5 comments about Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Database Development From Scratch.

1. I found this book easy to read with some very good examples of how to build an application with ASP and SQL Server. I took on another readers review about XML and ISAPI filters, but as a beginner, I don't think that they would have helped me to write an actual application.
   This book gave me the start I needed to get into SQL Server. So thank you. It is very rare that you find a book that actual acheives what it sets out it to do.



2. As a university lecturer, I found this book the ideal text for students with limited time, who needed to rapidly master the essentials of SQL Server database development. The majority of text on the subject is very detailed, very technical, albeit very authoritative, however one has to wade through a mass of concepts before gaining a practical proficiency in the subject. Rob Hawthorne approaches his subject through the development of a single project - the Spynet application which deals with the allocation of secret agents to spying activities. A strange topic to introduce one to SQL Server 2000? Maybe. But you have to read the book and be introduced to the author's wry sense of humour to understand the merits of his approach, which is based on sound technical information presented in an inimitable style which wants you to read more. By the end of the book you WILL understand and be reasonably proficient in SQL Server 2000. What I particularly liked about the book is its analytical efficiency. The author does not simply present code and give a general description of the functions and operations. He analyses each line of code and explains in simple terms exactly what it does. I also like his approach to the data administration aspects, which most students would shy away from. However, as the author presents these aspects, one realizes that the information is actually necessary to be able to work proficiently in SQL Server, and it is not necessary to be a database administrator in order to have sufficient technical knowledge to manage your applications well. The book has a strong section on trouble-shooting and debugging applications and informative information on internet based applications using Active Server Pages and the client server environment.
   Altogether, a highly recommended book if you want to get into Microsoft SQL Server quickly, without being bogged down by all the technicalities.



3. I've used Access for some years and read a little about SQL Server mostly in ASP-books.
   I found the book concise, not too long, and helpfull in starting using SQL-server 2000.
   You can read it first as a novel to get an overview, and later use it as a reference to actually do the stuff.



4. Mr Hawthorne is well-versed not just in MS SQL Server, but its' main competitor as well. In another publication he describes Oracle's beginnings as a contractor for the CIA. Consequently it comes as no surprise that his excellent beginners' hands-on introduction to MS SQL Server uses a fictional spy vs spy theme.

   For SQL Server newbies such as myself, reading, learning and building the book's spy database project is a blast! Who said "Edutainment" is kidstuff?




5. The author really knows how to make the book fun to read. It spares you from the boring, technical parts and concentrates on the more, interesting and useful applications of SQL Server 2K, though it does feel like a book for kids after a while. The author shows his sense of humour along the way, making you laugh every now and then, which is good! :)

   The book goes through most, but not all the functionalities of SQL Server and brings you through building a SpyNet database. It even has a chapter on building the frontend with ASP, though it doesn't teach you any ASP and assumes that you either know ASP already or can make sense out of the comments he wrote together with the ASP scripts. The book touches only the surface of SQL Server concepts and thus is great for beginners wanting to start doing something with SQL Server, but not so appropriate for professionals.

   Highly recommended for beginners.

5 comments about MCDBA Administering SQL Server 2000 Study Guide (Exam 70-228).

1. I have read and reviewed over 25 MS certification books, and this is among the worst I've ever seen. This book was obviously rushed into print, as the spelling and grammar errors are the worst I've ever seen in any published material. There are many cases where they give example SQL text that doesn't even run b/c of inaccuracies. Many of the exam questions specify incorrect answers and/or tell you one answer is correct, then the answer explanation will explain why another answer is the correct choice.

   The book is week on substance, as many of its pages are filled with screen shots rather than enlightening content. The test questions are not similar to the type of questions found on the actual exam.

   If anyone actually reviewed this book before it went into production, they should be fired immediately, as it's hard to read more than a couple pages without finding errors, many of which make it difficult to determine what the author is trying to say.

   If you want to learn SQL server and desire to pass the exam, spend your time with other material.




2. When using a Study/Exam Guide to prep for a certification exam, I expect the exam portion of the guide to be a key point. The CertTrainer ExamSim included with this book is a joke. I like to begin my preparation by taking the practice exam before I read the text to see where I need to concentrate. After 90 minutes or so, I reached the end of the exam, pressed Back to check my previous answer, only to find my answer had changed. Upon checking other answers, they ALL had changed to A&B! I retook the exam, and when I went into review mode, none of my anwsers showed up at all, and neither did any text to explain what the correct answer should be. It just started the exam process over.

   I have to wonder if anyone at the publisher actually tries to read/use any of the books they publish. With the technical nature of these books, it is imperative that they be acurate and usable.

   This is the second 70-228 book I've shelled out a substantial amount of money for (the 1st one being the "All-In-One" abomination), and I'm starting to get gun shy.

   These books don't come cheap in either cost or the time it takes to read and study them, and the publishers have an obligation to make them credible. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of choices out there, and finding the good ones is getting harder and harder.

   I just hope the publishers realize that as we become certified professionals, our recomendations are taken seriously.




3. This book is terrible. Period. The writing is dry, probably only 25% of the material is applicable to the exam itself, and the book is filled with inaccuracies. I sincerely doubt the author even took the 70-228 exam before writing this book, ... A complete waste of money, avoid this book like the plague.



