1 comments about Facelets Essentials: Guide to JavaServer Faces View Definition Framework (Firstpress).

1. This book is light enough to be read in one sitting. And, given how important Facelets is to JSF development, is a worthwhile read for any JSF developer. (Note that this book is focused primarily on Facelets - and by extension takes familiarity with JSF for granted.)
   
   The upsides?
   I found very broad coverage of everything that Facelets provides. Whether its templating support, the jsfc attribute, the EL, extending Facelets with custom tags, etc. ... its all in here.
   
   The downsides?
   Trying to cover so much ground in 80 pages is a losing proposition. As a result, some topics are covered in detail, whereas others seem to be included just for completeness sake.
   
   The difference in writing styles between the two authors is noticeable - and some chapters (like the earlier ones) are treated much better than others. I can't imagine why a short book like this one might have merited more than one author.
   
   The high point of this book is in its first chapters - it provides good information on how to setup Facelets (esp. the libraries you will need), and provides a very well presented introduction to its templating support.
   
   However, shortly thereafter you run into the Facelets Tag Reference chapter. For over 15 precious pages, the Facelets documentation is re-packaged with very little value addition.
   
   Bottom line - this book tries to be much more ambitious than its short format will allow it to be. In some places it succeeds, but in most others, it tends to be constrained by a lack of space.

5 comments about Microsoft Office Excel 2003 QuickSteps (Quicksteps).

1. I manage a medium-sized network and support a large number of fairly savvy users. That is, most users know how to do their specific tasks very well and are willing to learn new things. But they are not willing to sit down with a book full of dense text. This is where the "Quick Steps" books come in handy. I keep a number of these books on hand and when a user requests assistance, I give them one of the books with the appropriate page bookmarked. Steps are outlined in full color with lots of pictures and pointers and tips. Additional information is set off in side boxes so users can learn more if they choose. What I have found is that once a user completes a task successfully, they get fairly excited about the experience and browse the book to learn more. The books really stimulate users to experiment with things they would not normally bother to learn. And that is where this book excels. It is a "browser." Users don't feel like they need to start at the beginning and read through to the end. I get lots of grumbles when I ask for the book back so I can pass it on to others.
   
   This book is also great for new users. I tell them to spend a few hours working through the steps, which are easy to follow and can be done at a fairly fast pace. Most users think the full color layout is fun to work through. The down-side is that like any book, space is limited, especially with the fully-illustrated format, so you're obviously not going to find everything in these books, but I do feel they contain a good balance of material and are appropriate for corporate libraries.
   
   Marty (the concept author for the Quick Steps series) and I are fellow writers and that is how I learned about these books. I must say that they have helped my users enormously and relieved my support task. Hey, it's the 21st century. Anyone working in an office should know how to work with operating systems and common applications. Most people can do that if they have easily accessible references and refresher material like these books. Thanks to Marty for developing the "Quick Steps" concept and to McGraw-Hill for publishing this series.



2. I am an infrequent Excel user, so I needed a good reference book that is well indexed. That's exactly what I got with Excel 2003 QuickSteps. It's easy to find what I need when I want it. It's very well illustrated and contains a lot of great tips. The author does an excellent job of explaining the material.



3. I'm a soon-to-be-graduating Psychology student at the University of Washington and I am writing this review from the perspective of some one using excel in Social Sciences.
   
   I found this book extremely suited to my needs...each step was very clear and precise and it was easy to find the chapter or section that was most applicable to what I was working on.
   
   It covered all of the functions of Excel that I have used in my classes thus far. Although my intro. classes had a very brief introduction to the functions I needed, as I progressed into higher level classes and used more and more Excel I found that I needed additional specific instructions for my work. This book was very helpful in that way, and saved me the bother of forever emailing questions to my professor, as I had done before I received the book.
   
   I actually used Excel the most to analyze the significance of data from an experiment that I had designed and to graph the results. This required quite a few steps and it was helpful to have a guide to look at as I went as opposed to trying to guess what came after the basic skills I had previously learned.
   
