5 comments about Swing Hacks: Tips and Tools for Killer GUIs (Hacks).

1. This book had ways of implementing all the useful features that users expect such as drag and drop, transparent/non-rectangular frames, and lots of other things. Well worth the money



2. This book gives a good set of more in depth approaches to building GUI in Swing. While reading it I had a lot of 'that's interesting' moments. However, a lot of the examples feel more like an idea of what needs to be done to achieve something rather than a complete (and robust) implementation. What is more disappointing, I found that some advice in the book is misleading. For example Hack #57 demonstrates how to use the glass pane to intercept and riderect mouse events. Unfortunately, as demonstrated, this approach doesn't work at all in the applications that use any components that have menus. A very significant shortcoming, in my opinion, that is not mentioned in the book.



3. Lacking some up-to-date information is usually not a problem that impacts most books. You can usually pull out one or two decent tricks, methodologies or pieces of information you didn't know before. This book, however, falls flat on its face.
   
   Filled with completely useless "hacks", use of extremely common knowledge/practices and general lack of content make this book a complete waste. Beginners may find the information interesting, but in terms of use in their professional lives, useless. Advanced users will find that other methodologies and "hacks" out there are much more useful and function much more efficiently.
   
   Aside from the uselessness of the information provided for use within enterprise GUI front-ends, what bothered me most was the inefficiency of the data provided. With some simple tweaking, complete rewrites based on the ideas presented, etc. you can come up with much more efficient and powerful components and component extensions yourselves.
   
   Don't waste your time.



4. It met my test because what I needed to know was easy to find and I was able to make a quick fix while maintaining Java software and I knocked out a couple of problems that way. It was easy to read, a good index and had sample implementations. The only problem I found is that it seems out of date and I would gladly purchase a more recent edition.



5. This book has some interesting tips and tricks. It would probably be a good read for developers that aren't too deep into the Swing framework, because most of the examples provide quick ways to accomplish various tasks without having to know the swing framework inside and out.

5 comments about Eclipse: Building Commercial-Quality Plug-ins (2nd Edition) (Eclipse Series).

1. Eclipse: Building Commercial-Quality Plug-ins (2nd Edition) (The Eclipse Series)
   
   + Provides a good overall picture of plug-ins structure, a lot of details.
   - Contains a lot of methods description that you can find it otherwise in Javadoc, running an eclipse plug-in could have included some more options (in fact for developing I preferred the version from Eclipse help)



2. I got the book on time and the condition of the book was new as promised. Couldn't ask for more.
   
   Cheers!



3. This is a good guide for developing Eclipse plugins. Since most online documentation for Eclipse is garbage, this will get you up and running in much less time. It doesn't answer all questions but is a handy reference.



4. If you're planning to write an eclipse plugin, this is THE book to read. The authors have done a fantastic job. Kudos.
   Now a few suggestions.
   The examples in the book can now be imported in the form of an eclipse plugin. This is great but the examples take a huge leap. For example, chapter 6 introduces you to the concept of views and shows you how to build a simple view with a table and a hard coded set of values. The example in chapter 7 is a huge leap in complexity. It would have been nice to have an example that shows you how to wire events to mouse clicks in the basic "One, Two, Three" view. Instead, the example in chapter 7 tries to do too much. As such, I can only give a limited time to reading the book and going through the examples. The jump in the complexity of the examples from chapter 6 to chapter 7 is like going from "hello world" to socket programming.
   
   Again, my review is based on the perspective of someone who is writing eclipse plugins as productivity tools for my project, not as commercial products that I plan to sell. I may not be the right audience for your fantastic book but I suspect there are a lot of people like me who want to write plugins as productivity tools. Since your book is THE best book on eclipse plugins, I'm sure they'll be referring to it too.
   
   Another thing: Part of the examples from chapter 7 don't seem to work. Specifically, the "add to favorites" button on the toolbar doesn't work because the selection object is of the type TextSelection and not IStructuredSelection. Maybe I'm doing something wrong.
   
   Update: After having actually written a decent eclipse plugin, I have a list of suggestions for people who're just getting started.
   1. Eclipse Corner is a very good resource for tips on writing eclipse plugins.
   2. If you can't figure out how something is done, try looking for code on google codesearch. For example, lang:java eclipse ASTRewrite
   3. If you're using Ganymede, you can see how things are done in the eclipse source code. For example, if you want to see the code that implements the outline view, select the outline view and hit Alt-Shift-F1. This will bring up the plugin spy. It will have a link to the source code that implements the outline view. Of course, the real code for the outline view is buried in a deep hierarchy but you get the general idea.



