Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Administration by Adam Jorgensen, et al
Reviewed by Sudheer Maharana
Review date 12/11/2012
Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Administration
Just completed reading the book and it’s huge. Authors have tried their best to fit most of the DBA practices in a single book. However, it is a very detailed book and can be considered as a condensed version of books online. It gives you a guideline on to focus on the most frequently used database administration functionalities starting from installation/upgrade, automation, troubleshooting, performance tuning, security, change management, monitoring etc. It has explanation on high end database features such as Replication and Clustering. Authors have touched upon some of the new features such as “Always On”. I enjoyed reading the chapter “indexing your database”.
I will refer this book to everyone and especially the new DBAs who want to know more about SQL Server 2012.
Beginning Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Programming by Paul Atkinson, et al
Reviewed by Sudheer Maharana
Review date 12/11/2012
Beginning Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Programming
It is a great reference book to understand the concepts and basics of T-SQL structures. It is almost comprehensive, high-level introduction to the fundamentals of SQL Server.
Before the book dives into the basics starting of T-SQL fundamentals, it gives an overview of RDBMS basics and then moves on to CRUD operations of SQL, Joins etcs and covers advanced topics such as XML and Locking. It also gives some overview of SSIS, BI and other SQL server related activities like administration.
In short, I will recommend this book to all the newbies who want to get introduced to the enchanting world of T-SQL for the newest edition of MS SQL Server.
Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Integration Services by Brian Knight, et al
Reviewed by Sudheer Maharana
Review date 12/11/2012
Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Integration Services
I have been an ardent fan of Brian Knight and the team and most of the time, follow them in blogs to get to know most on my quest to learn new things on SSIS. This book is a complete reference guide for SSIS and if you are in the market to shop for a reference book on SSIS, your search ends here. I have their 2008 version of the book and now 2012. Content structure is almost same between both these books except few more changes in various sections. I enjoyed reading the chapter on Advanced Data Cleansing and went about doing a prototype.
The book explains on all aspects of the SSIS development in detail with examples to supplement the explanation. Anybody who is interested to jump start on SQL Server or to refer advanced topics can refer to this book. A great book indeed and worth every penny.
Professional Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio 2012 by Mickey Gousset, et al
Reviewed by Frank Liao
Review date 12/04/2012
Professional Application Lifecycle Management with Visual Studio 2012
This book gives the complete “What”, “How” and “Why” on features inside Visual Studio 2012 (VS) and Team Foundation Server 2012 (TFS). The authors wrote a comprehensive guide to how to use TFS within the software development lifecycle (SDLC) from multiple perspectives of product development (Change Management, Product Management, Project Management, Architecture, Development, and QA). This includes setting up your source control, creating automated builds, storyboarding, setting up your Scrum template, creating design/architecture documents, creating tests, debugging, and doing code/application analysis.
I specifically like the explanations of different configurations and how one favors a “value” over another in practice. As a consequence of this writing style, it is not a quick guide where someone can pickup and set up their own TFS environment without investing a significant amount of time.
Coming from a software development background, I especially like the sections about source control, the Scrum template, architecture, code metrics and unit testing. I felt that the discussions were complete and very similar practices that I’ve seen in the field of software development. Additionally, I learned additional perspectives to the usage of TFS that I hadn’t thought of before.
Overall, this is a great book if you want to be fully informed about how to integrate TFS within your SDLC.
Node: Up and Running: Scalable Server-Side Code with JavaScript by Tom Hughes-Croucher, et al
Reviewed by Sam Lam
Review date 11/26/2012
Node: Up and Running: Scalable Server-Side Code with JavaScript
I’ve been using c#, .net, SQL and other Microsoft programming tools close to 20 years (okay .net is only about 10yrs), love them still and definitely carrying a bit of bias against other relatively newer technology. Since a year ago, I have been reading up a lot of good things on node.js and particularly on the insane ‘parallel’ performance and throughput. So I’ve decided to dive into the technology by trying it for myself. I thought the best way to review Node.js is by developing a prototype.
My particular problem is javascript skill, or lack of. (if anyone ask, i would say my js skill is 3 out of 10, even though that i used jQuery for quite sometime; consuming the technology doesn’t mean that i’d be great at it) So my hope for this book is to give me a quick introductory shortcut to understand and to learn Node.js, hopefully, in couple of days.
I’m surprised how light this book is, no more than 200 pages. Thought that was a great sign that I can easily zoom through it. After the first few chapters, I noticed much of the materials was written for linux environment, such as Ubuntu. Even though I do have a ubuntu VM on my machine, I’ve decided to stick to the Windows 7 environment. It was an excellent decision, because it was so much easier. With Notepad++ and Webmatrix 2 refresh, why would anyone still want to develop node.js in ubuntu?