   I also lent this book to a friend who works in American Ethnic Studies and used Excel to organize and make tables of data for her thesis. The American Ethnic Studies major has no background in science, so was in the position of having absolutely zero knowledge of Excel. However, with this book alone, she was able to complete the Excel portion of there thesis without any additional help.
   
   From a student's point of view, this is a great resource if your field involves any use of Excel.



4. I don't use Excel all the time. But when I do I don't have time to troubleshoot problems.
   
   This hands-on, user friendly book has helped me conquer Excel. The text is readable and well organized. The visuals are clean and fully support the instructions.
   
   I found that you can start from the beginning and teach yourself EXCEL with simple step by step instructions or you can flip straight to your topic of interest and further build your skills. This is a great tool for all levels of expertise.



5. This particular series of instructional books (meaning the "QuickSteps" series) has always been one of my favorites -- they're concisely written in short paragraphs with decent descriptive pictures to help anyone learn just about any type of software application.
   
   While I found this book to be fairly complete, I'd still only recommend it as a desk-side reference manual to use along with Microsoft tutorials themselves. While it is a cleverly written book that is not as cumbersome to use as other reference books on the market, it does not address all of the finer points of Excel.
   
   All in all, it's a great reference book, and let's face it, sometimes it's just easier to review a chapter a few times to digest material rather than stare at a computer screen until you become cross-eyed.
   
   All in all, I'd probably give this book a 4.5, but since that's not an option, I'll have to stick with 4 stars.

5 comments about AdvancED Flex Application Development: Building Rich Media X (Advanced).

1. This is a very basic introduction to Flex, and doesn't provide much into how it fits into web design as a whole!



2. This book is not all about FLEX it spends time covering the creation of RMX which is not what i wanted at all. The authors are idiots and don't focus mainly on flex. If you want to learn flex puchase something else. If you are interested in their (the authors) project and what they use in their project spend 42.00. WHAT A WAISTE!!



3. I have mixed feelings about this book which I got because it was one of the first to cover Flex 3.
   
   I think it is a bit weak on the pure Flex bit - I just can't see someone actually learning Flex out of it, though they will get a pretty good feel for what Flex does. It presents just enough information to explain their application, the RMX, no more. The coding examples are also somewhat hard to follow, with code being all over the place. Yes, it might be real-life production/business code but that doesn't mean that it is automatically great for teaching. Simpler, more illustrative, tighter code would have been better.
   
   On the other hand, the book does a much better job at presenting the big picture of a Flex website and how all the parts fit together, almost at a business/planning level. The wireframe chapters and how to integrate ads are great. Also, though I don't use PHP+Drupal, which they use as a backend, I definitely came away with a confirmation that Flex wasn't tied to particular backend server technologies. If you do use PHP and Drupal, you will get more value out of it for sure.
   
   All in all, a 3.5/5 book.



4. This is a great book to learn how to build Flex Rich Internet Application. It is easy to read and follow, and it also includes SEO omptimization techniques for higher ranking in SEO results. Highly recommended!



5. The only problem with this book is that it's not AdvancED as they claim in the title. It's aimed for beginners who never worked on a bigger projects before. The way the authors approached building of RMX application is pretty cool, and newbies will learn something from them. There isn't any depth in the book though, everything they touch upon, and they touch many many things, is pretty shallow. Be it Project Management, Action Script, Flex, MXML, Skinning, SEO, it's all pretty basic. But as I said, I recommend it to anyone who wants to start doing Flex apps professionally.

5 comments about SMS 2003 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach.

1. This is the best book I have seen about SMS since SMS 1.2 (what 10 years ago?). I've working with SMS for over 8 years including 4 years at Microsoft and recently as a consultant. I recommend this book to all my customers who are just getting started with SMS as it walks them through basic tasks like how to create collection and so on. As you get used to SMS and want to do more sophisticated things, this book is right with you as it has vbscript examples for almost everything it describes doing through the GUI.



2. I found this book to be very detailed when it came to the scripting aspects of SMS. A little creativity , an HTA front end and these scripts and you could have a very advanced SMS environment. I also liked the drill in on the ITMU screens to show someone that is initially installing it, what to expect.
   
