5 comments about Beginning SQL Programming (Programmer to Programmer).

1. It is obvious this book was a rush to press item. There are so many mistakes and inconsistent example formats in this book that it is an embarrassment. The authors also get sidetracked with many of their examples and leave you hanging. The book does contain SQL, but mostly it promotes "Microsoft tools." I would not recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn SQL. It is simply another rush to market book on how to do X. O'Reilly's SQL Essentials is by far many times better!



2. I don't understand some of the very negative reviews here. If you are new to SQL, then this book will be a good compagnon.
   This book worked for me, it's gives you the fundamentals you need to get to the more advanced stuff. This book is to teach SQL, as a reference I use o'reillys SQL in a nutshell. And the comment on the price? Well, i think all programming books are getting more and more expensive...



3. Nice overview of SQL in Access, SQL Server and Oracle. Reviews mostly basic methods, but comprehensively, and that's just what I needed.



4. This has got to be the worst book on any computing subject ever published. The try it out sections and code snippets throughout the book are about 80% incorrect, honestly the level of errors and poor coding is disgraceful. Wrox books are normally of a very high quality but this one is absolutely terrible, I can't emphasised that enough. I begun this book with high enthusiasm for this subject but now my enthusiasm has totally diminished.

   Apart from the appalling level of errors there is also a high level or repetition, which can only be down to poor communication among its authors. Then in other areas you'll find exceptional weak explanations or explanations lacking altogether.

   The book skims over most of SQL, it doesn't cover it all by a long shot (as another reviewer has suggested). Also those who have praised this book must of read it like a novel, because if they really analysed and tested the code they would of realised most of it is incorrect. I just don't believe anyone who really examined this book could give it any praise, it really is awful.

   Some of the try it out sections constantly use parts of SQL that aren't covered till later in the book, so you're pretty much left hanging, or jumping back and forward. Confusion reigns. You'll also find that the authors apply a style of SQL common to the DBMS they each use most often, so you end up with different types of SQL. This is all very well for an intermediate or advanced text but not in a book for beginners, as this just adds to the already overloaded confusion level.

   The case study at the end of the book uses both ASP and VBScript so if you don't know those you can forget the case study. This is disappointing as case studies can really help your understanding of the language, and how it should be applied in the real world.

   The errata page for the book on the Wrox website only includes about 9 errors (at the time of writing this). I've been told that they haven't got anyone to do these updates yet, this has been the case for sometime. So if you encounter trouble you'll have to find a forum and a helpful techie to help you through instead of Wrox support. This is very annoying and extremely disappointing consider the volume of errors. So prepare yourself for some major headaches.

   If you complete this book you'll note yourself feeling numb and confused . You will have to buy another book to put all the wrongs in this book right in your mind, and believe me there are loads of wrongs to put right. This really is a very, very poor publication. DON'T BUY!!!




5. It's difficult to know where to start with this book. Errors I suppose is the best place. There are so many errors in the examples in this book it is embarrassing, it would be laughable as well, but instead it is seriously annoying. It makes grasping the concepts almost impossible as you keep having to tinker with the code to get it to work, or seek other sources of information to find out how it should be done, which defeats the purpose of using this book altogether.

   As another reviewer has mentioned, I don't believe the authors communicated much, if at all, when writing this book. It explains some concepts several times throughout the book, as if each author is taking a crack at it, and then other concepts are ignored completely.

   Another really annoying thing about this book is that there isn't much hands on stuff, they just talk at you, rather than involve you. The 'try it out' sections typical of Wrox books are few and far between in this publication. There aren't any questions to test your knowledge at the end of each chapter either. I say again this book just 'talks at you'; it leaves you feeling quite numb.

   It's odd that for a manual of over 700 pages you will feel as if you have learnt very little. Anything of real value, that would help you in the real world of development, has been left out. Sometimes it mentions some feature that would be of real value and then the words 'but we won't be covering that in this book' appear. This happens again and again to the point of insanity.

   The only thing I have learnt from this book is that I will have to buy another book to learn SQL, but it won't be a Wrox publication this time, Wrox are beginning to fall in my estimation. I really don't know what Wrox and the authors were thinking when they released this, it really is terrible. You know you really get the feeling that Wrox are getting you to do their proof reading for them!

5 comments about .NET Enterprise Design with Visual Basic .NET and SQL Server 2000 (Kaleidoscope).