5. I am writing Eclipse plug-ins for almost two years now and owned this book almost from the beginning. Looking back I must say that the book helped me get started and let me believe "it's possible". As probably many others I was a little intimidated at first by the vast possibilities of the framework.
   Now that I am much more experienced I must say that whenever I look into the book it leaves me a little bit disappointed. It only adds little value to the "Platform Plug-in Developer Guide" which is part of the online documentation and already covers a lot.
   The book goes into details and code very quickly without explaining the concepts very well. I still use the book every now and then for finding some nuggets not covered elsewhere and sometimes I get lucky but not too often.
   Shall you buy this book? If you are a beginner and if you like to learn by programming a sample plug-in then yes. The more proficient you get the more the book will lose its value and you will use other sources of information.

5 comments about RMAN Recipes for Oracle Database 11g: A Problem-Solution Approach (Expert's Voice in Oracle).

1. I just finished reading this book. I must admit that I like technical books that have examples you can test and see the results yourself. The book has a lot information and especially rman new features with Oracle 11g. The best way to take advantage of this book is to have a test server on hand to try RMAN problems in the book. I recommend this book. It will enhance your knowledge of rman in Oracle 11g.
   I give 5 stars.



2. I've referred to this book numerous times; it's excellent. In fact, I can barely get it back from one of my peers. In essence ... you're faced with a specific problem and this books provides an excellent guideline for tailoring a solution to your situation. A must buy!



3. This is an excellent book that I ever had. This book provides us what we need to do in a step by step method for all imaginable scenarios. This may look repetitive but it provides the complete solution in that fashion rather making us to scrape through different chapters and leaving us in doubt on what to do. If some one is looking for rman internal algorithms, they can search elsewhere. But if they are trying to have a book that could provide easy, quick and straight forward solutions in a crisis, this is the one they might need. This really helped me to troubleshoot and resolve the issues on different occassions.RMAN Recipes for Oracle Database 11g: A Problem-Solution Approach (Expert's Voice in Oracle)
   -Nehru Kaja.



4. I just took a graduate level course on RMAN at Regis University which was taught by one of the authors (Darl Kuhn). I am very new to Oracle and this book serves several purposes:
   --Introduction to RMAN for those who have never used it
   --Learning through hands-on case scenarios and how to utilize them (for almost ANY situation)
   --A continuous reference for experienced DBAs
   --Touches on a few topics external to basic RMAN, such as the restoration of online redo logs, running RMAN on Windows, the data recovery adviser, and utilizing RMAN through the enterprise manager.
   
   I sell most of my text books after I'm done with the class, this one I will keep.



5. I have had this book just over a month and have found the book quite useful. I have yet to review the entire book but have been picking it and reading it from time to time and learning new things or better ways of doing tasks in RMAN.

5 comments about Designing the User Interface: Strategies for Effective Human-Computer Interaction (4th Edition).

1. This is more of a syllabus with references than an actual textbook. It's even a sensible syllabus; if you want an outline of the important topics in contemporary and historical computer user interfaces, Shneiderman's book will tell you what you need to know. But the utility of this book is unclear; it's not intended to teach the reader how to design interfaces, nor does it teach experimental design and evaluation.

   At 600+ pages, it's both terse and verbose. Verbose, because of the "let me tell you what I'm going to tell you, tell you, tell you what I've told you" format favored in this kind of overview. Terse because the "tell you" part is a kind of white-washed summary; as soon as a topic is brought up, several references are trotted out, summarized in one or two lines, and then dismissed. I wanted more depth, more case studies, and a higher-level vantage point.

   Despite a short tour of command lines, including natural language text commands, and a 10 page summary of speech recognition and synthesis-based interfaces, "Designing the User Interface" is almost exclusively about contemporary computer graphical user interface design. Better books on GUI design include Johnson's "GUI Bloopers" and Raskin's "The Humane Interface".




2. As most reviewers have noted, this is a classic and must-have book in the field of HCI. This fourth edition--newly published in March 2004--has been thoroughly revised to include much material related to the WWW. It does appear that Shneiderman took care to go through each chapter and remove less relevant material in favor of including new topics that have come up since the last edition was written.