   The only drawback for this book in my opinion was the lack of OSD (Operating System Deployment) Feature Pack information. There is a paragraph that discusses it but not much more. However, this being a problem solution approach to SMS I am not surprised OSD isn't covered in depth.



3. This book is for advanced SMS administrators who work with SMS constantly. I was expecting the first few chapters to start from the beginning of an SMS install and explain some best practices methods, but this book expects you to have it all up and running.
   All the script examples show you how to modify sms to make life easier for administrators. And wheres the included PDF version of the book so you can copy the scripts?? Well you need to pay an extra $10 for the privledge!
   If you want to customise SMS and want example vbscripts then this book is definately for you. If you want a book to show you how to install and configure SMS & explain its options, buy another book.
   
   Edit: Greg had contacted me directly and pointed myself to his publishers website where the source code can be downloaded. Thanks Greg.



4. I've been working with Microsoft SMS products for years. Unfortunately, SMS 2003 is a very complex product that takes time to master. After exchanging emails for a couple of years (it seems) I'm glad to have finally met Greg at a recent conference and that he asked me to review a copy of his book.
   
   After reading some of the reviews for Greg's and Warren's book; `SMS 2003 Recipes - A problem-Solution Approach", I can only conclude that some bought this book for the wrong reasons. Rather than comment on any of the wrong reasons; I'd like to comment on what I liked about this book and how SMS Administrators can take their craft to a new level.
   
   What I liked:
   - The authors covered the basics of using VBScript to communicate with SMS and managing SMS tasks with VBScript. Discussion of coding best practices, and of interfacing with WMI are key items to cracking the coding mysteries of SMS 2003.
   
   - The overall format of the book is well done; Problem/task statement, how to solve problem through the SMS 2003 MMC, then how to solve/automate the problem/task statement through code.
   
   - Each section of SMS 2003 administration is covered in detail, from automation of site property settings to automation of advertisements.
   
   - Index is excellent - since I do not usually work in a "linear" manner, it's nice to be able to quickly locate a topic and find more information.
   
   - The chapter on building a Virtual SMS lab. While this topic may seem out of place at first in a "recipes" book, I can tell you first hand the importance of testing any code based solution in a lab environment before releasing these changes in production!
   
   Conclusion
   SMS is all about automation, saving businesses time and money through automating; hardware & software inventory, and software distribution (to name a few tasks). There are many tasks that SMS administrators perform on a daily basis that can be time consuming, especially when there are many SMS sites that need to be managed. Some of the VBScript code contained in this book is available on various sites. However, Greg and Warren are to be commended for a compilation of this information in one source location and thoroughly explaining its usage. This book is ideal for any SMS administrator looking to take his or her skill set to a higher level of ability!



5. I bought this book because the price was good. After reading and using the recipes. This book is excellent. It shows you how to do a task manually (through the SMS console) then it shows you the same task in VBScript. Honestly, this book should cost much more and look forward to more books using this format. A+++

5 comments about Agile Java(TM): Crafting Code with Test-Driven Development (Robert C. Martin Series).

1. I'm not a beginning programmer, or even an absolute Java novice, so maybe this book isn't really aimed at me. My biggest gripe is that the code snippets continue on and on making the book very poor for anything other than cover-to-cover reading.



2. I've gotten about 6 chapters into this book and I love it. I've been developing Java for almost 7 years and am currently teaching myself Agile principles and this book comes as a great help.



3. This book is primarily for new programmers who want to learn Java as their first programming language. The book can also be helpful for programmers familiar with test driven development (TDD) but new to Java, or vice versa. I am an experienced Java developer, and I found that going through Agile Java presented me with a new and better way of approaching Java code development. This book covers Java 2 Standard Edition (J2SE) version 5.0, but covers only a few of the additional APIs at an introductory level. Technologies that are used pervasively in the majority of enterprise applications, such as logging, JDBC, and Swing, are presented in Agile Java. Some of the information, such as that on logging, will teach you all you need to know for most purposes. Other lessons, such as those on Swing and JDBC, will give you a basic understanding of the technology and will tell you where to go when seeking further information.
   