Following the chat / twitter examples were easy. They are the step-by-step guide on how the code is structured, client/server communications over tcp, and routing on express (similar to MVC). It surprised me how easy it was to work with Jade and EJS. I’m very much impressed by Node.js, it’s incredibly efficient.
I pretty much went off tangent after that , and moving on developing the prototype at my own pace. I glanced thru rest of the book and didn’t find anymore full-program examples as in the first 40 pages of the book. Rest of the book contains references that can be found on nodejs.org, expressjs.com, or mongoosejs.com website.
A bit disappointed that it didn’t cover node-inspector, which is an very important tool when it comes to debugging node.js. Formidable is also another important library used in node.js.
All in all, I think the book is okay as an introductory reading material. It doesn’t cover everything needed for node.js newbie like me, nor does it contain cookbook references of advanced techniques. But it was good enough to help me started and gave me enough ideas so I can dig up references from Google.
There’s one website i learned from this book, which is most valuable for me (javascript.crockford.com). This site explained a lot of mystery about Javascript for me: such as class constructor, prototype, private vs global, etc. So if anyone asked me again, i can boldly claim that my javascript skill level is now 3.1 out of 10. LOL
Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services with MDX and DAX by Sivakumar Harinath, et al
Reviewed by Lawrence Matias
Review date 11/26/2012
Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services with MDX and DAX
This will be my first time to use the said product. This book is very detail in the covering all the necessary entry points and pitfalls that you will encounter during the learning process. Please note that it is very hard to know this product, but the book was able to go over the main points. This in turn made the product learnable. If you are serious in using this tool, then this is the book for you. Also I like that you can download from Wrox the necessary materials that are needed for the chapters. This is a big help. Overall this book is priceless.
Programming Microsoft SQL Server 2012 by Leonard Lobel, et al
Reviewed by Neeraj Agrawal
Review date 11/25/2012
Programming Microsoft SQL Server 2012
First off, this book is for all those db developers who have good working knowledge of SQL Server along with a keen interest in using other microsoft technologies to play around with the database. The book is nicely dissected into 3 parts. The first 2 parts are geared towards core SQL development. The 3rd part covers new tools of integration and new technologies that are enriching the SQL landscape.
Chapter 1 is a full-blown coverage of the new SSDT introduced in SQL Server 2012. This chapter is for core developers who often find themselves juggling between tools for SQL as well as .net development. As SSDT is hosted within the visual studio, there is now a single development environment to work from.
Chapter 2 covers new T-SQL features and enhancements brought in by SQL Server 2012. Each feature is nicely treated with some good examples.
Chapter 3 goes deep into discussing SQL CLR. This highly underutilized feature within SQL Server was touted to be the next big thing. Hopefully after reading the chapter, you will feel the same and be encouraged to take advantage of it.
Chapters 4 & 5 cover transactions and SQL security. Both have been highly misunderstood areas and the chapters do complete justice to them.
Chapters 6, 7, 8 & 9 covers all the non-relational features that are making SQL an enterprise level product. Features like XML integration, Hierarchical data manipulation, file streaming and
geospatial support equip SQL Server with tomorrow’s technology. These features are powerful and very intuitive to use.
Chapters 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 & 15 cover different aspects of SQL programming. Mobile and cloud computing have becomes buzzwords and SQL is enabling developers to tap into those areas. .Net has quickly become the leading software development platform and these chapters help SQL developers get familiarized and productive on it.
To summarize, the book is very well written and covers lot of ground. It should be of immense help to novice as well as seasoned db developers. I recommend it to everyone.
C# 5.0 in a Nutshell by Joseph Albahari, et al
Reviewed by Ajit Kumar
Review date 11/19/2012
I have been reading this book series since “C# in a nutshell” published in 2002. It is a great book to jump start with C# programming as well as upgrading your skill-set every time a new version releases. This book explained the key differences between 3.0, 4.0 and 5.0 on very high-level. Added benefit of this book is to have specific chapters on advance topics such as parallel programing, threading, tasks, asynchronous patterns, Serialization, I/O and networking. Authors have explained LINQ in a greater depth (three chapters) including significant block diagrams to easily understand the execution fundamentals.
I would recommend this book to anyone who is beginner in C# as well as professionals upgrading their C# programming skills.
Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012 Integration Services by Wee-Hyong Tok, et al
Reviewed by Laxmi Mallampati
Review date 11/08/2012
Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012 Integration Services
As an Intermediate developer in SQL 2005 SSIS, I found this book useful to learn all new features in 2012. However I did not have a test environment to execute the flow. I was mostly interested to learn CDC changes and Configuration changes, which were explained well. The XML file import was explained in simple terms. Enjoyed reading this book and need to dive deep-in to understand in more detail.I would definitely recommend this book as all in one package. it starts from basis and covers all the components in SSIS.