1. The book is very much a hand's-on architect's/programmer's book. Not much emphasis on an academic viewpoint, but more the practical lessons from someone that has learnt from 10 or more years of design/programming. It contains many little insights that come from experience.
   
   It is (thankfully) not another beginner's book. It is set at the enterprise level.

   Good detail on testing and debugging. Throughout there is reference to scalability, fault tolerance and performance. I liked the way he introduced the test bed and using the same debugging approach across different layers.

   He is quite bold in suggesting the how things will go in the future (best architecture/design approach), offering various options, but admits some may be wrong.

   I would like to have seen more test results, I know these will be available with the non-beta code, but to compare methods, it is useful to see comparative details in the book.

   It is a good overview of the possible current architectural solutions. He realises there are many solutions to a problem, like life, the answer is a matter of balance and compromise.

   Good size book. Easy to read, so it must have been well written!




2. This is a good book. It is definitely more of a design book than a programming book (as the title says). A good developer has books like this in his or her library though.

   Unfortunately, Jimmy's writing is very hard to follow at times. English may be his second language, and it shows. Next time get a better editor -- a very poor job of editing the book was done. Some sentences just run on forever and use a bunch of unneccesary words. This may sound picky, but this type of book is read through entirely and it should be better written and organized.

   I do really like how Jimmy expores different design possibilites. He gives the pros and cons of each option, including the one he proposes. He obviously understands the technologies very well and has much real-world experience. You can tell he is an experienced developer.

   So remember, this is an enterprise design book. If you follow his proposal you will have an application with many layers/tiers that also makes use of COM+ / component services. For smaller applications this type of design is usually overkill. But for very large applications a good design is critical.

   Good book.




3. Some good material in this book that are related to N-tier design, but not a .Net book at all. Less than %20 of the book had anything to do with .Net. It looks like the book was written 2 years ago and then .Net was added to the title to better market the book. I had to return mine.



4. If you are looking for a book that gives you a blueprint for building a scalable enterprise database application using the .NET framework and SQL Server 2000 then this book hands it to you on a plate.

   Don't buy this book if you are looking to learn Visual Basic .NET or SQL Server because this one is all about applying those basic skills taught in other books to produce a "real" application.

   Most books on this subject fit the 80:20 rule, they take you 80% of the way and then ask you to just finish things off yourself. Anyone who is familiar with the 80:20 rule knows that the remaining 20% needed for completion is as much effort again as the first 80%.

   This one introduces, designs and builds a real application to completion, consisting of n-Tier architecture with full transaction control, business rules and data access with concurrency control. It doesn't ignore real world requirements such as performance, debugging and testing.

   The author imparts tips and tricks learned over the years and gives you a working example of one of the most important design patterns in database access, "Batch Command" (sometimes referred to as "Unit of Work"). This pattern minimises multiple trips to the database by compiling separate SQL statements into a single script that is send and executed in a single call. All code examples are in VB.NET and are accompanied by UML diagrams where appropriate.

   In summary this book fits hand in hand with Microsoft's .NET data access strategy and basically hands you the design, implementation notes and source code of a working, scalable, enterprise class application on a plate.
   
   Well worth it!




5. This book should have been entitled "Design of Enterprise Systems with emphasis on Stored Procedures". It really has little to do with VisualBasic or .NET, and more to do with proper large application design in the OO/SQL era.

   The author is obviously obsessed with Stored Procedures and makes a very good case for using them. In his systems, every application deals only with stored procedures and never performs SQL statements directly. Well, that's one way of doing it, but it introduces a whole lot of problems that were never really discussed too clearly.

   The book is an excellent resource not just for the theory but for practical code snippets you can [take] and use in your next huge, huge enterprise application.

   I say "huge, huge", because the sheer amount of overhead you will create in developing any applications based on this architecture is astounding. For anyone who started programming in COBOL, welcome to the world of Microsoft object-oriented programming! You will be spending 90% of your time worrying about coding things that have absolutely nothing to do with the application! Do we really want our application subject matter experts to have to worry about Shared Properties Managers, Object Construction, Threads, Object Pooling? Well, we have no choice if we go with .NET under Microsoft.
   
   If you've stepped away from VisualBasic for a couple of years, welcome back to the new world of Microsoft's vision for a single language with many names. They call it VisualBasic now, but it's just C wearing a mask. Forget about rapid coding. Forget about type-independence. Forget about functions and subroutines. You're going to be spending most of your time memorizing the wall chart of COM objects and trying to learn yet another incarnation of VB that is as incompatible with the previous version as Java is with Fortran.

