5 comments about SQL Server CE Database Development with the .NET Compact Framework.

1. I found this book to be a valuable reference and the chapters on replication have saved my hours of banging my head on my desk.
   
   What do you get...
   - You get the rundown of SQL CE and its limitations.
   - Some reference material on the subset you must work in.
   - Numerous examples.
   - Complete walkthroughs of RDA and Merge replication, including how to secure the data being transfered.
   
   Overall I am happy with the book.
   I hope in the next edition it covers some topics like best practices for design, and performance enhancements.



2. This book is a great overview for someone starting SQL Ce development. It is also a great reference book for those familiar with CE development. The book starts by going over some of the basics of SQL CE. Examples are easy to follow and a good foundation for starting development.
   
   I found the chapters on Remote Data Access and Merge Replication the most useful. Detailed setup and installation instruction on what is needed to use either of these technologies. Overall book was an easy read and the examples were very useful providing a great starting point to extend on.



3. This book is padded with reference materials that you can easily find in SQL's users manual. Huge amounts of space are used to show full source examples (in both C# and VB) of incredibly simple concepts. There is a 45 page chapter on Operator Reference which includes three whole pages on using the plus sign, and another three on the minus sign. Yes SQLCE can do addition and subtraction. Similar excessive detail is given to SQL command syntax (SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, etc.) and SQL function references.
   
   The first three chapters are essentially how to use Visual Studio, how to use Active Sync, and how to use Query Analyzer. All are covered accurately, but no real insight on any of them.
   
   So 311 pages into the book I finally get to something meaningful, Remote Data Access. Sorry, the chapter walks me, with full page screenshots, through the steps of the wizard to set up RDA. It then gives full source code (in C# and VB) to a simplistic example. Unfortunately, in all of that bulk, there are some important concepts which are essentially lost in the noise, such as why we use uniqueidentifier and timestamp columns.
   
   OK, so maybe the next chapter on Replication will be good. Again, a highly pictoral walk through of the SQL Replication Wizard screens, and another application in full source code (in C# and VB). Oh wait! It's the same application as the previous chapter but with a replication button.
   
   So keep reading there has to be meat here somewhere. Nope, we've hit the Appendix. And somehow we have again found a complete waste of pages. The Appendix contains a class listing of the Compact .NET Framework. I don't understand the point of this at all. It's just a listing of all the objects and their types. No descriptions, no properties, no methods. I don't know what anyone would use this for.
   
   If the source code examples were paraphrased (and provided in full online) and the pointless references were removed, this book would be about 40 pages long. It might be a very good book at that point, although not one worth $49.99.



4. SQL CE is a very tough topic with plenty of pitfalls, this is the book you need to navigate the terrain and ship your product on time. Beginner to Advanced, this book covers it all.
   
   Design of a successful mobile system isn't necessary intuitive, this book guides you through various subtle differences in mobile development issues. The deep dive in the replication is very valuable.



5. This and another book got me through the limitations of the .net compact framework. This book helped me understand and code my first .Net Compact Framework PDA application. I used it to build an actual application. This is a down-to-earth-make-it-happen book. I hope no one else buys it so that I am one of the few that can use SQL CE effectively!

4 comments about Oracle XSQL.

1. The author has done a excellent job. It describes about the important pieces in a dedicated chapter - XSQL architecture. After that he delves into SQL, PLSQL, XSQL , XSLT. The best part is chapter 14 on Building XSQL web applications. This explains how all the above pieces are put into a working model. The material is written keeping oracle 9i in mind. As a whole, I felt very comfortable reading the whole book.

   Especially for database developers who come from sql, plsql background and are trying to get into web development world ( without the hassle of learning Java Servlets, Jsp etc ... ), I would definitely recommend it.




2. This book describes a new and interesting approach to some well-known web development problems. Though not all of the technologies described are mature (yet), they are largely standards-based and likely to grow in popularity in the coming years. The author does a good job of showing how several different technologies (SQL, XML, XSLT, HTML and others) can be focused into a coherent whole. Probably not for beginners, but anyone with web development experience should be able to learn a lot from this book.