Node: Up and Running: Scalable Server-Side Code with JavaScript by Tom Hughes-Croucher, et al
Reviewed by Adnan Masood
Review date 10/03/2012
Node: Up and Running: Scalable Server-Side Code with JavaScript
For a swiftly evolving framework in its relative infancy (current version at the time of this review is v0.8.11) this book serves as an illustrious introduction and start-up guide. The book’s version of node is v0.6.6 which causes demos to not run as smoothly as one would like. However, due to the wealth of preliminary information and its focus on getting up and running, anyone thinking of working with Node should definitely have a read of this book.
The book clearly explains Node’s underlying concepts of non-blocking I/O and event loop. For instance, authors discuss the significance and possible use case for node with analogies as follows.
” … In a small restaurant where the kitchen staff and the wait staff are the same people, no improvement can be made by becoming event-driven. Because all the work is being done by the same people, event-driven architectures don’t add anything. If all (or most) of the work on your server does it computation, Node might not be the ideal model…”
Being an O’Reilly publication, my expectations for high quality writing and production were met however the book falls short on details when it comes to getting Node up and running on Windows; instead it has an implied expectations for Linux knowledge.
The book is divided into two parts and eight chapters. Starting with the basics of brief introduction to Node.js, chapter 2 delves directly into Doing Interesting Things such as Building a Chat Server and simple Twitter application. Chapter 3 deals with Building Robust Node Applications, discusses the infamous Event Loop and makes way for the next section i.e. deep dive and API reference.
Starting with chapter 4, the deep dive / API reference section, we look into the Core APIs moving into chapter 5 Helper APIs such as DNS, Crypto, Processes and Testing. Chapter 6 deals with Data Access including NoSQL and Document Stores, Relational Databases, Connection Pooling and Message queuing Protocols. Next chapter deals with external modules such as express and Socket.IO while the final chapter 8 walks us through Node’s extensibility endpoints Package Manager and Add-ons.
Programming Microsoft LINQ in Microsoft .NET Framework 4 by Paolo Pialorsi, et al
Reviewed by Haitao Wang
Review date 9/10/2012
Programming Microsoft LINQ in Microsoft .NET Framework 4
This is a good book to explain how LINQ works inside and out. Also in this book, there are lot C #examples. I am looking information on how LINQ works with SQL. This book definitely meets my expectation. It has good chapters about query, manager data, and data binding.
Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Administration by Adam Jorgensen, et al
Reviewed by Neeraj Agrawal
Review date 9/10/2012
Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Administration
This book is definitely a must read. From anyone just starting with SQL Server or a seasoned database professional, this book has something for all.
The book starts with an overview of the new features in SQL Server 2012 and then talks about SQL installation/upgradation best practices. It then covers topics related to configuration, service broker, CLR integration, security & change management. These topics are so vast in themselves that one should not expect a very detailed coverage, although, the authors have made sure the reader gets enough knowledge to be able to go off their own. What I liked most about this book is its coverage of topics related to performance tuning & optimization. There are at least 3-4 chapters which are very detailed and informative. I’m sure beginner & intermediate DBAs will hugely benefit from this. The authors have also covered the regular topics related to replication, clustering, backup/restore, log shipping, database mirroring etc.
There is also a small chapter on SQL Azure administration & configuration. The much hyped SQL Server 2012 feature of AlwaysOn also gets its own chapter in the book too.
Finally, the book does not miss out on covering the reporting services, analysis service, integration services & sharepoint integration.
To summarize, I think the book does justice to its size(around 900 pages). It provides crisp and concise information related to basics & specialized topics. However, it does leave a lot to be explored by a DBA on his own. For a huge product like SQL Server, even several volumes might not be able to cover all.
I recommend this book to my fellow DBAs. Go for it…..
Code Complete by Steve McConnell
Reviewed by Linh Vu
Review date 9/9/2012
This book is a great guide to the whole software development lifecycle. From requirements gathering to developing to debugging, it offers insight, common pitfalls and tips. There is so much detail in each topic, it feels as if years and years of industry programming experience condensed into one book. Incredibly helpful in getting someone up to speed for working in teams as well as architects and leads wanting to organize and plan large software projects. I’d recommend this for anyone working with software as it is a great guide to go by as well as to understand why processes such as requirements gathering and writing tests are necessary.
Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Integration Services by Brian Knight, et al
Reviewed by Ajit Kumar
Review date 8/20/2012
Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Integration Services
This book explains each SSIS tools in detail with plenty of code samples which help to jump-start for newbies. Initially, it starts with slow pace but covers more advanced topics in later chapters such as “Accessing Heterogeneous Data”, “SSIS Extension and Administration”, “Integration with WMI and External Applications” etc. It provides the real practical experience while working with programmatic examples. I would recommend this as a great reference book even for expert SSIS developers.
Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Integration Services by Brian Knight, et al
Reviewed by Sindhura Ravi
Review date 8/20/2012
Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Integration Services
I have been working on 2005 and 2008 Integration services for quite a while and never read a book to know how it works rather did few experiments on the tool and able do some good work.When they introduced 2012 version had no choice to read as no tool to expirement.so ordered the book and started reading and was mainly interested in new features so,when i looked into the topic SSIS CDC Tools was impressed with the way it was explained in the book and was really interested to play around these tools apart from that I always used to have some issue with the data types so jumped to the topic for understanding the data types and it was explained perfectly how to work with the datatypes and how to improve the performance by chosing the right datatype.Enjoyed reading this book and need to dive deep-in to understand in more detail.I would definitely recommend this book.
Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012 High-Performance T-SQL Using Window Functions by Itzik Ben-Gan
Reviewed by Laxmi Mallampati
Review date 8/20/2012
Microsoft® SQL Server® 2012 High-Performance T-SQL Using Window Functions
One of the good “Cheat” book I came across. Yes, I agree with many that there is no doubt Itzik Ben-Gan is one of the great T-SQL experts in the industry. Initially I thought many of the functions he described cannot be used in OLTP model. Very quickly I realized I was wrong to some extent, I had to identify duplicate entries and Islands and the queries were right there. But I think I will stick to my Original Comment – the book is very specific for certain window function as the title suggests which are – ranking, distribution, ordering, getting ranges, gaps, island, duplicates, running totals, packing intervals, aggregates and finally optimizing them. Ofcourse that’s what the title suggest (Window Functions..) and is very well concised in 200 odd pages when compared to 900 or so in other books. Actually I was expecting – to know different alternatives for creating such functions, which I did not find much. There is a mention of CLR, but one should be good with .NET coding. My final conclusion would be go for the book in case you have to deal a lot with analytical type of coding. This is the book, where we can simply use the proven logic.
Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Integration Services by Brian Knight, et al
Reviewed by Lawrence Matias
Review date 8/19/2012
Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Integration Services
To maintain continuity of the lessons the sample database can be downloaded from Wrox website. This is very helpful and a time saver because you do not need to find the correct version of the database to match the book. I also wish that I had this kind of caliber of a book when I first started with SQL 2000. This book has it all. It shows you all the necessary entry points and pitfalls that you will encounter during the process. The steps in the lessons are clear and match SQL 2012 UI accurately. It is not like working with some books that the version that the book was based on, was not the production version. This has been a time saver. Overall this is book is priceless.
Microsoft Project 2010 Inside Out by Teresa S. Stover, et al
Reviewed by Kenny Patel
Review date 8/17/2012
Microsoft Project 2010 Inside Out
I started using Project 2010 without any training and had to constantly Google or look up topics on project help for some of things i wanted to do. i ordered this book based on good reviews and am quiet impressed with the amount of material that is covered in the book. this book covers everything from creating, managing, customizing and integrating project 2010 and it is well organized. since there are 1200 pages it is good to use index to find what you are looking for. steps on how to do something are easy to follow and lot of them also include screenshots. i also like the fact that the book comes with soft copy, makes it easy to find a topic without having to look up the index. notes and trouble shooting section in each area provide quick info and help resolve any issue. i think this book is good for someone who is starting out or has working knowledge of project 2010.
Professional WCF 4: Windows Communication Foundation with .NET 4 by Pablo Cibraro, et al
Reviewed by Anupam Satpathy
Review date 7/18/2012
Professional WCF 4: Windows Communication Foundation with .NET 4
I always love Wrox publication book. I have not yet completed all the chapters of this book. Below is the few review points based on first few chapters.
As per my view this book is intended for beginners.
Don’t forget to read first two chapter if you are beginner. Those two chapters will give you the basic fundamental idea of WCF. Basically the contract creation part is required. Chapter-3 is not cover all the bindings but overall it nice for beginners. I had little confused on chapter-4. No idea why REST service is included there. It could have created a separate chapter with little more elaborate. If you want to develop REST service better go for some other book for detail. WCF security part is nicely described. This book is more than sufficient for implementing security in your WCF application. This book doesn’t cover all the detail related to AppFabric. Better go for separate book.
But overall experience of this book is very nice and clearly describes what we want in real implementation
Beautiful Data by Toby Segaran, et al
Reviewed by David Chin
Review date 6/12/2012
This book is not your typical teach you how to do something book. Instead it is a collection of essays by various people who study data and who have used data to solve problems.
Being a person who relies on data heavily to do my job, I really appreciated reading about other people’s stories and how they rely on data. I am more of a behind the scenes type person, so presentation and creativity has never really been my thing, but this book helps get the mind going and if nothing else, you appreciate other’s people work in the field.