   The core of Agile Java is fifteen lessons of about 30 pages each. It starts with baby steps in Java, TDD, and OO. The book finishes with a strong foundation for professional Java development. The core lessons should be read sequentially since each lesson builds upon the previous ones. Once you have completed the core lessons, you should have a solid understanding of how to build robust Java code. If you haven't completed the fifteen core lessons, you should not assume you know how to write good Java code. Each of the fifteen core lessons in Agile Java has you build bits and pieces of a student information system for a university. This single common theme helps demonstrate how you can incrementally build upon and extend existing code. Each lesson also finishes with a series of exercises. Instead of the student information system, the bulk of the exercises have you build bits and pieces of a chess application. Some of the exercises are involved and quite challenging, but they are where learning the methodology really begins.
   
   There are three additional lessons to cover a few more Java topics. Two of the lessons present an introduction to Swing. These two lessons will provide you with enough information to begin building robust user interface applications in Java. But the bigger intent is to give you some ideas for how to build them using TDD. The third additional lesson presents an overview for a number of Java topics that most Java developers will want to know such as JARs, regular expressions, cloning, JDBC, and internationalization.
   
   I really liked how the author integrated the three concepts of Java programming, TDD, and object-oriented design without confusing matters. The book is very clear with good illustrations. I highly recommend it. The following is the table of contents:
   
   Lesson 1. Getting Started
   Lesson 2. Java Basics
   Lesson 3. Strings and Packages
   Lesson 4. Class Methods and Fields
   Lesson 5. Interfaces and Polymorphism
   Lesson 6. Inheritance
   Lesson 7. Legacy Elements
   Lesson 8. Exceptions and Logging
   Lesson 9. Maps and Equality
   Lesson 10. Mathematics
   Lesson 11. IO
   Lesson 12. Reflection and Other Advanced Topics
   Lesson 13. Multithreading
   Lesson 14. Generics
   Lesson 15. Assertions and Annotations
   Additional Lesson - Swing, Part 1
   Additional Lesson II. Swing, Part 2
   Additional Lesson III. Java Miscellany
   Appendix A: An Agile Java Glossary
   Appendix B: Java Operator Precedence Rules
   Appendix C: Getting Started with IDEA
   Agile Java References



4. This is my new favorite-book-to-give-to-anyone-who-is-learning-or-using-Java.
   
   The title is misleading in that this book is about much more than just the Agile Programming stuff. While it does a great job talking about Agile techniques and always starts by creating a unit test, the book really is about all aspects of Java (specifically Java 5) programming. Anyone who takes the time to work through the examples will become a much better Java programmer.
   
   OO patterns, collections, type safety and more are covered and explained in the context of a rich, in-depth example. And because the author has you construct a high-quality test suite around the example, you are free to experiment with different ways to implement each new feature - thus proving to yourself the benefits of Agile design.
   
   Just like it says in one of the quotes on the cover, this book is now required reading for the Java programmers at our company.



5. I had originally bought this book for son who was going to spend the summer working for my development team writing unit test for our database POJOs. I was so impressed way in which concepts were incrementally introduced I read the book cover to cover. It is now the only book I recommend to beginners and I introduce it as a 'must' read for all my new hires.

3 comments about Writing Better Requirements.

1. It's a short and to the point book on what requirements should contain; it's like a cliff-notes version of other requirements gathering books. We ordered one for our whole team and made it required reading! For anyone who doesn't have the time nor the patience to weed through 300 pages to get to the point, this is the book for you.



2. It is rare when you come across a project management book that is easy to read, short and full of valuable information but Writing Better Requirements meets this criteria. I like simple and to the point!
   
   The Book Provides Practical Advice
   
   The book provides good practical advice on writing requirements. Alexander and Stevens follow their own advice for writing requirements in the book by using simple words that contribute to the books readability. The book is written in a manner that will not intimidate non-technical personnel so it may given to the entire project team, including customers and users. (Wait... I just had a novel idea...we should teach our customers and users how to write requirements.)
   
   Here are five of many valuable tips from Writing Better Requirements
   
   1. Perspective on the requirements effort. The authors state approximately 5% of the project effort and up to 25% of the schedule duration should be put on project requirements.
   
