No comments about MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-432): Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 - Implementation and Maintenance (PRO-Certification).

3 comments about Oracle8i DBA: SQL and PL/SQL Certification Bible.

1. I have Sybex and this one. I like this one because it has a lot of exercises. After I pass the examination, I can have confidence to handle the job which is given by my boss.



2. This book is an outstanding resource for both the 8i and 9i exams.



3. This book set me on the right path! Having had no experience with Oracle, I had study only this book, went through its practice questions and lab exercises, and in 1-1/2 month's time, I passed my first exam with flying colors! If anyone is interested in becoming a OCP for Oracle9i and want to also validate your skills in PL/SQL, this book will definitely help you pass your first test. There are some example and question errors in this books, but most are not essential, or are at least noticeable. In any case, it delivers the results and I have nothing but high regards for it.

5 comments about Oracle Web Applications: PL/SQL Developer's Intro: Developer's Introduction.

1. If you're starting to become involved with making your Oracle databases available over the web this is a must read. You can dig out the information presented here from the Oracle manuals and tech sites but ... in just 200 pages the relevant information is collected and organized. Take a weekend to read this book before you start working with the web. You'll learn what pieces are available to you and how they fit together...



2. Don't expect too much from the book that covers so many topics on just two hundred pages! First five chapters are dedicated to current Oracle & If you have time you can probably download white papers with better technical information about the topics from Oracle, Technet or related websites. On the other hand this five chapters are good time savers. Last four chapters are much better, covering introduction to PL/SQL and Toolkit (HTF, HTP, OWA_***), two sample web applications (Survey and Discussion Forum) and XML. The best thing about this book is that you'll find out what you don't know, so you can make a list of relevant books that covers the topic in more detail.



3. I have used this book as a handbook reference in teaching advanced Oracle & Relational Database Development. As I metioned, it is a very good theoretical book. I particularly liked Chapters 3 (WebDB), 4 (OAS) & 9 (XML). Should you require more hands on examples & sample usage, however, you will have to look elsewhere.



4. This is a fabulous book, clear and well-written. It's simple enough for those without much experience, but also provides enough detail for those who don't need coddling... Definitely, worth the $.



5. This book came out in 1999, and it's now late 2001 as I write this.

   This publication is a very well written introduction to the spectrum of tools and approaches for using Oracle databases to generate dynamically created web pages - based on 1999 technology. While Oracle has advanced since then, most of this book - especially the PL/SQL web toolkit sections - is still useful. If you're an Oracle developer who's familiar with SQL and PL/SQL, then this book will get you up to speed very quickly (it's only 220 pages - thin by "computer book" standards) on the detail of how the PL/SQL web toolkit is used to combine database data with HTML. If you're an Oracle developer, but you don't know anything about web architecture or HTML, then you'll get a brief yet effective introduction in here of what you need to know.

   If you don't know PL/SQL, get Steve Feuerstein's book first called Oracle PL/SQL Programming. Use that to learn PL/SQL. Then, once you're familiar with it, you'll get much, much more out of what's presented in this book.

   The section about the PL/SQL web toolkit is very useful, even today.

   The overview of WebDB is dated. Oracle's new name for this tool is "Oracle Portal", and while the underlying architecture is the same, and the features taught here still largely apply, there are new features and a completely different interface on the new tool.

   The chapter about Oracle Application Server (OAS) is still interesting to read for an overall idea of how web architecture is implemented in Oracle's web server family. But the app server has been updated several times since this book, and has very different screen displays. The basic features are still the same, and the brief review provides helpful insight into where Oracle has been, which isn't too far, fundamentally, from where it is now.

   Finally, the XML chapter is not bad for quickly getting a great general introduction of XML and it's capabilities, but be aware that Oracle has GREATLY extended it's XML support since the publication of this book. Nevertheless, I still find this chapter extremely interesting in that it shows the intricacies of what it really takes to generate an XML document, while the newer Oracle XML utilities do much of this work automatically. While the new utilities are good to use, this chapter will give you a bit more insight into the utility of XML and a database, along with a fuller understanding of what is happening, so that you can be more flexible in your use of XML.

   There's nothing of substance in this book that addresses Java or Oracle Forms for web use.

   So - in summary - it's a little dated for 2001, but still very useful. It's brief and to the point. Very helpful for an Oracle developer who needs to come up to speed quickly on web technologies.

3 comments about SQL: Access to SQL Server.

1. I read a lot of books covering topics from Access, SQL Server, to VBA. This book covers all of the "required" Access topics. It covers them better than any other book I have ever seen. It then goes on to cover topics I have not seen in other books or classes. While reading the book you will catch yourself saying why have I never seen this before, or hey I can use this! It uses Jet, Transact & VBA. Do you want to build better applications, do you want to know more than the competition, do you want to be a better developer? If so, this book is a definite purchase.