   Don't believe me? OK, use Visual Studio.NET to write a simple application that looks up a record in a table and says "Hello World".

   But I digress. The book's treatment of error handling, trace logging, concurrency locking, and other oft-neglected issues is very good and gives practical advice on how to do it. I will personally implement many of his suggestions. Many others I will pare down into a more manageable architecture for a company that does not have a multi-million dollar IPO worth of cash to burn through in the next 12 months.

   His critical analysis at the end of each chapter of the proposal presented in that chapter, on the basis of performance, scalability, portability, maintainability, reusability, testability, debuggability, interoperability, and other "ities" was very clever. I will use that, as well as "codability", "readability", "longevity", and "learning curve" to help evaluate what language I want to use in my next application. It might show an MS OO language to be the worst choice. Who knows?

   2 pet peeves:

   1. "Preventive" is the correct word. There is no such thing as "Preventative", because we do not preventate things. Wonder how that slipped past the spell checker that SURELY every writer nowadays has.

   2. "Errand" is running to the store to get something. "Errant" is something that has gone wrong. The entire sample application is built on a misuse of the word "Errand". But I forgive Jimmy because he is Swedish, and if I had to write a technical book in any of my 2nd languages, I would be hard pressed to get absolutely everything right.

   Good job, Jimmy.

5 comments about Microsoft SQL Server 6.5 Dba Survival Guide.

1. No other book on the market even comes close with respect to the DBA specific aspects of SQL server. All the rest are a mix of developer/DBA material. If you just want to know how to administer SQL this is definately the book for you!



2. Basically, a well-written, high level 'cliff notes' of the manuals. The target audience is casual and beginner users of SQLServer, not power users. Power users and budding DBA's should try SQL Server Unleashed by the same publisher, or SQLServer Secrets from IDG.



3. This book is more clearly defined than the Microsoft manuals. Buy it! It's money well spent!



4. This book gives you the information you need when you need it. The authors will tell you what works, and what doesn't. You get the right answers, not just the Microsoft answers.



5. As a SQL Server DBA I am often called upon to deal with 6.5 installations. All my training has been on 7.0 and while many of my peers may have gotten their start on 4.2 or 6.0 or 6.5, I learned on 7.0 and it is different. The 6.5 DBA Survival Guide has helped me to figure out how to do things in 6.5 that are done quite differently in 7.0. I have found it to be an excellent resource manual for making sense out of how things work. Online help in 6.5 is a great disappointment compared to 7.0 so a book like this is essential.

   I don't know how to compare this book to others on 6.5 because I have not read any others. But my readings in this one have compared very favorably to what I have read in dozens of references dealing with 7.0.

2 comments about Client/Server Databases: Enterprise Computing.

1. It is good book to keep as reference. Excellent for people who are starting/interested/working on client server projects.

   But why it is out of print?




2. This is a textbook for my class. As i can learn nothing from the Prof, this book helps me out a lot!

4 comments about Understanding SQL and Java Together : A Guide to SQLJ, JDBC, and Related Technologies (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems).

1. In the pletoria of books on Java and databases, this is the one book that just must be read. It gives a thourough enough introduction to JDBC 1.0 and 2.0 and SQLJ Parts 0-2. Very readable! Covers the subjects to just the right level for developers and database experts.



2. Very excellent book. Here's why: 1. The book is readable without being verbose. 2. After every English explanation of a topic, there is a short code example. 3. The code examples show just what's relevant -- no fluff. 4. The authors tell you what topics they don't have space to cover in depth, and refer the reader to the appropriate sources.

   I found this book perfect for getting started with database access using Java.




3. I found the the C code examples unbelievable in a book that says it's for Java. The SQL is not your standard JDBC SQL its PL/SQL style. I wish I hadn't opened the CD in the back so I could return it. A waste of time and money. Perhaps if you are a very advanced SQL person and have a lot of experience with Java this might be a helpful book, but then you wouldn't want this book either, nothing good here.



4. I purchased this book for an independent study and found it severely lacked pertinent information. The core of JDBC is the Java objects that assist you in accessing a database, but this book fails to provide a decent explanation of them. The first 2 chapters are filler on Java and SQL, which someone learning to access a database using Java should already know. If you don't know them, the coverage in this book is hardly sufficient. Descriptions of code examples or discussions leading up to the code examples were probably the biggest shortfalls of the book. There is so much going on underneath that this book fails to explain.

No comments about SQL Server Forensic Analysis.