I like that I was able to skip around and not have to read the book cover to cover, which I do not have the patience to do with any tech book. There are definitely some slower essays and ones I didn’t care for, so it made it nice to just skip those parts. But I would highly recommend the last chapter.
SOA in Practice: The Art of Distributed System Design by Nicolai M. Josuttis
Reviewed by Priya Ahluwalia
Review date 6/11/2012
SOA in Practice: The Art of Distributed System Design
I have been working in SOA development for quite sometime and finally thought to read what professionals think about SOA. I have enjoyed the introduction material provided in the book and did not want to dive too much into details so that I can understand the business need for SOA.
The book also covers modeling of complex business communications using UML from the most abstract standards down to the individual software calls needed to implement the necessary network communications.
Written well and explains the distribution design. In some cases there is redundant material, but overall the book is a good read.
Learning Perl by Randal L. Schwartz, et al
Reviewed by Laxmi Mallampati
Review date 6/4/2012
In my opinion this book is the best one to get you started with Perl programming. It doesn’t end with the basis, it also teaches you in-depth. It helped me write Perl programs in a very short time. Regular expressions chapters are in detail which helped me in data processing programs. Exercises at the end of each chapter gave an opportunity for practicing before writing real programs. Now this book is my handy book. Pros: Helpful examples, Concise, Easy to understand
Professional C# 4.0 and .NET 4 by Christian Nagel, et al
Reviewed by Vu Tran
Review date 6/4/2012
Professional C# 4.0 and .NET 4
The entire book not only cover new features for both C# 4.0 and .Net 4, also review architecture of .Net and C# to give you the background for writing managed code. If you are new to C#, this book is a good reference for you. You should be able pick up and write your first C# app easily. If you are a .Net developer and want to find out only new features, you may be overwhelmed with lots of existing basic C# and .Net core. The book is well organized. All features explanations are illustrated by sample code right after that.You can download sample code from publisher as well.
One of the interesting features was Covariance and Contra variance. Generics were added in C# 2.0 which however did not allow type conversion.e.g There is no conversion from List
The feature that I did not like was optional parameters. This was introduced in VB. It may help when work with interop. But I think overloaded method providing clearer code in C#.
Generally, it is good reference book for .Net developer. I took off one star because I was expecting the book focus in depth only new C# 4.0 and .Net 4 without going through lengthy basic stuff for beginner.
Learning the vi and Vim Editors by Arnold Robbins, et al
Reviewed by Linh Vu
Review date 3/2/2012
Learning the vi and Vim Editors
Vim is a a great editor that I’ve always wanted to learn. Lots of people praise the speed/efficiency of editing in Vim, but it came at the cost of a huge learning curve. This book presents a thought out way to learn vim. It goes over basic commands and slowly builds on them, enabling you to learn it progressively. Many other resources online and the bundled resources with vim, bombard you with so much information, that nothing sticks. A slow progressive process, slowly applying what you learned is the best way to learn vim and this book presents it in an optimal way. It starts out with basic editing and movement, then combines them with newer commands to let you see how you can use this on a day to day basis. I would totally recommend this book for anyone wanting to learn to use vim.
Professional ASP.NET MVC 3 by Jon Galloway, et al
Reviewed by Adnan Masood
Review date 4/6/2012
Time and again as you work through a technology, delta books become increasingly important i.e. the technological texts which are concrete, concise, and build upon earlier foundations of your learning without starting all-over again from the square one. Professional ASP.NET qualify as one of those books, which not only fit the above definition, but are also engaging and a delight to read in this overcrowded marketplace of encyclopedic-code-riddled-texts. Authors are well known in the Microsoft development community and any avid MVC3 developer is bound to end-up on their blog postings and articles during the troubleshooting-lookups, which made picking up this book an easy choice for me.
Let’s starting with the strengths; this book covers almost all the major aspects of web development with MVC which an enterprise developer encounters during the course of a web oriented SDLC. To give potential reader an idea of book’s organization and depth of coverage, chapters range from advance Hello World startup to must-have M, V and C in the model-view-framework; along with HTML helpers, annotations, security, Ajax, routing and a collection of advance topics. I specifically enjoyed chapter 7 on securing your application which handles the practical aspects of app-sec such as authorize attribute, XSS, CSRF, cookie stealing, open redirection, over posting and secure configuration. It definitely makes a lot of sense to include essential security related guidelines in a professional book for web developers and keep the contents accessible by way of providing simple examples. Blog posts of Phil Haack, one of the four authors, are very relevant to application security related techniques (confused deputy attack is a good example) and I felt authors did an excellent job in covering application security in the book.