   This book is already my favorite book of all time, replacing "The Guru's Guide to Transact-SQL
   by Kenneth W. Henderson, Ken Henderson". (You should get that book as well). I also just purchased "Microsoft Access Version 2002 Inside Out (With CD-ROM) by Helen Feddema" and I think that book will also be in my "top three" books to reference/read.

   If you are serious about being a top developer, get this book.




2. This book is well written and easy to follow. The explanations are written in clear language and instructions are written out step by step. The book is well organized which means it's easy to use it more as a reference book. But, it is such a pleasure to read, you want want to skip a single page. This book covers both very elemental aspects of SQL, but also has much to offer the more experienced user.



3. I own about 30 books about Access (all versions). This book tops all of them. If you are using Access 2000 or 2002(XP) and you like to know about SQL Server (2000), trust me this is it. Try to read it from begining to the end. It's written in english language (not technical slang) and it shows you some cool tricks even for those Access 97 users. Hope to see more books from these guys. Thanks

2 comments about Pro SQL Server 2005 Assemblies (Pro).

1. Do not be mistaken the book is NOT a light read but the knowlege that the author is able to impart is fantastic.
   I found the first part of the book really informative especially the parts dealing with User Defined Functions and the User Defined Data types.
   One must try out the examples in order to glean the most from the book. The last chapter's examples involve the use of Web Services. This is a must!!
   Over all I would really recommend the book to the SQL Server Developer.



2. The ability to run .NET code within the database makes SQL Server even more valuable - and the need for Pro SQL Server 2005 Assemblies even more obvious. Here's a guide to building each type of SQL Server assembly, packed with examples geared to common business problems and solutions, and tips on accessing external data sources and web services. Code projects in C# and Visual Basic are available from the Apress web site, making this expert's guide even more useful.

5 comments about Xslt.

1. This book was difficult to use, and I found that the author tried to cram too much into his examples. Some concepts were really poorly explained. Fortunately my company paid for this book, and not me.



2. This book is one of the most frustrating technical books I have ever read. The fact that it is from O'Reilly just makes it doubly insulting. The author doesn't bother to explain concepts. He just lists out the syntax for the various elements without bothering to explain how the instruction works. This book might be useful as an XSLT reference but it is useless as a learning tool. I totally agree with the other reviews of this book about the "huge honking examples" To give you an idea of how bad it is, the first XSLT example in this book is the obligatory "Hello World" example which is less than 20 lines. The second example is 3 pages long and uses concepts that have not been introduced at all!! The book also suffers from too many forward references. He keeps mentioning concepts that have no relation to the topic at hand. Sure, it might be great for completeness, but it just gets in the way when you're trying to learn a new concept and he keeps throwing additional, esoteric (by his own admission) stuff at you. In my opinion this is a very poorly written book.



3. I've been programming in a system that uses XSLT for reporting for about three years now. This is the book I actually use. It's getting beat-up and battered and has a couple of pages bookmarked - mostly in Chapter 3. I found the initial Hello World examples - where the same XML is processed for text, SVG, Java, and VRML - to be a really fascinating read.
   
   The core functional programming block in Chapter 4 is worth the skull-sweat it takes to work through it. One useful feature is a number of examples that don't work - that seem right but are misleading.
   
   On the downside, the index is fairly poor, but that's typical.



4. I was able to use this book on a new project I was assigned to at work. I had previously read a bit about XPath, but other than that, I had no experience with XSLT. Within 2 days of reading, that being the first 4 chapters or so, I was able to fix the issues I had been assigned.
   
   This is a book for programmers, and for people who know a bit about XML. It is not a school textbook. It does reference some topics before it details them, but if you are a programmer, you are used to reading the context of something unknown to figure out what it does. This book is no different. The examples it includes are non-trivial, and they give you a good idea of the power and correct usage of XSLT.
   
   I highly recommend this book. It helped me do what I needed to get done, quickly and correctly.



5. Coming from a tech writing background, I bought this book back in early 2007, wishing to develop practical programming skills in XSLT 1.0, which I was utilising to transform single-sourced XML documentation into multiple outputs, such as HTML/Java Help and PDF.
   
   Without an apparent specific target audience in mind, this book initially gives the appearance it's written for those wishing to learn XSLT with little or no prior XSLT programming knowledge. It has topics organised in a manner that covers the basics of XSLT programming principles in early chapters to more complex XSLT concepts further on. There are several appendices: an XSLT reference for all elements in the XSLT specification, an XPath reference and an XSLT and XPath function reference, all of which should prove useful once you start making headway into XSLT programming. The structure of this book is commendable.
   
