5 comments about Pro SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services (Pro).

1. I began this book with limited Reporting Services experience, not really knowing what to expect. What I found in every chapter was that the authors really took the time to explain the nuances of this technology that can only be understood from working with it in the real-world and not on a sample database with simple reports. I also learned much more about basic and advanced queries that really helped me out with parameters and stored procedures. I would definitely recommend this book for everyone new to reporting services and those who would like to get answers to detailed reporting scenarios.



2. This book has been well written. Concise, but to-the-point. Coverage on Share point portal and Microsoft CRM is the most comprehensive comparing all the other SRS books in the market. I would recommend you buy this book as well as Wrox to be complete.



3. Well not a good book at all. If you don't have anything else in the office to read or do...and just want to know what Reporting services is all about, you can go throught the book in few hours.



4. This books serves as a great learning tool and reference for people learning RS or for those of us that use it on a daily basis.



5. 
   Loved the writing style. I really appreciated that instead of boring us with an introductory chapter to RDL (Report Definition Language), they sneak it in here and there, keeping the info flowing at a good pace. Plus they wrote the book based on a real-world project they worked on, which makes it easier to grasp the concepts. I give this an A+ and will look for Apress books first from now on ;)

5 comments about Logic in Computer Science: Modelling and Reasoning about Systems.

1. This book is a good introduction to logic. It is highly readable, not dry. It explains logic in the language of humans, not arcane mathematics, yet it somehow is able to remain rigorous. This makes logic make sense, rather than it being an abstract intellectual pursuit detached from life and other topics.

   Half the book is on logic, half on model checking. I've only read the logic part so far, so I cannot compare the model checking treatment to that in Clarke et al.'s "Model Checking."

   The logic treatment is not specific to computer science (or at least did not seem to be so, for someone not a student of mathematics and logic), so in my opinion the title is a misnomer; perhaps a better title would be "Logic for People, and Model Checking Too."




2. A lot of good material is covered and in a relatively tight fashion. The presentation of logic is well done, but when getting into the BDDs, the explanations get a little complicated and I personally had to read it over several times before I could make sure I understood what was going on. This book also does not have anything on symmetry, so if that's what you're looking for, there are better books out there. However, this book can hold its own and I recommend it to anyone interested in learning the basics of model checking provided they can take handle some of the heavy duty reading.



3. The coverage of this book is quite good for what concerns logic in computer science. However, using it as an introduction on logic for computer scientists is probably ambitious because the explanations are rather complicated for undergraduates. A first course on logic and another on AI would not hurt before getting into this one. Too many notions of computer science (syntax and semantics of programming languages, complexity) are needed to fully understand some topics, hence it is better that you already have a broad view of all aspects of computer science before reading this one. As an advanced course textbook to formal techniques in computer sciente on the other hand, this one would do the job.



4. In my opinion (I refer to the II edition)the logic treatment is fairly complete for a computer science student (anyway it's missing the treatment of Prolog and the relevant logic).This book is also an excellent introduction to Model Checking of Clarke.



5. I read this book to learn the basics of model checking, and I found it an excellent introduction. Logic can be a dry and intimidating subject but this text presents the theory in an engaging style. Concepts are always introduced with concrete examples to explain them and to show how they should be used to reason about software. This book is essentially theoretical, there is no presentation of real world uses of the methods.

No comments about Beginning XML with C# 2008: From Novice to Professional (Expert's Voice in .Net).

5 comments about Clear Blogging: How People Blogging Are Changing the World and How You Can Join Them.

1. I've been blogging in a ho hum way for over a year - but this book has opened up blogging for me in a whole new way.
   I would recommend this as an intro... middle and advanced book. It has tons of stuff for every level. Of course I'm at the beginning level so maybe I'm not the perfect judge but I can say it has enough stuff for me to follow up with for at least a year!
   What I really like are the interviews, the links and the detailed information (step by step) to do or check things out. And... besides the book I'm getting just as addicted to his web site... http://clearblogging.com



2. Bob Walsh goes a long, long way past the usual, superficial approach. ("Blogging is great - here's how to set up your blog on TypePad.") The interviews with well-known bloggers are an outstanding feature of the book - they are insightful and very useful - they'll help you understand what you're committing to, how to run a successful blog, and what you can expect to get out of it. Also, Walsh gives the best advice I've seen for advertising your blog via Technorati, Feedburner, et al., and for using social networks to promote your message. Great job. - George (fitnessintuition.com)



3. To put it succinctly, Clear Blogging is the kind of book I would give to a boss or manager to educate them about what blogging is, can be, and a hint of technicalities on the back end. While a good book and a great overview of what is entailed with blogging, there are not enough nitty-gritty details to satisfy someone who is of a technical nature or someone who has been blogging for a while.
   