3. Mike has done an outstanding job with a complicated topic, a remarkable achievment from a Carolina fellow!



4. There are few books out that deal with Oracle Text and XSQL. Applying the methodologies, practices, etc. I found no need to search for another reference.

No comments about Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Programming (Professional).

No comments about Beginning Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Programming.

5 comments about Oracle in a Nutshell.

1. This book was very disappointing. It contains very few examples of anything. While it is useful (though cumbersome) to determine the syntax of Oracle commands, it provides no examples of how to practically use the commands. It gives me no help in determining what command, function, or package to use, no help in how to use it, only the syntax or declaration of it. I find it far more useful to use one of my other reference books or go to the web; at least there I typically find advice and examples on how to use the commands. The book is of very limited use!.



2. When I purchased Oracle in a Nutshell I thought I would need to buy another book for a quick reference to the data dictionary views but to my pleasant surprise these were included too.

   A great book but it's not for the weekend-warrior DBA. If you can create indexes, tables, tablespaces, users, instances and databases off the top of your head then you'll love this book. It saves having to wade through all the Oracle documentation to look for less frequently used syntax etc.

   Ben




3. Well , yes the so often chosen approach by technical book writers, of lets make it very large with lot's of STUFF, so it sells, which unfortunately most of the time does work. To get to the point, for a software developer, who actually has to produce a system or results outside of academia, this thing will get its best use as a fire starter if one has a fire place.
   First of all, it takes far too long to find anything, and once found the description looks often like a hieroglyphic abstraction instead of a short example, (very typical for folks who write books about a subject they do not comprehend them self.) My suggestion, if you are looking for a quick straight forward, and ineligible answer try (ORACLE the Complete Reference), written by the Vice President of Oracle.



4. I am an experienced developer who purchased this book as a quick reference because I don't always have time to hack through the Oracle documentation. The book has been quite useful and I've found it has everything I need, but it is often difficult to find things because of the way the book is organized.
   
   Specifically, what I find annoying is the lack of complete information all in one section. For example, the entry for TO_CHAR() for dates lists the syntax along with the input and optional mask parameter. The optional mask parameter is labeled dfmt which refers to a list of possible values in Appendix D. No where under the TO_CHAR() entry does it mention that the list of valid date formats is in Appendix D. If you have not used the book in a while, you will forget that the list is in Appendix D and spend the next ten minutes trying to figure out where the list is. FYI, I had to go all the way back to the first page of the chapter to find it. Could the author/editor not have included a small blurb next to the parameter like: (Appendix D)?
   Also the SQL*Loader section is a little hard to figure out for those of us who only use that tool every six months or so. It seems I do a lot of cross referencing when I use this book.
   
   All in all this book is accurate, complete, and quite handy. I am not certain how much improvement could be made in terms of expanding the details of each entry with out making the book much bigger, but I hope that some how the author will figure out a way. I look forward to seeing the 2nd edition.



5. This is a prime example of a book trying to be all things and falling to be anything at all.
   
   It is to big to be a quick ref and to small to be anything else.
   
   I had hope that by now there would be a 2 ed based on feedback from readers,but it seems that Oreily is content to leave it as it is.
   
   
   That is sad for us all but it also means that Oreilly has damaged its brand in my eyes.
   
   Here is what i Said on Oreillys site soon after I bought the work years ago.
   ---start--
   This book could use some improvement. Overall it is good but it fails to take into acccount that not all parts of oracle need to be included in a quick ref.
   
   In particular it tends to ignore the bread and butter of pro-cobol proc
   
   and odbc in favor of more trendy JDBC JSQL etc. This might be forgivable but to include very damn oracle package notwithstanding how likely they are to be usefull to an application programer is not. The book starts to look more like an oracle feature list for presales than a handbook to surive in the trenches. This makes the book far less usefull for me than I had hoped. I expect that I will keep looking for that handbook.
   --- END---
   In retrospect I think I was too kind, but I was hoping they would improve thier products. I had been an O'reilly fan and customer for years,and so I was hoping, as a customer, to push gently in the right direction.
   