5 comments about Instant SQL Server 2000 Applications.

1. I now posess five (5) of Mr. Buczek's books. In this book, as in all the rest, it remains evident that Greg has a genuine concern that the reader learn from his printed material and urges further learning by manipulating solutions that he has presented.

   Chapter 1 does a great job of reviewing the basics of working with SQL Server and the SQL Server Enterprise Manager. As a programmer, I have designed an application using VB as the front end to SQL Server. Chapter 3 provided invaluable information.

   I found the Solutions provided by Mr. Buczek as real-world, and code examples were easily transposed to meet my programming needs.

   The Visual Basic Quick Reference in Appendix A and the T-SQL Language Reference in Appendix B are more than worth the price of this book. I will be eagerly waiting for the next release from Mr. Buczek.




2. The strength of this book is that is teaches through examples, and for someone like myself who knows a little about SQL and needs concrete examples to solidify understanding, this is an excellent resource. Mr. Buczek does an excellent job of breaking down the code in his examples and explaining what each line does. The book also has a good introduction through the first several chapters that help you get your feet wet if you have done little with SQL Server before.



3. This book is unbelievable! I had been looking for a book explaining stored procedures. I had bought four or five books on SQL Server but they turned out to be very disappointing: only one chapter on stored procedures and only examples that were less than convincing on the use of stored procedures.

   This book shows you real life examples where stored procedures are used. I understood right away what other authors were trying to explain.

   Mr. Buczek's book consists of small but complete real life applications. By using complete projects, we understand how and why using stored procedures.

   But the book is not only about stored procedures; using defined functions and triggers are also used.

   What makes this book stand-out among other books on SQL Server, is the coupling of SQL Server with a user interface: each applications use an interface: some of Mr. Buczek applications use VB6, others use VB.Net (beta 1: at that time VB.Net beta 2 had not been launched), others use Access and others use ASP pages.

   This is the book you need if you are tired, as I am, to throw your money through the windows by buying computing books that are written by people who should never have written books at all.

   As far as I am concerned, Mr. Buczek is the only person who desserves the right to write computer books. He is the only one who knows what he is doing.




4. I purchased this book more for the quick and dirty SQL applications than for the detailed 'How-To'. Unfortunately some code examples were created with a very early version of Visual Studio.NET. The code is now obsolete, so you must spend a fair amount of time repairing the code and bringing it up to the latest VisualStudio.NET conventions. Even then you might not get it working. I wish the publisher would make code corrections and errata available on their web site, but they do not.



5. I bought this book hoping that I as a hobbyist I would get some insight on how real database programs look and work. I program exclusively in Visual Basic .Net and only care to use SQL Server 2000 at this time. So, the description mentioned using .Net and I thought I had found what I was looking for. I was wrong.
   
   First, while some of the examples in the book use VB.Net, it is based on the beta version. A lot has changed since the beta versions, and this book really needs to reflect those changes.
   
   Secondly, all of the examples use the old way of connecting to and working with the database, i.e., ADO. With .Net has come a new and more effective (in my opinion) way of handling database interactivity, which is ADO.Net. I have no need for the old way of doing things. To leave ADO.Net out of this book just seems lazy to me. This is my main disappointment.
   
   Lastly, six chapters are devoted to using Access as a front end. This is why I believe the title is misleading. While many people use Access for this purpose, I do not and would have liked to know that one third of this book was devoted to this topic.
   
   For the most part, this book is filled with a lot of examples and information. Unfortunately, it falls short with the newer .Net technologies. If you want to use up to date technologies, this book is probably not for you. Unless you want to take the time to port all of the code from ADO to ADO.Net and from beta coding standards to current standards. Otherwise, it might be a good investment.

No comments about PL/1 Programmer's Guide to Embedded SQL for DB2.

1 comments about Oracle9i Instant PL/SQL Scripts.

1. This collection of scripts is a great starter kit for new DBAs because it contains highly useful code for nearly all of the basic administration, tuning and troubleshooting tasks encountered on the job.

   What I like is this isn't just a collection of code on a CD ROM, but each script is carefully explained in the text of the book. For someone like myself who is still in OCP training the explanations are almost as valuable as the code. Although the title claims that the scripts are for Oracle 9i, they also work with 8i, and the book covers what modifications (if any) need to be made to use each script in earlier versions of Oracle.

No comments about Full-motion video and audio CD-ROM training for SQL Server 2000.('Practical Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Administration on 21 CD-ROMs' course): An article from: Software Industry Report.