   However, for someone who needs to know what this blogging thing is about and how they might be able to use it for their business, either directory or indirectly, this is the perfect place to start. I would estimate that at least half of the book is made up of interviews with either bloggers, people who run blogging companies, or marketing type folk. These interviews, though they get a little long and predictable after a while, lend real life examples to the lessons being taught.
   
   Additionally, there is sufficient attention given to topics such as podcasting, monetization, and social networking to give you a good start on finding out more about these areas.
   
   All in all, for any body wondering where to get started, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Clear Blogging. And if you are already in to blogging, I will bet this book can still teach you a few things.



4. If you are going to recommend just one book to someone who wants to get started reading, following and creating a blog, this is the book. Author Bob Walsh goes far beyond the usual treatment of the topic and gives you tons of practical tips, suggestions and information about resources. I've been blogging for over a year and I learned a ton from Bob's book. Don't waste your time with other books, go right to source and read this one. I highly recommend it.



5. Although there are hundreds of blogging books in print, from my surveying this one appears to be the most relevant practical guide -- so I gave it an extra star. I liked it for the following reasons:
   
   (+) good tips on building readership (plus some SEO)
   (+) explanations of importance of garnering and giving referent links
   (+) practical tips on monetization
   (+) coverage of some useful tools I might not have otherwise discovered
   (+) highlighting some popular blogging platforms
   (+) engaging writing style
   (+) accessible as a book you could give to a co-worker, or even less-technical family member
   (+) gets reader excited about blogging
   
   However, it has the following problems:
   
   (-) some material highly subject to aging (e.g., blogger how-to steps could have been omitted)
   (-) promotion of some obnoxious tools (e.g., White Smoke grammar helper, user-unfriendly Microsoft Live Spaces)
   (-) very little mention of WordPress (you wouldn't realize its popularity by reading this book)
   (-) not enough emphasis on blog *reading* (Google Reader got one sentence, but its features and best practices could been expanded to a whole chapter). Optimizing your reading habits/patterns is a critical skill for surviving blog-bombardment
   (-) no mention of the role of pinging (and necessity by some services)
   (-) too many interviews (police wives and military perspectives didn't add anything for me)
   (-) a number of grammar and spelling mistakes
   (-) audience target may have been too broad (I would expect Apress to have had a better techie focus)
   
   Overall, I thought the book could have been half the length and still had the same impact. But as a new blogger I got quite a bit out of the book, and I still recommend it to anyone who is not already a pro. Just be prepared to do a lot of skimming, and try to get a library/used copy that has important points highlighted.

5 comments about Advanced NXT: The Da Vinci Inventions Book (Technology in Action).

1. This book was great, I use it as a resource when teaching robotics.the book is kid friendly (9-14) and they enjoy using it as a source.



2. I have enjoyed many of the books in this series, but was severely disappointed when I got this one. The ideas are great - and would be really useful to my students, if the pictures that accompanied them were in any way able to be seen clearly. I tried and failed to build several of the models after my students all expressed frustration at trying to figure out what was being portrayed.



3. Just the idea behind this book makes it worth purchasing. Taking the ideas of one of the greatest minds in history and applying it to a brilliant robotic platform is genius. Relating the robots to Da Vinci's designs is a great learning experience for old and young. My 8 year-old is becoming quite a fan of Leonardo due to the use of this book.
   
   The bots in the book are great, and the potential for extensibility is even greater. There are quite a few new NXT books out this year and this is definitely one of best especially if you are interested in tying the evolution of physics and mechanization to modern technology.
   
   I highly recommend this book. If you are running a Lego Mindstorms team or teaching robotics using the NXT platform, do yourself a favor and pick up this book, it's a great way to enhance your curriculum.



