothered me is that most of the examples in this book use JSP as the presentation technology. If Facelets is really worthy of having a mention on the title, I'd have expected to see more real world usage throughout the book.
   
   So why not drink the KoolAid?
   . . . . . .
   Misc projects:
   ==============
   A common problem I had with the other chapters was that the examples were too short to be of much use.
   
   For instance, the example for pageFlowScope is too trivial to convincingly demonstrate why it is useful. It provides nothing more than a description of the mechanical aspects of using this scope. I'd have loved to see a working example that exemplified how it avoided the weaknesses of the request and session scopes.
   
   [To fully grasp the actual meat of this particular topic, I highly recommend reading about Tomahawk's saveState, Trinidad's pageFlowScope, and Orchestra's conversation scope - all in one sitting. These are all different solutions to the same core issue - so they're best read together. The discussion in Orchestra's chapter is by far the best - esp. see Page 175 - Managing Independent Windows, and page 194 - Orchestra's Architecture.]
   
   
   Antipatterns:
   =============
   The chapter on JSF Antipatterns is a very interesting read. A few of these antipatterns seem like spectacularly bad ideas to begin with and you wonder how they passed design reviews in the first place. However, there are a lot of practical usage tips here (such as thread safety issues with custom validators and converters) that made it worth my time.
   
   
   Appendices:
   ===========
   The information on dependency injection with Spring is confined to about a paragraph - so a better choice is Spring Recipes by Gary Mak. The appendix on view state encryption is also a useful addition.
   
   Conclusion:
   ===========
   This book was long overdue - and is well worth your time if you are into using the MyFaces sub-projects. Throw in Facelets and you have a winning combination.
   
   
   Damodar Chetty
   swengsol.com

5 comments about iPhone Open Application Development: Write Native Objective-C Applications for the iPhone.

1. Be warned this book is for unlocked iPhone application development only; not the official Apple iPhone SDK. If you are interested in hacking iPhones, this may be for you. But for most iPhone application developers, the material here will be of little use.



2. While this book was well written and informative, it is well past its prime now. Apple's Official SDK is no longer beta, and thrid-party apps are flowing on the AppStore. While there may still be a reason to jailbreak and write completely open and un-restricted apps, this book is still stuck way in the past. The v2.0 firmware has changed so radically that the examples and teaching in this book will only hurt the would-be developer.
   
   Wait for the new batch of books about the offical SDK coming out this fall, and in the mean-time check out a book on plain-old Objective-C instead.



3. As the other reviewers mentioned this book doesn't specifically talk about the Apple Official SDK, but ALOT of the information is the same. In fact there is no other source that you can find with such clean and simple instructions. Also, if you are planning on NOT using IB to make your UI this book is gold since that info is hard if not impossible to find.



4. This book was a life saver. A few months ago, when I first started coding for the iPhone, I had no clue what to do with anything. There was literally NO DOCUMENTATION whatsoever. However, this book make learning the iPhone's API a breeze. Since then, I've gone on to make several well known iPhone 1.x applications, including PocketTouch, FontSwap, and StatusStyle.
   
   I would highly recommend this book to anybody who wants to learn how to start coding great applications for the iPhone.



5. Coming from a PHP world, Object-Oriented Programming can be difficult to wrap your mind around. Thankfully the introduction chapters here aren't too far overhead. OOP concepts are a must-have for modern programmers, and this book makes no contentions to teach you Objective-C directly. However, the author has included some good references to where you can take beginner OOP courses.
   
   Through the first year of iPhone's being and well into the pre-2.0 and post-2.0 environment, this book proves invaluable for its chapters on the UIKit, a large part of the API that is used to build graphical apps on the device. Extensive coverage of UIKit classes, as well as undocumented 1.0 enumerations for certain components makes this a frequent reader when you are getting started.
   
   The examples within the chapters cover just about anything you can think of doing with the UI, within reason. You will be able to confidently build apps that rival the ones included by Apple itself. Chapters on audio and graphics subsystems are as complete as could be at the time, and offer some examples that would be useful for game developers.
   
   Quirks about the Ojective-C language are briefly discussed, then wonderfully mastered and repeated frequently to drive the point home. Object delegates, high-level messging, inherritence; you will get a full course of modern OOP goodness.
   