Chapter 10, Building and using a NuGet package is not strictly an MVC3 topic and should have been part of an appendix instead of it being in the book. Using NuGet, the package manager, is always a pleasure but building packages and publishing to NuGet.org is not necessarily the best use of 30 pages, which could have been more effectively used for advance topics such as custom view engines. Unit testing centric chapter of the book is highly relevant but falls short on practical guidance on HTTPContext handling, WebViewPage.Context as HttpContextBase in Razor etc. For instance, I would assume any self-respecting pro unit testing text would include strategies for unit testing with wrapper classes, action filters and parameters, directly mocking HttpContextBase and setting ControllerContext. I was disappointed to see authors didn’t cover as much in the mere 21 pages allocated for such an important topic and trivialized it with theoretical associations of quality and unit testing.
Dependency injection i.e. separating component behavior from dependency resolution without object intervention in MVC3 was well explained and I was delighted to see that instead of using an IoC container like castle Windsor or unity, authors focused on fundamentals and provided custom implementation. Last two chapters, extending MVC and advance topics are overall excellent with their discussion of common extensibility points however somehow, I still don’t think explaining attributes “Action Invoker” really qualifies as an advance topic.
Now concluding as an intelligent collaborative filtering engine, if you enjoy reading about MVC3 with the terseness of Jon Galloway’s writings, intelligent quips of Haack, ode with Allen and assumingly full throttled TDD with Wilson, go ahead and try out the book, you may not regret the “route”.
Professional Parallel Programming with C# by Gastón Hillar
Reviewed by Ajit Kumar
Review date 4/2/2012
Professional Parallel Programming with C#
This is a very good book to understand the concept of task-based programming. Book starts with the basic concepts of multi-core architecture, threads, concurrency, synchronization and parallel theories; explains the examples of splitting the task over multiple processors. In later chapters, it covers the complete details to make you expert on asynchronous and parallel programming. I would highly recommend this book to everyone; very interesting to read and easy to understand.
SharePoint 2010 Business Intelligence 24-Hour Trainer by Adam Jorgensen, et al
Reviewed by Lawrence Matias
Review date 4/2/2012
SharePoint 2010 Business Intelligence 24-Hour Trainer
Excellent, covers all important aspects of SharePoint 2010, and Business Intelligence integration. It covers from Security, Excel Services and PerformancePoint, Configure Reporting Services, Customize using SharePoint Designer, Workflow, and Optimization of SharePoint Database. I wish I had the book when first starting with SharePoint 2010 Business Intelligence projects. I can say that the price for admission for this book is comparable to an actual class. Thank you for doing the book.
Web 2.0 Architectures by James Governor, et al
Reviewed by Adnan Masood
Review date 1/30/2012
If you are trying to decipher web 2.0 related terms, acronyms and buzzwords, you are definitely not alone. It is hard to quantify what exactly a web 2.0 design entails; “I know it when I see it” does not help explaining the characteristic features of modern web architecture including design patterns, core models, reference architectures and solution patterns. “Web 2.0 Architectures” by Governor, Hinchcliffe and Nickull attempts to crack the code of web 2.0 jargon and strives to help reader make sense of this ever changing web ecosystem.
The well written and organized book is divided into eight chapters which discuss design patterns, reference models and architecture artifacts. The web 2.0 patterns discussed in the book includes Service Oriented Architecture (SOA), Collaborative Tagging (folksonomy), Synchronized Web, SaaS (cloud computing), Persistent Rights Management, Mashup, Rich User Experience, Participation/Collaboration, Asynchronous Particle Update, ,Semantic Web Grounding and Structured Information. This categorization helps distinguish salient features of a web 2.0 architecture and help define what richness actually means in a rich internet application.
If you have been working in the field long enough, the meme map on page # 63 will help skimming through chapter 3 (which contains web 2.0 example sites) so you can get to the core of the book. Chapters 4 to 7 discuss specific patterns for web 2.0, models, and reference architectures. As mentioned in the book’s title as well as title of this review, “web 2.0 architectures” is focused on big picture architectural overview of the Web 2.0. Even though it’s not a 10000 ft. abstract overview whitepaper, it also does not converse nitty gritty details of building a 2.0 app using jquery and node.js. This text is about concepts, models, reference architectures and common recurring themes in web 2.0 sites. It does not concern itself with specific technologies and implementation details but rather talk about the common paradigm. Therefore, if you are considering it as a cookbook/recipes book for web 2.0 applications, you will be sorely disappointed. However, if you are a web engineer / architect or a technologist interested in the underlying design patterns and attributes of web 2.0, this book is for you.
Pro SQL Server 2008 Replication by Sujoy Paul
Reviewed by Laxmi Mallampati
Review date 11/14/2011
Pro SQL Server 2008 Replication
I am new to SQL Replication & this book helped me understand the replication basics, and understand what options I have and which would be better for a given scenario. Each type of replication is covered to a great extent, followed by backup and recovery. I am still in the initial chapters, the snapshots and the step-by-step explanation helped me understand it well without actually implementing it. However I did not complete the entire book and am not sure what kind of issues would be encountered in real time environment. I still would recommend this book as a stepping stone into the world of SQL Replication.