   Whilst Tidwell comes across as an intelligent, knowledgeable and enthusiastic XSLT programmer, describing XSLT concepts is not one of his strengths. Initially, XSLT can be a difficult programming language to get into, but unfortunately Tidwell frequently fails to put himself into the shoes of the novice, making assumptions about certain XSLT concepts in his descriptions that fail to come across clearly. One major weakness of this book is its insufficient coverage on XPath. Sure enough it has reference material to XPath axes and functions, but little coverage on HOW XPath is actually used in XSLT. This is a shame, considering that XPath is such a fundamental component of XSLT.
   
   Tidwell uses fairly good XSLT code samples and snippets to help explain specific XSLT concepts. However, some of the early samples make use of XSLT code whose concepts are not covered until much later chapters in the book. Often, there were no clear indications as to whether one should read ahead to understand these concepts first or put them mentally on hold. I found this potential need to forward reference rather distracting. In other XSLT samples, code from different programming languages (such as Java) was utilised more than necessary.
   
   In one chapter, Tidwell makes three successive attempts to explain the somewhat complex "Muench Method" for grouping XML nodes! Whilst I almost grasped the concepts involved after the first explanation, the subsequent explanations just plunged me into further confusion. Between each explanation, he adds comments such as "Well, that's crystal clear, isn't it?". This style of writing only contributed to the frustration felt upon making a sincere attempt to actually understand this concept. I ended up having to search material elsewhere to find an explanation I could actually understand.
   
   After having practiced a little more XSLT myself and having reread a few more chapters, this book became easier to understand, partly because I developed a clearer understanding of the concepts involved and partly because I felt more acquainted with Tidwell's style of writing. With perseverance, a beginner can make substantial headway into XSLT programming using this book, although I wouldn't rely on it as a sole XSLT learning resource. I found that the XSLT 1.0 Pocket Reference by Evan Lenz a fantastic little reference book - it's concise, explicit descriptions of XSLT concepts really helped me understand some of the ones which were lacking in this book.
   
   I guess if you come from a programming background and know a little about XPath, this book would probably work well for you. Otherwise, I strongly suggest supplementing it with another XSLT learning resource or Google searches on the Internet. There are loads of helpful code-snippets out there with decent-enough explanations to supplement them and XSLT programming principles can be learnt well by example.
   
   Let's hope that Tidwell's next edition of this book is an improvement upon what is potentially a good learning resource.

4 comments about The Rational Guide to SQL Server Notification Services (Rational Guides) (Rational Guides).

1. Suppose you're in charge of inventory at a store. Wouldn't it be nice of your computer system could notify you immediately that you're selling a lot of something that normally sells very slowly?
   
   This is exactly the situation that Micro SQL Server 2000 Notification Services is designed to handle. It is a platform that includes a notification engine to tell selected individuals about selected changes in the information in the database. Computer systems normally work in a pull oriented architecture i.e. you go to the web and ask for the sales figures for each inventory item to see if there is an anomoly. Notification services changes this model to a push orientation. You subscribe (we don't want to be doing SPAM) and based on the criteria you select you are automatically notified of changes in the underlying data structure.
   
   The Rational Guide books are somewhat of a new concept in publishing where a small book, compared with most computer books, can hold down the price and the size while devoting itself to one subject. In addition, the publisher has made additional information available on his web site to allow the reader to expand his knowledge beyond just this book. I like this concept. All computer books don't need to be 1,000 pages, much of which is just copied from the previous edition.
   
   The audience for this book is considered by the publisher to be a Beginner/Intermediate Developer. Beginner - yes, Notification Services are so new that almost all of us are beginners. But this is not the book for someone just starting out on SQL Server
   
   Excellent concept for a book, well executed.



2. We are a major player in the real estate industry. Our web site has millions of visits per day and has positioned itself as the focal point of listing finding. One recent requirement was to allow web users to subscribe to our data and be notified upon a listing change or new listing in an area. We immediately started looked at sql server 2000 notification services. The starting point for research was "The Rational Guide to SQL Server Notification Services". This is a great resource and its content has allowed our developers to rapidly build a custom solution for our needs. Great buy. Great technical content.



3. This book is an excellent introduction to Notification Services -- much, much better than what's available in Books Online or on the web. It's well-written, well-organized, and terse. A great text for someone just getting their feet wet.
   
   However, it has a fatal flaw that knocks it down from 5 to 4 stars: This book has no index. I'm incredibly disappointed by this. It means that this book, once read, will never be picked up again -- if I can't find information quickly enough, I won't bother. An index is key to a good tech book, but apparently Rational Press missed that memo.
   
   Great book, but buyer beware if you need something you can use as a reference later on down the road...



4. This is an excellent introductory book for Sql Server Notification Services especially when time is a constraint in learning the technology. The author does an excellent job in explaining the technology and uses a sample notification service application for doing so. The book also comes with 2 bonus chapters and source code for the sample application that can be downloaded from the publisher's web site after registering the book!