   By the time you are done working with the chapter's examples you will feel like a million bucks. The iPhone platform is now your own lump of clay for you to mold and shape to your will. Couple this with some in-depth cocoa publications and you have the all the keys needed to swing the doors wide open. Feel smart, be informed and discover the tremendously versatile API that is iPhone OS.
   
   The 2.0 version of Apple software makes some important changes, but for the most part, this book is still very useful. Great for beginners -- even if you don't know OOP, you can learn from examples on the 'Net and be way very soon.

5 comments about Practical Apache Struts 2 Web 2.0 Projects (Practical Projects).

1. Its not for beginners
   
   This book is not good for beginners. Its very hard to follow this book with so many assumptions.



2. Like others said its not for beginners. However, that doesn't make it a bad book. If you are looking for guide for going to struts 1 to 2, this book is not it. With that said, if you are a webwork developer or already have a handle on the Struts 2 basics this book does provide some nice samples. It provides a nice sampling of how to integrate with some of the plugins that have been added over the last year. (zero config, wild cards in configuration, gwt, hibernate, spring, security). You may already be an accomplished struts 2 development however, their may be some things to take away from this to add to one's cookbook.



3. I was extremely disappointed in the authors other struts 2 book; and was planning to avoid this one, but all the other stuts 2 books kept slipping their date, so I picked this one up on a whim.
   
   I'm rather surprised by the negative reviews people are giving it, as I found it a very useful book. Yes the title is a little hokey and the content only pays lip-service to Web 2.0 aspects. I have been working on my own personal projects in Struts 2 for a few months so I wasn't a complete novice coming into the book, and I lurk on both the users and developer mailing lists. I felt the material was well laid out and followed a natural progression. The book doesn't really cover MVC theory nor how it applies to any of the "Action" frameworks, so its not really a book for people with no prior experience in those areas.
   
   The other limitation I found was the book just ends. There was no real wrap up or conclusion. Basically he finishes developing the last use case of this sample application and on the facing page is the index. To me this was the only place that felt rushed.
   
   The book doesn't cover a fair bit of the annotation based configuration opposed to XML and a few of the more established plugins however that are a few places where it might not be "future-proof" given the works that's going on now merging/combining several of the convention-over-configuration plugins into a single unified one for struts 2.1



4. "Practical Apache Struts2 Web 2.0 Projects" walks you through developing an app in Struts2. It includes use cases, iterations, a build process and some unit tests.
   
   A number of other reviews correctly point out this book is not for beginners. You should be familiar with MVC before starting out. This was ok as I wasn't expecting an "intro to struts 2" book based on the title. The author includes a section on Hibernate bare essentials to get readers with different experience on the same page.
   
   I found there to be a good balance between how Struts 2.0 works and implementing common things you might actually want to do in practice. While the book does cover Web 2.0 a bit, this is more of an extra buzzword in the title. The last two chapters are really the Web 2.0 part - RSS and AJAX.
   
   The end left me a little off balance. There was a whole chapter of introduction. The end was the AJAX chapter and the immediately dumped you in the index. A bit of conclusion, or at least a blank page, would have been nice.
   
   Overall, the book was fine. It is good for a "recipes of common tasks" type book once you have read a bit about Struts 2.0.



5. The samples in the book learn you very useful information about the Struts 2. You can download the sample codes. Futhermore you are immediately able to use them in your applications. Then you feel as you are at very good point to go forward into the details of the Struts 2.

5 comments about Coder to Developer: Tools and Strategies for Delivering Your Software.

1. The book tries to cover the whole of the software development process from planning, team management, coding best practices and finally creating an installer and releasing the product. With such a broad range of topics each one is only treated very superfluosly and shallow. The author has a very tool centric view on things and as such many chapters are just a market overview of available software for the task at hand. I don't think this is of much use for the reader since that is exactly the kind of information you can gather in half an hour of internet research with google - and even after reading the book you'd still have to do this research anyways in order to gather current prices for the latest gadgets. All software solutions presented in the book are for windows only and Microsoft's tools seem to get extra focus and attention. The intended target audience for the book are independant developers and small software shops. As such the author assumes that you are wearing multiple hats and are filling all kinds of different roles from designer to coder to management. I very much liked this perspective on the software world because for one thing I am one such lone wolf developer and second because there are already tons of software books for the large corporate software developer. Those books typically assume loads of process and management and different departments etc which all don't apply for the single developer. Two important things missing in the book's coverage are two chapters: One for the time before concrete planning actually begins on the question of "what to develop" and determining markets. Another one for the other end of the road on how to market your software, how to price it and how to present and distribute it. If those were included I think the book would truly cover the complete process a lone developer goes through from idea to product.
   All in all, the book gave me little new information but a good checklist to work through on a project.