   Well, in any case, O'reilly has left me before I left them. I may buy O'reilly again, but the persumtion of quality and utility is no longer in their favor-- where once I would buy sight unseen, now I must have proof of utility.
   
   I do not know what they are doing to the Nutshell series, but I do not like it.

5 comments about A Visual Introduction to SQL.

1. This is a GREAT book for foundation skills in SQL.

   I used this book to teach myself SQL when I was "elected" to implement an Oracle database system at a former job and have since gone on to become an Oracle developer and DBA. The concepts and techniques learned in this book have served me well along the way. I have taught Oracle development in a technical school, and insisted that they use this book in the classroom. The diagrammatic approach to learning about tables, columns, joins and SQL functions seems to "click" with everyone who encounters it.

   I'm writing this review after buying my ?10th? copy of this book - don't loan it out if you need to keep your copy.




2. I used this book when I needed to pick up SQL fast. I worked in an organization where I had to build Teradata Data Bases and used SQL to select and move the data. The illustrations really help visualize every aspect of assembling an SQL program and how it interfaces with the data base. I still use it today when I need to be reminded of a particular syntax. Don't loan this book out if you ever want to see it again. I did and now I'm buying another book!



3. This book doesn't assume that you are familiar with databases or the SQL programming language. It teaches you the programming language step-by-step using a graphic approach. A great way to learn SQL.



4. I am currently enrolled in a Database Management (Oracle/SQL) class at Boston College. Right off the bat, I knew I was in trouble when we were told the professor would be unavailable for help and most of students in class were computer science majors. (I was taking the class to broaden my computer skills above and beyond front-end web design.)

   The textbook in class was the heinously monstrous 1200+ page Oracle 9i The Complete Reference by Kevin Loney. After struggling through many chapters and finding our professor's teaching style very unhelpful, I decided it was time for another resource.

   I checked on Amazon ... and found Sam's Teach Yourself SQL in 10 minutes to be semi-helpful. Then at the Harvard Coop, I stumbled upon it - - A VISUAL INTRODUCTION TO SQL. The problem, I realized, was that I am a visual learner and need to see all the schema tables and step-by step actions to describe what happens as I develop queries. This books is key for any layman, like myself. It walks you through very basic (and more complex) problems in an easy-to-read visual approach. While using SQL on the PC, viewing the tables is difficult and this book helps you map out the problems to figure them out. I was especially impressed after emailing the author about a table question and getting a personalized response.

   If you are in a bind to learn SQL on your own, this book is great and won't kill you lugging it around either.

   P.S. A great addition I found to this book was a Mac client software (that can access Oracle Databases) called SQL Grinder. Like the book, this program is also very visual and the GUI (MAC) clearly reigns over any PC. Sorry Windows users! Thanks for your help, David Chappell! ;-)




5. This book has short chapters and a lot of examples. It is a good "second" book for an Introductory SQL course.

No comments about Programming Microsoft SQL Server 2008 (PRO-Developer).

2 comments about Microsoft SQL Server 2005: The Complete Reference.

1. Just a reference. Short explanations. Some critical notes (big plus of this book).
   The only book you need in case you love to look for details out of the BOL.



2. This book is only good if you know nothing about RDBMs in general. The first half of the book covers mainly theory, only touching on how to acutally perform the operations you're most likely looking to learn. Even when explaining how to do something, you're guided through the wizards and GUIs instead of learning something useful. If you're interested in learning stored procedures, look somewhere else. The 20 pages that cover this topic will give you barely enough details for you to write your own.
   
   Reference? yes. Complete? I don't think so.

1 comments about Expert Oracle PL/SQL (Osborne Oracle Press Series).

1. Note the word Expert in the title of this book. This is not where you would turn to learn how to write a simple SELECT statement. This book presumes that you have a basic fundamental knowledge of how Oracle and SQL work together. The emphasis here is on the lessor used features, the newest additions to 10g Release 2, in short the information beyond what the basic programmer knowledge that helps to define the expert.
   