3 comments about Web Application Design and Implementation: Apache 2, PHP5, MySQL, JavaScript, and Linux/UNIX (Quantitative Software Engineering Series).

1. This is the book I wish I had had when I was starting to set up my Books-On-Line web site. Here in one simple step is just about half of what you need to know to set up a fairly complex database driven web site. I say about half of what you need to know because he spends no time at all on appearance, type fonts, color, illustrations, all that stuff. As he says in the introduction, he's not good at that (neither am I), and for those subjects you need another book.
   
   But for a functioning web site he recommends what is sometimes called LAMP - for Linux, Apache, MySql and PHP. To summarize why:
   
   The software is FREE, a very good price.
   It doesn't crash as often
   It runs faster so you can use a slower computer.
   
   By the time you finish, you'll probably want at least one book on each of these software packages, but here is an excellent place to start. It gives you enough to get started and you only need to go deeper into each of these packages when you start getting fancier. The nice thing about this book is that it gives you everything you need to get started in a well written, easy to understand way.
   
   Mr. Gabarro, there are two things I would suggest for your next edition: One, include a cd of a working collection of the four packages rather than saying go get any distribution, and two, talk a little about past and emerging technologies such as Cold Fusion for the past, and Ruby on Rails for the future. I'd be interested in your opinions.



2. Have read 40% of the book so far. There are many places where visual aspects are discussed, and there are no visual illustrations!!. The book is clearly aimed at people whose knowledge is elementary in the areas being discussed, and yet there is no attempt to make it easy for the reader to learn. Also, the examples are unimaginative.
   
   On the bright side, I like the casual conversational style.



3. Hi guys, first of all, thanks for actually considering buying this book. I do appreciate all reviews, whether they are good or bad, as this is the very first book I wrote. I do have to say in response to T.Arora that I did spend a lot of time writing this book (took me over a year), and the reason I did not include more images was a contractual restrictions. I was told to write a book of about 300 pages, and adding images would have made me go way over board. I felt it was more important to concentrate on explanations and the actual code. After that, you could always write the code and see what it looks like.
   
   I do hope you read it till the end. I've heard good things about the last chapter, when everything gets together. Hopefully you will like my examples a little better. :)
   
   For those thinking on whether or not to buy the book, realize that this book is about learning how to make database-driven websites, not how to make pretty pages. If you want to learn tricks and dangers of Web programming, the book can definitely help you. If you just want to learn Web design and how to choose colors, get a different book.
   
   Thanks to all of you that have purchased it so far! :)

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 Admin911: SQL Server 2000.

1. This book is a concise and friendly guide that is great for admins. It proved itself the first time that I had a problem allowing me to quickly find the answer I needed.



2. SQL Server 2000 Administration headaches? ... Well if you need a rapid reference on system administrative functions that could not only save your company $$$ on downtime and system availability but improve your response to difficult situations this is a DBA must have. I have purchased more books attempting to get reliable information and tips to make my Administration of SQL Server Database systems robust, reliable, and rapid on response I have finally found the information I needed in "One" book. I would recommend this book for Mid to Senior level Database Administrators and as a guide for training Junior level DBA's to prevent bad habits and teach the proper habits of monitoring, managing and maintaining SQL Server databases overall. Oh and the nice touch is that TIPS: and CAUTION: notices throughout the book educate the creative "out of the box" approach to proper system risk management. I hope Mr. Knight considers sharing his talent with future Administrative Guides !!!



3. If you're thinking of buying this book, because you've tried everything in Microsoft's online manual "Microsoft SQL Server 7.0 Performance Tuning Guide" and are still having some performance problems, then this book could be your solution.

   It helped me solve some of the problems I was having with our productive server and helped me understand some basics a bit better than before. It does not contain everything you need to know, but gives you some ideas how you have to look for further information and what you have to look for.

   It contains some good reference material, but not all of the hidden features. As with every book under 1000 pages this is not THE bible for the DBA but is a complementary book that will provide some invaluable information not found elsewhere. This book was well worth the price..




4. This is one of those most have books for any SQL Server DBAs reference library.

   Brian Knight covers a LOT of different items and goes into sufficient detail on all topics. Probably the best real world book on SQL Server administration out there. I've worked with SQL Server for over 5 years and have been a senior DBA over a large enterprise SQL Server farm but I still learned a great deal from this book.




5. This is an excellent book. The coverage of SQL Server is very solid. However, if you plan to purchase the author's newest book, SQL Server 2000 for Experienced DBAs, DO NOT purchase this book. The newer book covers everything this book covers, in addition to the topic of high availability. Owning both books would be completly redundant, a mistake I personally made.