3. This book looks more like a collection of references than a real text book. The author inserts references to other works and papers in such a random and repetitive fashion that makes reading the book a real pain in the ass.
   
   And then there is the verbosity. Apparently, Mr Shneiderman likes to list items and give examples. And he likes it a lot. If you make the terrible mistake of reading this book you will navigate through never-ending paragraphs that make circles and circles around the same idea, giving pointless examples of an anyways pretty obvious concept.
   
   This book is really bad. It looks like the author just copy-pasted the contents of his course slides and inserted some pretty pictures in the middle. Don't waste your money and/or your time with this one.



4. No other book in the field of HCI (Human-Computer Interaction) is as broad, has so many useful guidelines and is a better bibliography as Shneiderman DTUI (Designing the User Interface).
   
   DTUI will *not* give you in-depth knowledge of every aspect of HCI, because that's an impossible task for a single book.
   Instead, DTUI focuses on giving you an overview and understanding of central HCI concepts coupled with useful everyday tips, rules and guidelines.
   
   The passionate HCI student will in DTUI also discover a comprehensive guide to the books and articles that have shaped HCI throughout the years. (Reading the HCI body of work, you will soon discover than DTUI is one of the most cited books in the field, an indication of how influential it is.)
   
   To teachers in search of a introductionary HCI book for their classes, I strongly recommend DTUI. "Interaction design" by Jennifer Preece, et al. is another fine book that's has less theory in favor of the practical.



5. Book is very well written, and covers all the topics necessary and with the necessary detail to grasp the concepts related to human interface design. Highly recommend this book to anyone!!

2 comments about A Practical Guide to SysML: The Systems Modeling Language.

1. So far, I have read all of part one and sizeable portions of subsequent text. Part One, about 60 pages long, is one of the best introductions to a very technical book aimed at the semi-technical audience. Through example, easy-to-follow diagrams & well-written English, the authors nearly seduce their readership into wanting to master the remainder of this long systems engineering text focussed on a highly-regard industry standard (OMG SysML). Part one is suitable for assignment as a week's worth of reading in Undergraduate and Graduate courses in Systems Engineering.



2. 
   The book is a key addition to anyone's library working with complex systems or dealing with systems and software engineering. It is also an important book for business analysts and other engineering disciplines to understand how their contribution and knowledge can be modeled, documented, orchestrated and managed as part of a larger ecosystem. The largest factor affecting our development of modern systems is software and systems integration. The text provides a pragmatic modeling language to remove ambiguity and uncertainty in our organically evolving world of information technology whether you are dealing with embedded software, systems of systems, or high computational systems. The applicability of the principles espoused can be applied to facilities, transportation & warehousing, ergonomics, work design, safety, quality, supply chain, product life cycle, manufacturing, financial, maintenance, and health care systems. The "Green" Initiatives for public as well as private institutions is another application across several industries where the SysML language could be used in its parametric and requirements diagrams. It was excellent in not only describing the models but also applying the models to describe the interdependence of the behavioral and structural complexities we deal with as professional engineers or information technologists. The examples in the book are an excellent base for graduate students, professionals, and newcomers to the field. The text provides excellent examples in using SysML. The layout and sequence of the material was done well providing a very intuitive pattern of application making it easier to absorb and translate to one's environment. The quick reference section is incredibly valuable. Chapter 1 and 3 as well as 17 is a must for business analysts, systems, and software engineers at minimum. I look forward to more material from these authors to help advance the application of the management of technology and SysML.

5 comments about Pro CSS Techniques (Pro).

1. There are many CSS books on the market now, so distinguishing yourself from the many is getting harder and harder to do. Since there are less intermediate to advanced books compared to beginner CSS books this is a start. Another thing this book focuses on that is different than the majority of other CSS book is that is stresses creating semantic markup throughout the design and development process. Semantic markup means understanding the meaning of the XHTML that you write. What this means is that the code is free of presentational information using only
   and when absolutely necessary. These two tags can be very useful in creating intricate CSS designs but they have no semantic meaning. Many blog posts have called this "divitis" because their web page is just a whole bunch of

   tags with identifiers (id or class) and that's it. While this visually helps the designer quickly create the site, to screen-readers, or PDAs or cell phones may not render the page exactly as you may think it should and using semantic markup helps the browser for that particular device render that page that makes the most sense. It is a hard concept to grasp or fully explain (as I probably am not), but it is used more and more in current web practices.
   