   2. Guidance on structuring requirements. Improper structuring is identified as a primary cause of poor requirements. The structuring discussion includes a useful table that documents problems and solutions for structuring requirements. For, example, the authors characterize one problem as Some requirements can be applied simultaneously or in any order and provide the common sense solution of Mark whether sections in the structure are sequences, parallels or alternatives. Overall the authors provide some good alternatives to challenges on how to effectively structure requirements.
   
   3. Plenty of exercises. Another valuable aspect of this book are the exercises provided after a lot of the sections in the book. The exercises provided are well thought out and solutions are included at the end of the book. In addition to the exercises examples are provided to clarify and reinforce key points.
   
   4. Guidelines on conducting a requirements workshop. Important guidelines on how to conduct a requirements workshop are discussed including room lay out and facilitation tips. The book has a good glossary of terms.
   
   5. Lists of other sources of requirements. The book includes a nice list of other sources of requirements. One of these sources that is often overlooked is problem reports from the previous system. The authors state these problem reports can often be turned around into requirements. This is a powerful method to ensure improvement of the future system.
   
   Writing Better Requirements should be a part of every project managers library. I give it 5 of 5 stars! Make your life easier and give it as a holiday gift for your users and customers.
   
   
   Dr. James T. Brown PMP PE CSP
   Author - The Handbook of Program Management



3. There were some good thoughts about writing better requirements, but, for the price that you pay for the book, I expected more substance. Most of the suggestions are just good common sense.

4 comments about Object-oriented Data Structures Using Java.

1. I teach a graduate level data structures course at a Big 10 university, and reviewed this text over the summer to use in my course. The text covers all the basics - lists, linked lists, hashes, graphs, trees, and all with good OO foundations. In my review, this book hit on all cylinders. However, I am looking at it with many, many years experience in teaching and in data structures, and frankly made the mistake of 'skimming' the book to make sure that everything I wanted to cover was in there.
   
   Then class started...
   
   The book, while going through all the motions, fails to execute well. Diagrams have mistakes in them, algorithms are wrong, code samples don't work... I have had to do quite a bit of damage control with my class, and will not be using this book next term. I now have guilt that my students were stuck paying for this book, and can't sell it back for students in future terms.
   
   (A note to faculty - the supporting material is... OK. The test banks are mediocre, and also have errors in them, and the lecture materials contain all the errors also found in the book)
   
   So, the bottom line: All the basics are there, but this is not a winning book. Perhaps the second edition will be better?



2. This seller was very punctual with the shipping and delivery of the book and it was in very good condition like the ad had stipulated.
   I will recomment him to anyone
   
   ST



3. A good, clearly written book, although there are a few mistakes in the code given. Still, it covers some tough topics in a clear and concise way. Still, it's not a book I wouldn't tackle without some guidance from a class!



4. This book is great for understanding the basic data structures in computer science. I couldn't be any happier with the way it explains everything. However, the only issue I have is that most of the exercises in the book are very vauge and therefore as a student I waste to much time trying to understand what I need to do specificaly because the book just throws out these vauge exercises without any constraints.

5 comments about Object Thinking (DV-Microsoft Professional).

1. Dr. West is correct in that Object Orientation is more a way of thinking than anything facilitated by a language. It's also clearly the language of the moment. I really like the quotation from T. Rentsch given in the book: "My guess is that object-oriented programmine will be in the 1980's what structured programming was in the 1970's. Everyone will be in favor of it. Every manufacturer will promote his products as supporting it. Every manager will pay lip service to it. Every programmer will practice it (differently). And no one will know just what it is."
   
   Dr. West is clearly a supporter of not only object orientation, but of XP and Agile as the natural consequence of OO. This book is more of a philosophical treatise trying to get people to think "objectly." It's not a programming book.
   
   I read the book. I even enjoyed it. I learned more about object orientation than I knew before. But I look at some Java code that I write and compare it with that from recent college graduates who began to think in object terms from the beginning, and my code is still rather procedural, no, make that very procedural. After all, I started programming in assembly language and FORTRAN while the college kids parents were busy being born.
   