   In addition to the standard programming tips, this book goes beyond the basics to look at what the database itself is doing. With more knowledge here, you can better understand what the database itself is doing when it is working on your SQL statements.
   
   Although virtually all databases now use SQL as their basic programming language, each of the big database programs has additions or differences that make that particular version of SQL just a bit different from others. In this book, the authors concentrate on those special features as implemented by Oracle.

5 comments about Access Hacks: Tips & Tools for Wrangling Your Data (Hacks).

1. This is a fine set of 100 tips and tricks that will help you get the most out of Access. It's a good combination of simple tricks, and more advanced coding hacks. Involving everything for networks, to XML, to data crunching ideas. Even if you don't find exactly what you are looking for in terms of a solution you will benefit from seeing how the author approaches the problems.
   
   Look through the table of contents, if you find ten or twenty that are in your areas of Access pain then



2. If you're new to Access/VBA development, this book will be a good reference. If you've been developing Access apps for a few years, there's not much in here you haven't already figured out for yourself.



3. I rate this two stars, rather than one, because it's likely that most people will find something in the book which will put them onto a new way of doing something.
   
   Unfortunately, the book (which includes "hacks" from seven contributors, as well as the principal author) is wildly uneven in quality. The poor quality varies from the text (it is noted that hack #9 is not an "eloquent" way of handling the problem) to the solutions presented. For instance, the example code in hack #22 turns off warnings -- but then never turns them back on, which could be rather disastrous (not to mention that any code which sets warnings FALSE absolutely needs an error handling routine which ensures these are turned back on). Hack #74, rated medium hard, introduces domain aggregate functions (DSum, DLookup, etc.), but the example code doesn't protect against situations when nothing matches the Where criteria -- so the example code will blow up if the DSum function returns NULL and tries to assign that to the Single variable. Examples relying implicitly on unnormalized tables abound. Would it have been so hard to think up examples that actually used normalized tables? Hack #19, rated medium hard, provides code to move through an overly-long form relying on SendKeys (!) to simulate PageUp and PageDown key presses. Rather than insert page breaks on the form and buttons relying on SendKeys on maneuver between these, why not just transform the long form into tabs on a tab control?
   
   The above is illustrative, rather than an exhaustive list of hacks that are trivial, dumb or even dangerous. While there certainly are some hacks in the book which gave me food for thought, problems like the above which I could detect in other hacks made me wonder what I'll find out the hard way as I try to actually use these new ideas.



4. I've enjoyed several other Hacks titles - Excel and Word particularly. This one is not quite the same; it's like a combination of interface and SQL hacks. Granted, there are many useful tips and ideas for code - not always bulletproof as another user mentioned, but if you know what to do you'll be able to apply these ideas.
   
   A lot of SQL-based hacks are self-evident to someone who has a solid SQL background; some interface features (such as user system tables, etc) are interesting ideas, but one might wish there were more of them. For instance, there are at least three examples of UNION statement in a query to concatenate SELECT statements... one would think this could be fitted into a single hack.
   
   Most of the form hacks assume that bound forms are being used, so if you populate controls programmatically (DAO or ADO recordsets) much of this won't be applicable. Form design is an important topic, but very few control properties are covered. Multi-user section is pretty pointless - if you work with multi-user access applications, you probably already know most of this.
   
   Certain hacks are duplicated; for instance, the one regarding "cleaner criteria" has basically two identical hacks back to back. Besides that and the UNION statement, there are a few other redundant hacks, retold by different authors.
   
   On the bright side, there are several good ideas, or at least interesting ones that open some doors to making your own hacks. There are some user-interface ideas that are valuable (like the one that highlights the active control). All in all, I do read this book, but use only about 20-30% of it, of which a good deal I either knew already or could figure out on my own.



5. I've only had this book a short time and have found more useful tips in this short book than in most of my other reference books. If you are proficient in Access, This is a must have!