Beginning SQL Queries by Clare Churcher
Reviewed by Ketan Patel
Review date 11/7/2011
I have working knowledge of SQL and wanted to get a book that starts with basic and goes deep into writing complex queries/stored procedures and this book is definitely not it. Author uses algebra and calculus (expressions) approach to writing queries which might be different than all the other SQL books I have read but it actually is more confusing. 95% of the book is used to cover simple SQL functions and the only “professional” part of the book that the author has covered is `indexing’. I think there are lot of other paid and free SQL material which is easier to understand with good examples and coverage. I would not suggest this book to anyone.
Programming Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 by Leonard Lobel, et al
Reviewed by Sudheer K. Maharana
Review date 10/23/2011
Programming Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008
One of the great additions to my library. Authors have well laid out the chapters. I liked the chapters on FileStream and the datawarehousing chapters. The contents of the chapters are much advanced and helps guide a programmer to get upto speed on SQL Server 2008 new features such as FileStream, merge, and date functions. I recommend this book for all the medium to advanced level programmers to refer it to for a quick understanding of concepts with examples.
This also takes DBAs to understand the concept around occasionally connected systems and how SQL Server refreshes the data for the end applications such as Mobile applications. The chapter dedicated to Transactions could have been much improved. Again if one wants to write a chapter in transactions, leave a alone a single chapter, a sizable book will not be sufficient.
Expert PHP and MySQL by Andrew Curioso, et al
Reviewed by Mallesh Kunchakurthi
Review date 9/23/2011
I am an ASP.net/Microsoft techno guy with minimum knowledge about open source languages/technologies. I wanted to get an understanding of those languages. After I read the book, I feel like I knew so many new things. The explanation given in the book with examples is really simple to understand. It covers from basic to advanced topics. I would definitely recommend it.
Software Requirements 2 by Karl E. Wiegers
Reviewed by Warren Jituboh
Review date 9/20/2011
I purchased this book to gain an understanding of the various methods used for software requirement gathering. It’s a fantastic in-depth guide which provides varied scenarios the reader is able to immediately reference. If you are already exposed to requirements gathering in some capacity you will find this to be a very helpful source of valuable principles to operate by. You will be able to very quickly identify areas of opportunity for you to devote your time and effort in developing your skills. You will be able to immediately apply the knowledge you acquire from this book, it’s a great read.
Mining the Social Web by Matthew A. Russell
Reviewed by Adnan Masood
Review date 9/19/2011
Mining the Social Web by Matthew Russell is a delightful reading which covers a wide array of very pertinent social media technologies. When working in the field of social media and web mining, one comes across a plethora of buzz words, tools and techniques to do various web data analysis tasks. This book does a great job at demystifying these topics. What I liked most about Mining the Social Web is that it takes a specific area such as TF-IDF and then connects the dots with various intertwined technologies (bi-grams, graph visualization, cosine similarity) to paint the big picture in terms of practical usage. Even though there are several prerequisites (python is a big one) and a small learning curve for the tools introduced in the book, it’s well written and easy to follow.
Web data analysis is quite a huge field of research and development; given it’s hard to cover a majority of topics in one book with practical examples, author has done a tremendous job by addressing the practical and relevant concerns such as accessing the twitter field with oAuth, mapReduce, NLP, couchDB, processing mailboxes, accessing linkedin and last but not least the virtues of semantic web. Nowadays when most technical books usually tend to become occasional reference books where you refer to specific topic and skim through the rest, mining the social web is a big exception. Either you are trying to familiarize yourself with the current technologies of social media mining, or are a experienced developer looking for a different point of view for implementation, this book will definitely widen your horizons.
SQL Server 2008 Transact-SQL Recipes by Joseph Sack
Reviewed by Rajkumar Ramasamy
Review date 9/19/2011
SQL Server 2008 Transact-SQL Recipes
A very good book to become an efficient DB developer. The book begins by refreshing your basic SQL knowledge with all various day to day scripts such as select, creating Table, creating Index, and views. Then in the later chapters, the author explains about conditional processing which helped me a lot to write conditional scripts or use conditional flows in my scripts.
Another good think I like about this book is the Chapter 14 which explains how to use XML in Database like Creating, Validating and Indexing XML data. the explanation is so simple and clear. In later chapters, the details on Error handling and service brokers are good but not very detailed. But there is good enough information to understand what they are and how they work.