2. Gunderloy assumes you can already program well. But he shows how making a commercial product means you need extra skills. It is the assimilation of these skills that makes you into a developer, in his eyes.
   
   Unit testing is one of these skills. Vital in verifying that crucial routines work. While this might not be feasible for all routines, you should aspire to do so as much as possible. Plus, it would be good if the unit tests could be run in an automated fashion. So that you can easily and often test.
   
   Another necessary trait is to use a source code control system. So that you can roll back to an earlier known good version if necessary. More importantly, it enables a team of programmers to work on the same code base.
   
   Having a streamlined build is also good. It is convenient to be able to type 'make' [or the equivalent] and have all your code compile.



3. This is a book that, while probably beneficial to all coders, seems particularly useful to junior programmers and technical managers. If you are a more experienced developer and/or don't develop using .NET, then you will find yourself skimming about a third of the book. Before you decide that a automatically disregarding a large portion of a book's contents qualifies that book as not worthwhile, I would point out that the other two-thirds of the contents make up for any "deficiencies." The important thing that this book does is provide a list of sorts of all of the areas that are important for a high-quality developer (or manager) to bear in mind.
   
   Gunderloy walks through the development process, from planning to delivery, discussing many of the ideas and processes that one learns by working on a high-quality software development team. Many of the code snippets or details concerning tools are MS, if not .NET, specific. However, a junior programmer will likely learn a number of things by reading these sections - even if they do not develop .NET applications. More experienced programmers may even discover some useful notions as they peruse these sections. The key here is that Gunderloy is covering the span of the software development process instead of addressing a single area in depth. Thus, where the reader may have a number of areas of expertise, he or she stands a good chance of shoring up weaknesses in those regions between areas of expertise.
   
   As this book is a relatively quick read and covers a wide area in less than 300 pages, it goes without saying that none of the areas discussed are covered in great depth. However, after reading it, one is more likely to be able to effectively investigate weak areas. Gunderloy does provide some useful starting places to begin these explorations.



4. Thorough but readable reference book for developers who have a clear idea of how to code, but may not have thought about all the supporting activities and tools to help do them. Probably more appropriate for new developers just out of university, where computer science, but not necessarily software development, is taught. Written for developers in small companies, but addresses same topics that apply in large companies too.



5. I'll point out small bits of comments of this book.
   
   For example, the author misses the usefullness of virtual machines, encouraging readers to buy cheap pcs to test their software projects. Having Virtual PC or VMWare for free, it is a much cheaper solution.
   
   Another "warning" comes from the lists of tools, maybe too much in my opinion. A developer can unfocus from the most important point: coding and thinking correctly. At least, the author notices that they should be used with caution.
   
   Overall, gives very good advices and practices for developing, bot lonely and in small groups. It gives good tips about managing projects too.
   
   There are chapters about source code control, testing, visual studio tooltips, code analysing and generation, bug tracking, logging... even automation techniques and tools (continuous integration software included!). Great for newcomers to this critical components. The documentation chapter is very good too, mentioning even developer diaries and postmortems.
   
   Some of the tools mentioned are outdated, and some tools like Resharper, Virtual PC or Reflector are missing, so their chapters seem uncomplete, but software development is a very fast-evolving world so it's logic.
   
   I recommend it to anyone who just have developed with Visual Studio "standard applications" and wants to learn more professional tools and techniques oriented to the development lifecycle.

2 comments about Mastering Enterprise SOA with SAP NetWeaver and mySAP ERP.

1. There are not many more books that review the subject like Scott and Vamsi do. If you are just out to figure out the capabilities or trying to apply SOA with SAP, this is THE book to read.



2. This is a fascinating book that attempts to decode SAP's strategy and the reader will get the glimpse of impending consolidation and why many software firms such as i2, high jump, etc have put themselves up on sale. Most likely, days of best of breed software companies are over. It is now a platform war where platforms are being optimized. Barriers are being created to enable higher pricing and fewer IT engineering resources to do the work. Therefore, I believe that companies should evaluate the platform before listening to the consultants; professors; and best of breed companies trying to sell a solution etc.