   Now this book is written by a couple different authors which seems like the norm nowadays. [...] They all have contributed to various blogs (including their own) about web design techniques and many of them are here in this book.
   
   Now the title of this book may be misleading. You do not have to be a professional web designer using XHTML and CSS in the workplace to buy this book. Nor do you have to have memorized every CSS property and value to understand what the authors are saying. All you need to be able to grasp the concepts talked about in the book is a basic understanding of Cascading Style Sheets. As long as you know the basics, this will be a very enjoyable read. The reason it is called "Pro" I am guessing is that many "pro" fessionals use the same techniques and practices that are talked about in the book. It doesn't mean that it is so complex and intricate that only the select few will understand.
   
   So to start out the book goes into an excellent explanation (of what I started to in the beginning) of what semantic markup is, why it should be used and practical uses for it. The book then (chapter 2) goes into quick summary of CSS basics but from a perspective of why each element and style should be used (semantic meaning) and some of the least understood properties and selectors. The next chapter goes into a great explanation of how the "cascade" part of CSS works with using descendant, child and adjacent sibling selectors. This is a difficult concept to grasp and the author(s) explain it very simply and easily for almost any level of reader. Lots of code snippets and examples here with great uses for everyday stuff. The next chapter (chapter 4) is skipped in many other CSS books but is a very important issue: browser differences. This chapter explains each browser's (Firefox, IE, Opera and Safari) history and incompatibilities with CSS 2.1 and CSS 3.0 standards and discusses some of the big issues that started "hacks" back in the early years of CSS development. Hacks themselves are discussed in chapter 6 and are a very valuable skill in creating designs that are consistent across browsers. Though the author(s) explains that hacks are much a reason of non-semantic markup as they are with browser incompatibilities.
   
   CSS layouts (chapter 7) and common page elements (chapter 8) are great chapters to get your website started with good design ideas or help you redesign your site without tables.
   Some of the techniques shown are: rounded corners, image swapping and hover effects, creating tabbed navigation, and styling a logo image. Another concept explained in detail that gives most people headaches at first are floats which are used extensively in layout design and creating properly aligned forms without tables.
   
   Another great chapter (chapter 10) focuses on layout designs for styling tables. Although there are a lot of examples on the web on how to do this it makes it easier to find it and apply it to your own site.
   
   This is a great book for anybody wanting to further their CSS knowledge and experience by learning techniques that are used by some of the top designers out there. A must buy!



2. Having read through Pro CSS Techniques, I can recommend it to web site creators who occasionally (or often) find themselves scratching their heads wondering why that browser isn't rendering the page the way they intended. The book's subtitle reads: Real-world CSS Techniques for real-world CSS professionals. As a practical manual for developing today's websites, Pro CSS Techniques covers all the real-world bases.
   
   What I especially like about the writing is that it isn't preachy and it offers options. For instance, it explains two techniques to expand anchor elements across their containers, providing both pros and cons for each. In addition, having been released after the final version of IE7 and Windows Vista, Pro CSS Techniques covers both IE6 and IE7 rendering anomalies as well as Windows Vista-specific typography information.
   
   The authors are undoubtedly creating real websites every day. This book is a great resource for the areas we're most likely to need, as well as a fine reference for CSS techniques in general.



3. A nice addition to Apress' bookshelf covering CSS Web Development. The book is well-written, easing you through specific topics and techniques that will take your developement skills to the next level. Simon Collison, Dan Rubin, Ian Lloyd and Jeff Croft are revolutionizing standards-compliant, accessible, responsible web design.
   
   Well done again fella's. Looking forward to more advanced books from you and Apress!
   
   Cheers,
   
   Elias



4. Although pro css tecniques as the title of this book clearly incinuates it is for the more advanced designer, I still believe it is all in all beyond pro and to no bit of aid to the beginner or perhaps even the intermediate to advanced. Clearly the Authors of this book are master webdesigners and now what they are talking about, however Their lessons are overlooked when it comes to having the reader learn the techniques and not them illustrating and proving their intellect. Although my review may oppose likeness for this book I did learn a few little kickers here and there.