4. There are some great ideas in this book but the pictures for construction are not that clear, with pieces hidden behind other pieces. Directions are for the more advanced of Lego's Robot builders. If you already know what you are doing, you can jump right in and go to it. For the novice or the beginner its next to impossible. I love the Da Vinci connection but clean up the photographs so that more people can take advantage of the idea.



5. I haven't used the book yet, but as I flipped through, I was disappointed by the quality of the assembly schematic reproductions. I'm not sure we will be able to follow them.

No comments about Excel Pivot Tables Recipe Book: A Problem-Solution Approach.

1 comments about Geometric Algebra for Computer Science: An Object-Oriented Approach to Geometry (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Graphics).

1. Geometric Algebra (GA) is a unifying mathematical language that should be taught instead of or at least in combination with traditional vector analysis. Most other books on GA are aimed at Physicists. This book is a better match for Engineers and Programmers. The authors are all active researchers in applications of GA. They have done a comprehensive and up to date job of collecting, organizing and presenting the material for both beginners and those who follow the development of GA on the web. The examples and problems use GAViewer, an easy to learn programming language with an Open GL view window that can be downloaded for free from the book website. Using GAViewer with the book is very good way to learn GA, especially the 5D Conformal model of 3D space. The authors hold nothing back. Between the book, the code and the website everything is there to make learning GA fun and useful. I highly recommend this book.

1 comments about Teaching and Learning with Microsoft Office 2007 and Expression Web (2nd Edition).

1. This book is absolutely abysmal. I program in 3 languages. I'm required to take a technology class in my Master's program. This book is an affront to my intellect. The man who wrote this book has no experience ith either computers or children. He's a psychologist.
   
   Here's how you know the book is typically self-indulgent educational tripe - there's a self-assessment rubric on page 3 on whether or not you should buy the textbook.
   
   Then there are the idiotic assignments. One of them is putting frilly star borders, wordart and a picture of a whale on a business letter to be sent to parents (36). That's a great way to be taken seriously.
   
   The assessments are absurd, and the book doesn't tell you anything you can't already learn for free by clicking "help". Avoid if you can.

5 comments about MCAD/MCSE/MCDBA Self-Paced Training Kit: Microsoft SQL Server(TM) 2000 Database Design and Implementation, Exam 70-229, Second Edition (Pro-Certification).

1. This book is a very easy read, explains concepts clearly, but lacks the kind of detail necessary for passing the 70-229 exam, especially if you are taking this as an elective on the developer track. It will get you through most of what you need to know at 10,000 feet, but it will not take you to a passing score. It taught me things I had never used and for that it is well worth the time investment. I also love the fact that you can install the "e-book" on a laptop and a desktop at home and never carry the hard cover book around.
   
   I had been using SQL Server 2000 for years and thought this would be a snap for me. After reading this book I thought I was ready for the test. On the practice exam I saw words that were used that I had no idea what the context was. Those functions are not discussed in this book but you can trust they will be covered completely on the test! You will thoroughly need to know things like triggers, functions and constraints, and all their possible parameters, or you will not be prepared for the exam.
   
   After going through the book you will be ready for the material that is available at the practice test vendors Microsoft recommends at the Microsoft Web sites for MCAD & MCSD Certification. I am not trying to promote any company and I have nothing to gain by saying the following: The study guide I purchased for about the cost of this book prepared me for the exam. This book prepared me for the study guide.



2. I believe that the writers made some bad choices when they first began to write this book. First of all, unlike most other certification books the exam goals are not together in one section. Instead there are whole chapters for queries, indexes, views, etc with all of the information about each topic in that chapter. So if you wanted to read about 'query optimization' you would have to read the sections within that chapter about query optimation from the queries chapter, from the index chapter, some from the views chapter, etc. So if you want to review a specific topic that you are not as good at you will be doing a lot of page flipping.
   
   Second the book is too thick. It contains a lot of information that i doudt that you will actually get on the exam (like estimating the size of a table). It also has about a 100-150 page objective by objective index at the back with questions. But these sections seem to be fragmented from the rest of the book and do not have enough information to truely learn the objective. The first part of the book seems to be written as an introduction to databases book rather then a certification book, and i dont think that i would use this book to introduce myself to databases anyway.
   
   Third: the practice certification exam does not work. The practice exam is an exam that seems to have an embeded internet explorer and is ran by javascript. I have no clue why you would use javascript to create a practice exam. Anyway i get the 'error running these scripts, would you like to continue running scripts on this page error' and i am unable to run the exam. I am using windows xp service pack 2 internet explorer 6.1.
   