   What will kill object orientation is not us old procedural types, but the new concepts in languages currently being researched at the universities and places like Sun. Then the OO people will move to where we procedural people are now. But remember with the Y2K problem created such a concern about the old COBOL programs. COBOL and SQL and even FORTRAN are still with us.



2. I almost gave up on this book after the first 100 pages. I should have. I managed to hang on to within 25 pages of the end. That was where Mr. West presents the reader with the formula X=4q+(p*r), and solemnly announces (I'm not making this up) "4 represents a constant value," with the word 'constant' set in italics to emphasize its gravity. By the standards set elsewhere in this book, that qualifies as a technically profound statement.
   
   At least it's not just plain wrong, as were statements elsewhere in the book. For example, p.270 asserts that "Ensuring that it's possible for two objects to exchange messages is a matter of visibility: the objects have to be able to see each other." Well, no. Systems like Linda allow objects to leave messages for each other at anonymous drops. Component systems like the Bean Box count on some third party able to see both, a 'Mediator' in the Gang of Four terms that West generally disparages. Heck, anyone who's ever seen a Unix command pipeline would know how silly that claim is. He also asserts (p.253) that over-riding a superclass method causes "cognitive dissonance." For those not familiar with psycho-babble, that means it confuses him.
   
   Those are probably low points, since the rest of the book is so vague and philosophical that it neither informs nor misinforms. Mr. West goes on at length on the hermeneutics of objects and their postmodernist interpetations (p.59). He goes on about how Alexander's design patterns have been misunderstood by mere application, how their real purpose is personal transformation within the user. Mostly, he just goes on.
   
   By now, I guess my lack of fawning shows that I haven't been born again into the mysteries of "Object Thinking," whatever that is. True believers initiated into the mystery will probably say that I'm not competent to comment on the wonderfulness of The Way of West. Well, maybe that's a good thing.
   
   I wish Mr. West all success in his navel-gazing. Maybe if he's busy with that, he won't get in the way of people trying to get work done.
   
   //wiredweird



3. This book provides a philosophical look at object oriented development by taking the perspective that everything is an object and that behavior is what is the focus of the object oriented. Development evolution or agile methods are the way to find what the behavior is for the objects. Having experience modeling and understanding the process of modeling, this book provided a good perspective on how to think about going into the process of modeling and understanding objects. Taking this perspective and seeing everything in our world as an object helps to go from the unfamiliar to the object model. I especially found the object principles quite useful as well and heuristics as the way to design from an experienced designer. I recommend this book highly.



4. I found it a great read and thought the author really had some great points and strategies to Object Oriented design and development. He draws on a vast knowledge of smalltalk style programming which is unfamiliar to me because my background is with Microsoft technologies but now I use it alot with C# and .NET. I took off one star because he tends to reemphasize over and over the battle between the object and the structural camps in programming; while I thought it was interesting and funny the first times he talked about it, around the tenth I was getting a little bored.



5. First, to be entirely fair, it is highly debatable whether I am an object thinker or not. I tend to prefer to build systems around high domain understanding. I also tend to build system's around my own highly conceptual and abstract style of thinking and tend to not split out an object until I feel that it has enough responsibilities of it's own or it has proved itself as a theme in my design. I may feel that everything could be an object but I am not necessarily sold that everything in my system needs to be presented as an object.
   
   Many of the ideas presented in this book may sound outlandish but they are good and worth considering. It is a shame that many of the thoughts and ideas provided by the object culture are not as well understood as those from the pattern culture. The pattern culture seems to be erasing an important part of software design's history and leaving us with ideas that are in many ways not as good as those that proceeded them. I would have prefered that the two movements had been perceived as more complementary than antagonistic.
   
   As this book indicates, there is a great tension in the industry between those who feel that software development should be a systematic process (there is a magic algorithm that will solve any problem) and those that feel that software development is a complex undertaking that can only be done well by having a good understanding of the problems at hand. Neither of these are a question of professionalism but rather a question of who hard software development is. This book may be the first exposure that many have to the second culture. Too much development these days seems to be.. If you are faced with this problem, use this pattern. There is too much pattern fitting in the industry and too little pattern recognition or extraction. If nothing else is taken away from this book, it would be highly appreciated if the reader starts to build a comprehension that the human needs of the system dictate what needs to be built rather than standardized architectures, common patterns, and algorithms.
   