5. I come to web development as so many of us, through the back door. There are a hundred web projects for every web developer. And so, anybody with the desire can start building sites. This is how I started and how I continue. I learn just what I need to know to get this current project out the door. Now several years later I find myself deep in PHP programming with out any real knowledge of CSS. Free CSS templates have gotten me far and I have learned to hack them into something useful. But the fundamentals and advanced concepts escape me. So I did it, I got myself a CSS book and tackled the task I have procrastinated on for so long.
   
   Pro CSS Techniques turned out to be a great choice. I didn't want to waste my money on a beginner's book that usually are full of "not much". So I went for the book with "Pro" in the title fully expecting to have to struggle a bit. I was pleasantly surprised on two accounts. First I didn't find myself struggling much. And second this book actually covers a wide range of material including the basics. The tutorial style that most of the book is written in lends itself well to my practical side. At several points in the book I had a break through that took me straight to my computer to implement techniques on current projects. I found myself running through the section like a recipe, substituting their examples for mine. That's my kind of book!
   
   My favorite chapter turned out not to be a chapter at all but Appendix A - CSS Reference. It's a full reference for all CSS properties. This is what you would never get in a beginner book. How awesome to just look up the float property in the positioning section. I have to admit I may be over using the float property a little too much. But I have been freed from the bonds of tables and shale never return.
   
   Now I just need to live up to the Authors' challenge and write semantically correct code. I see the need and appreciate it when ever I come upon it but this will be the true change for an implementor like me who just needs to get the job done. "Take the time and do it right", is my new mantra!

4 comments about ANDROID A PROGRAMMERS GUIDE.

1. Just received this book. I went over the first seven chapters and am very disappointed. The first seven chapters are nothing more than existing online material with some added textual embellishments. There are also a few chapters with sample code (some of which are from the Google samples) and a few might be original code. This is not recommended.



2. Contrary to what the other reviewer writes, I find this book very informative and not related to any Google help that is available since it is so scarce. This is a terrific introduction to the topic - well organized and well written. Bravo.



3. I had fairly low expectations from this book as the API is still in a state of flux, so if some of the examples needed tweaking that would have been alright. However, I could not even find any example code on the book's website as advertised on the back cover. This is a 400 page book so I expected to get at least some useful material from it, but the author does not even get past Hello World until over 100 pages. The material after that consists of repetitions of trivial code additions followed by regurgitation of the source. It would appear that the author was just trying to increase the page count with no real valuable content. There is no in-depth discussion of what Activities, Intents, etc. actually are or how they work. After this poor experience I went back to the online help and am finding it vastly more thorough and helpful. I would not recommend this book for any level of developer.



4. I was very disappointed by this book. I will admit that the SDK is still being worked on and they just released version 1.0, which is upposed to be locked, a few of the examples won't work and have to be updated.
   
   In addition I found an error around the 8th chapter where the wrong class names are used and would mess up the example.
   
   The biggest problem is what seems to be useless pages with overly simple examples. Chapter 8 is horrible with a simple application and just pasting a bunch of different versions for the same thing. There are plenty of things that aren't needed to be explained, but are anyway ... even though the book states it is to be used by someone with previous programming experience.
   
   Way too simplistic and wordy for anyone who already knows Java.

5 comments about Programming Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Applications: Advanced Topics.

1. Basics of .net framework is presented in a clear and lucid style. This book is a joy to read and . by the way there is not much difference in content wise between applied .Net framework programming and this book. My only worry is the speed at which microsoft is pushing .net versions as if there is no tommorrow! [Subsequently the catch up I have to do on reading all this!]



2. The two books of this series (Core Reference & Advanced Topics) offer broad and deep coverage of ASP.NET.
   
   All the important topics of ASP.NET web sites are covered in a mostly tutorial with a little reference fashion. The books are well researched. The coverage of what really happens during compilation, request processing, and expression evaluation is excellent. The books avoid being an MSDN rehash. By carefully pointing out which ASP.NET versions support which features, the books will be useful for working with any ASP.NET version. No matter what you're working on you'll find something useful in these books. Note that web services are not covered.
   
   The terms "core reference" and "advanced topics" (which MS press is using on all the non beginner books) make no sense at all with these books. If you're serious, you need both books. Think of them as volumes 1 and 2 of a single book.
   