   I personally went out and bought the exam cram for 229 and it seems to be much better.



3. Not being interested in certification, I was looking for something that would get me the basics, and tell me where to go to get the meat. This book is doing that. Includes a MS SQL Server 2000 120 day use installation disk. The install includes the "Books On Line" (a source of a lot of meat).
   
   Not caring if this is good for cert test prep, and having never taken a cert test, I can't tell you if it is a good prep. It hase provided a good portion of the information I was looking for, and helped me understand the changes / inhancements in MS SQL 2005.
   
   4 stars because I am seldom overwhelmed with something.



4. Fairly good book with some problems in repetitive text. Do NOT count on this book as your only resource for the 70-229 exam. Then again, it's foolish to expect to pay $40 to pass this very difficult exam. I passed the exam but used a test engine endorsed by Microsoft.
   
   Bottom line: Outstanding value @ $40. Four stars because of the repetitive text, otherwise I would give it five.



5. I am in a SQL Database Implementation and Design class right now, and the lessons provided in the book do a good job at instilliong SQL code into your mind.

5 comments about Managing Gigabytes: Compressing and Indexing Documents and Images (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Multimedia Information and Systems).

1. As others have said, MG is a good introductory text for Information Retrieval. However I think it spends a little too much time on compression techniques and lacks a good discussion of incremental or on-line indexing. The book tends to assume that the set of texts to be searched is static - if new documents can be added or old ones deleted it makes the whole problem much harder and many of MG's techniques are no longer relevant. That said, I strongly look forward to Managing Terabytes (if it ever appears).



2. This is the only book there is that will actually teach you how to build an information retrieval system (aka search engine). It discusses all the algorithms and tradeoffs, and comes with free downloadable source code to experiment with. Some of the material is standard, but covered in more implementation detail here than anywhere else. Some of the material is novel: you won't find better coverage of compression unless you hand-assemble twenty research papers, and reverse-engineer them to figure out how they're implemented. But with "Managing Gigabytes", it's all here. (Although, after a particularly envigorating discussion of how to string together a bunch of techniques to compress their corpus and save a couple 100MB, I did a check and found you could buy 512MB of RAM for less than the cost of the book. Knowledge is Power, but sometimes a little cash is more powerful.) The only negative is that this book is not called "Managing Terabytes", as the first edition promised/threatened it might be. RAM and disk are cheap, but not that cheap, and for now terabytes (and sometimes petabytes) are managed only by NASA, Google, and a few others. I can't wait to see the third edition!



3. Managing Gigabytes is the best book out there on information retrieval. If you're interested in implementing your own IR system, there's nothing available that comes close to this book. But the book is good not just because it's the only one out there: the writing is excellent, the algorithms are presented clearly and explained well, and the coverage is thorough. Additionally, the coverage of compression algorithms is the best I've found in any book. All algorithms and pseudo-code in the book are presented clearly enough such that any competent programmer should be able to implement them. If all else fails, however, the free downloadable source code for the mg system can fill in any gaps.

   All in all, this is the best computer science book I've purchased in years. I wish all CS books were written like this one: it doesn't skimp on the theory or on the implementation details.




4. A wonderful feature of this book spans out practicality for various topics including compresion algorithms and theory, document and imaging system and information retrieval. On my personal interest, the authors highlight a vast list of not only the theory but present it in a simple common sense logic.
   
   There are several examples that break down complex processes into simple and easy to understand logic and the pages provides a smooth flow of the structured topics. Well organised, presented and fully informative.
   
   Truly an ideal book. This serves as a superior text for students studying document and imaging systems, processing and information and multimedia retrieval subjects. Beautiful!!!
   
   Just on a personal note, it would be great to see some emphasis in the future editions in regards to web mining applications.



5. It has been 8 years since it was published and I could see it is still one of the best in IR field. Without much long magic equations, it is not hard for common user to pick it up. There are mainly 2 parts in the book, the first book is compression, most of them are just principle introduction since it does not make sense for the read to invent or implement an algorithm. The second part is indexing (plus some query) which I highly recommended because it is "practical".
   The authors are smart guys who could do sth, google mg for their website and mg4j for the ported java implementation.