4. If you are new to SQL server and want to know the basics of the application then this books if your you. If you want to pass the exam however then I suggest you look else where. The material is too simplistic and there are too much typo errors. I read the book twice before turning to other materials like the Transcenders and Self Test software and I must say had it not been for the other materials that I used I would have failed the exam.



5. DON'T BUY THIS BOOK! It is full of mistakes, and I don't mean typos. There are outright incorrect statemetnts, for instance:
   the book claims that db_denydatawriter " Can deny the write permissions on any object"
   In fact, db_denydatawriter cannot modify any data in any user
   table in the database, it took me 1 minute to verify

No comments about SAS/ACCESS 9.1 Supplement for Microsoft SQL Server SAS/ACCESS for Relational Databases.

1 comments about Oracle Developer's Guide (Oracle Series).

1. This is an excellent book by one of the best know Oracle gurus. This is not a DBA guide, but is specifically for programmers (C language for example) that will be developing database applications with the Oracle database system. With this book, we completed our first large Oracle application. This book covers Pro*C, Embedded SQL, PL/SQL and more , basically all the options that you have for developing Oracle applications, and it is filled with working code examples. If this is out of print, it is certainly worth the search, perhaps there is a new version in the works for Oracle 8.

1 comments about Database Magic with Ken North.

1. In the successor to his excellent book, "WindowsMulti-DBMSProgramming", Ken North Introduces us to time-honored concepts ofwriting database applications in a fearless manner. Ken North, a seasoned veteran, has the guts to tackle all of these technologies in a single book: Data Modeling Tools, Database Server Features, Multi-tier c/s database applications using Java, and database app particulars for these databases: Sybase, Informix, DB2, MS SQL Server. He also brings clarity to the use of popular database APIs: ODBC and JDBC. Finally, he covers Interoperable SQL and the Component Access with OLE DB. If Ken's book could be faulted, it is because he didn't cover a great deal of specifics on Oracle or on ADO and ASP. And yet, he covers enough timeless aspects of building database applications in a client/server environment that no serious database application developer (at any level) should be without this book. It should noted that Ken North is ever active and moving ahead with technology almost as quickly as technology itself is improving. To this very day, he participates in and chairs technology panels at major computer industry conferences on such timely and important topics as JDBC and XML. In addition, he writes a monthly column in Web Techniques Magazine. In other words, Ken's contributions back to his chosen discipline are manifold and excellent as well. You might as well know that if Ken North said it, it is something that you can rely upon.

No comments about Natural Language Processing and Information Systems: 12th International Conference on Applications of Natural Language to Information Systems, NLDB 2007, ... (Lecture Notes in Computer Science).

No comments about SQL Server Forensic Analysis.

5 comments about SQL-99 Complete, Really.

1. the book is huge and has much useful information in it. However, I was somewhat disappointed in regard to the completeness claim the title (and the size) suggests. Especially the more advanced features (the book marks most of them them as "obscure") are not covered well at all. In particular, the new features for handling inheritance with UDTs are hardly ever mentioned, let alone illustrated with examples.

   It seems that in places where they lack experience of their own, the authors copy the reference manuals at best, sometimes not even that.




2. SQL-99 book has been a great help to me. It is the best technical manual i've read over the last years. Without it i could not have done my coding.



3. Over a 1000 pages of nicely-written examples, and one of the most complete descriptions of SQL currently available. If you're looking for an up-to-date comprehensive reference on ANSI SQL-99, this is definitely one to consider.



4. While I continue to struggle through the ANSI SQL-99 Standard, this book is a breath of fresh air in understanding. What a fantastic job!



5. If/when there is an SQL-99 edition of "SQL--The Standard Handbook" by Cannan & Otten, forget about this book. Cannan & Otten's book about SQL-92 is clearer and better organised. I'd have been lost in this book had I not read Cannan & Otten first.

   Content editing is sloppy. For example, we learn on p62 that unary + changes the sign of an operand. On p67, we are given an improved arithmetic expression which computes something completely different from its original. On p61, we are given a recipe for rounding that doesn't work for negative numbers. And so it goes.

   One thing Gulutzan & Pelzer provide but Cannan & Otten didn't is a free SQL system. I have accounts/access to seven different machines with five different CPUs and six different operating systems, but the software does not run on any of them, so I cannot review the software.

   Neither, for that matter, do the HTML files work. In a typical piece of sloppiness, the file names on the disc are like "appb.htm" but the references inside the files are like "appB.html". I had to copy all the HTML files and rename them before they were browsable.

   In a book this size internal cross-references need to be very good. Modern SGML-based publishing technology makes it easy to produce excellent internal links. This book could be better, and as it is a reference book, it really should be better.

   A trap for young players: in 1997 I found that a major vendor who claimed SQL 92 conforrmance was being economical with the truth. They conformed to the SQL 89 subset of SQL 92, but on fairly basic things like VARCHAR fields, did not conform. It will be a while before we can rely on some of the new stuff in SQL 99 being available. Just because there is something useful described in the book, don't expect to be able to use it yet. The advice about what is in the Core and what is not is *VERY* useful.

   Producing this book must have been an enormous amount of work, and despite my whinging, it will save its readers an enormous amount of work trying to make sense of a rather prolix and complex standard.

No comments about Informix/SQL: Tutorial and Reference.

No comments about SQL Server 2005 (Guias Practicas Para Usuarios / Practical Guides for Users).