   I do have some issues with these books. The biggest mistake was recommending the use of GDI+ (through the System.Drawing namespace). This is not supported. The System.Drawing namespace page in MSDN states "Classes within the System.Drawing namespace are not supported for use within a Windows or ASP.NET service. Attempting to use these classes from within one of these application types may produce unexpected problems, such as diminished service performance and run-time exceptions."
   
   I didn't enjoy Dino's writing style. It's verbose (at times), he uses odd words to describe things, and was boring even by tech book standards.
   
   The chapter on configuration was difficult. It would have better to cover configuration throughout the book, in the context of what was being configured, instead of a single all configuration and only configuration chapter.
   
   The section of asynchronous pages was confusing and didn't really explain why asynchronous pages improve scalability.
   
   Despite my reservations, there is much that's good about these books. Anybody who's serious about ASP.NET should consider getting both of them.



3. I bought this book specifically for the 100+ pages on creating custom web controls. That is the only portion of the book that I have used.
   
   The book does not come with a CD for the source code examples, and I have been unable to find them online.
   
   That means I have to type in the examples. I normally don't mind, as it helps me learn. But his sample control, SimpleGaugeBar, has code scattered across two chapters (#13 and 14), all in bits and pieces. The code is intermingled with alternate code examples that (I think) he isn't using in the class, plus code from other classes apparently unrelated to SimpleGaugeBar.
   
   The sample control is also buggy. Of course, it's my guess as to the code that is supposed to be contained in the control, because there is no single definitive listing of the code in the book. I suspect the sample code is simply buggy because the event sequencing the control responds to does not match the way the control was coded.
   
   He separated the creation of the internal list of control objects and the styling code into two routines. That's probably a good idea. But, and this is a killer, if you programmatically change the properties of the control, the internal list of control objects is created *before* the new property value is set, and applies styling after the property is set. This will cause the control to fail, because the styling code will refer to objects that were not created based upon the prior property settings.
   
   The styling code also refers to objects in the internal list of controls by array index number instead of by their id. That's bad form and very prone to error.
   
   I'm not a happy customer.
   
   That said, there is a lot of material on custom controls, and I learned a lot going through it. There are not a lot of resources out there that cover this topic in any depth, and this is one of the few. So, muddled, buggy and disorganized as it is on this topic, I would recommend it (until I found something better).



4. This book rocks! I cant find anymore words to say this :D
   
   I keep this book by my computer all the time. Dino has once again provided us with some great information.



5. So whilst you are waiting for the 3.5 version you can get this one second hand.
   
   It covers loads of usefull day-to-day tasks that most web devs have to search google for. Not sure that "Advanced" is the correct choice here, but its tasks that all my senior devs are capable of.
   This said, it's a must have for any web developers desk. All of the 2.0 stuff still applies to 3.5 cant wait till the new version that would be more complete.
   However, just using his examples expressed in Listview/Datapager controls using LINQ will yeild plenty till his new book comes out.
   I can understand why the 3.5 version is delayed (seeing 4.0 is due in December), there is plenty of 'advanced' issues in using MVC to content with, then add microsofts version of Spring/NHibernate to the mix (not stable yet where as the open source Spring/NHibernate is) then you can see why there is a delay.
   
   "ASP.NET 3.5 Applications: Advanced Topics" is a moving target and will be for 6 months(conjecture) or more(features in consenus use a >12months away?).
   
   So why get "ASP.NET 2.0 Applications: Advanced Topics"?
   It will make your life easier and get projects out the door faster.
   All that you learn in this book can be applied to your 3.5 projects (we just use VS2008 and VS2003 for legacy - VS2005 has no further use).
   Likewise if your are a commerical C# developer you would use the VSTS version of 2008 due to the productivity gains unless you work in a sweat shop where labour is cheap.
   
   Related:
   
   Using ReSharper4 Power Programming with ReSharper: Optimize .NET Development with the ReSharper Add-In to Visual Studio 2008 (Wrox Briefs) offer substantial benefits for C# 3.5 users this too will have you get quality code out the door faster.
   
   Programming Microsoft ASP.NET 3.5 is a welcome addition as Dino really knows his stuff (ASP.NET/AJAX/UI)

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.

No comments about Pro PerformancePoint Server 2007: Building Business Intelligence Solutions (Expert's Voice in Business Intelligence).