   I felt that the process of conceptual refinement and refactoring were not as present as they should have been in this book. In general, we are human and figuring out the way objects in a software system need to collaborate together to meet the businesses needs is difficult and is rarely done correctly in the first pass. Our initial understanding of what the objects are in the process might be wrong. The way we understand processes in software might be flawed or bemuddled with preconceptions of the way the system may need to be built.
   
   Given the modern age, I also would have preferred that the author present more of a roadmap to getting people to object thinking. For many groups mired in more traditional methods, it is likely that the transition toward object thinking will have to be a gradual purpose of emergence where a person is slowly presented to different ideas and ways of conceptualizing a software system that slowly led to some of the ideas presented here. The ideas are good but the book is more evangelistic than convincing.
   
   I also have some problems with this book in that it seems to advocate that object thinking is easy. My experiences in general suggest that people are not as great in the conceptual space as many OO theorists suggest. OO is a hard sell when people often have a hard time figuring out what really are the concepts (objects) in their system compared to figuring out system behavior. There are a lot of pitfalls in good object oriented design and a lot of work that could be done just explaining to people what makes a good object. CRC is advocated here but I don't feel that the power of the method is entirely explored. Responsibility and role assignment are very important in any design.
   
   Some of the problem here is our traditional assumption of the role software development has in an organization. If I am a developer who is tasked to build software based on specified requirements (and not presented with domain information), object thinking may be hard or impossible. I think the message need to be that if we want good software, this role needs to change.
   
   Overall, this book will give the reader a good big picture view of what object oriented design really means. It will also give the reader a better understanding of what a programmer really should know in order to build good software (too often people think that knowing technologies or clean code is the key). This book will not in itself teach the reader to be a really good architect but it provides an important foundation that is missing from too many people's understanding these days.

5 comments about Beginning ASP.NET 2.0 in VB 2005: From Novice to Professional (Beginning: from Novice to Professional).

1. This book was not helpful it does not give any exercises it jumps from one topic to another. The book is suppose to be for beginners not advanced.



2. I teach a web application development course for experienced MIS undergraduate students at a huge southern university. This is the second edition of MadDonald's in VB I have used and will continue to use it as long as he keeps publishing them. My students will have had two programming courses in which they use VB and are very experienced with database design, SQL, and stored procedures.
   
   The book provides superb coverage of the development and execution environment, the fundamentals of coding and contols, data connectivity, security, and performance issues. Unlike most other references (at least for VB 2003) MacDonald focuses exclusively on the code-behind pages and doesn't try to mix up the VB code in the HTML pages.
   
   The book contains a superb brief overview of web services--definitely enough for my students to create and field their own.
   
   The explanations and examples are well written and easy to follow for this audience.



3. Sylvia B. Gonzalez, ASP.NET is really not a beginning subject. I have been in the business for more than 40 years, it is not an easy business. That is the reason they pay us well.
   
   Just keep reading, find a book that is best for the way you learn.



4. Another excellent book. The writter not only presents the subeject very well but his was way of presenting the information and samples are well choreographed. No time wasted, to the point. Hope that he writes other books.



5. Of all of the books I have purchased for ASP.NET (VB) so far, this book is the best. It covers most if not all topics needed for the intermediate ASP.NET developer. Good writing style with clear ideas and examples. The book is organized well and it is easy to find the particular topic you are looking for.
   I think it may be the best ASP.NET book for the price and would recommend to anybody who needs a reference manual for their web development in ASP.NET.

1 comments about Object-Oriented Analysis and Design with the Unified Process.

1. This book provides an excellent approach to OOAD. I still refer to it from time to time. As a System Analyst it has helped me through the years as a point of reference. It can be used in a classroom setting and also a real world setting, for an aspiring analyst and in the professional arena for a Professional Analyst.
   
   Personally i love it.