At the end there are some good information for a DB developer might need to know such as Linked servers, Mirroring, little performance tuning and snapshot and full backup and recovery. Overall, I really enjoyed reading this book. not just enjoyed, I learned a lot from this book. Thanks to the author. I would recommend this book to all my friends and DB learners. 5 star…
Pro WCF 4: Practical Microsoft SOA Implementation by Nishith Pathak
Reviewed by Zohrab Broyam
Review date 9/14/2011
Pro WCF 4: Practical Microsoft SOA Implementation
This book answers a lot of advanced WCF questions and has really good explanation on SOA. It is heavy on WCF and light on SOA side.
It’s an easy to read book and is a great resource for WCF developers and architects.
Is this one of the best WCF/SOA books that I’ve ever read? Probably not… but I don’t regret I read it 
SQL Server 2008 Query Performance Tuning Distilled by Grant Fritchey, et al
Reviewed by Lawrence Matias
Review date 9/11/2011
SQL Server 2008 Query Performance Tuning Distilled
I have been using SQL Server starting with 2000 till 2008 R2. My problem is always regarding monitoring the system without the price of those expensive monitoring tool. If you are on a budget, and if you need to start to monitor your, SQL Server, without the price of those expensive monitoring tool, then this is the book for you. This book will teach you the ABC of how and why you are having problems with the system. After that it will show you options on how to resolve your issue with the system. It does not only focus on SQL Server itself but it focus on the whole server. I will be using this book until the next version. For this book to be a success, you need to spend the time to really follow the examples in the book. This way you will have a solid foundation on how the whole system relies on each component of the server. Thank you Grant Fritchey and Sajal Dam for the book.
Developer’s Guide to Microsoft Prism 4 by Douglas Crockford
Reviewed by Haitao Wang
Review date 09/06/2011
Developer’s Guide to Microsoft Prism 4
It gave an overview in the first chapter about the Prism. It then offers the topics with different approach. It is good reference books with sample codes. There are also a lot of diagrams that help understanding the topic. I am using this book as a reference to MVVM Pattern. Useful sample has been provided in this book. It is a good book for starting the WPF and Silverlight developments.
Programming WCF Services, Third Edition by Juval Lowy
Reviewed by Priya Ahluwalia
Review date 09/02/2011
Programming WCF Services, Third Edition
I bought this book especially to get details about Security in WCF, which is very hard to find. Most of the books just give few lines about Security and then refer you to other books. This book did justice to the topic and provided adequate details for me to now go and get details for specific security features I want to implement.
Liked the format of the book. Starts explanation from a basic level and then gets into more details, but not too much to bore you.
Definitely recommend it.
Pro CSS for High Traffic Websites By Antony Kennedy, Inayaili de Leon
Reviewed by Sean Xiao
Review date 08/31/2011
Pro CSS for High Traffic Websites
“Pro CSS for High Traffic Websites” is good for the developers with CSS experience and tech leads of large web application development team. Different from other CSS book, this book focuses on how to organize CSS, how to develop CSS with proper methodology and how to manage a team. The first chapter, “The Value of Process” talks how important of the process in a development team, it is not specific to CSS, but it helps project manager or team lead understand how a solid process can help developer write scalable CSS. It also introduces different tools for developer to organize, and debug CSS. Other chapters give guideline with CSS template and framework to help developers start building their own a scalable, robust and flexible CSS.
The book also focuses on advanced CSS development such as CSS performance, preprocessing with LESS and Sass, capabilities to server different devices and media.
This is not a CSS reference book, I recommend this book to experienced web designer or developers, and development leads.
Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Database Development by Douglas Crockford
Reviewed by Laxmi Mallampati
Review date 08/31/2011
Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008 Database Development
In my opinion this book is a good book to get through the Database Development Certification. The book can be read by a fresher to SQL as it starts from the basic, so not many details are covered in depth. It covers most of the information needed for the test. It has been a while I attempted any MCP tests, the practice tests gave me the confidence I needed, also it helped pin point where I need some more focus. However you might need to look at other resources in case you need detailed information.
Pro ASP.NET MVC 3 Framework by Adam Freeman, Steven Sanderson
Reviewed by Paul Nakashima
Review date 08/29/2011
I felt that this is a good read for the new developer wanting to learn about MVC and for the experienced developer wanting to know what’s new in version 3. It starts with a simple application to get new users up to par then it goes more advanced features including new the Razor syntax. As expected there is a discussion about unit testing, routing, entity framework, etc which is the heart of the MVC framework. Also it discusses the security guidelines and pitfalls to avoid during development. Each chapter seems to logically follow the next building on items learned in the previous chapter. I would highly recommend this book.
JavaScript: The Good Parts by Douglas Crockford
Reviewed by Linh Vu
Review date 07/21/2011
This book is a great starting point for JavaScript. It goes over some of the common patterns you see in the wild and also a thorough background on the basic object types and methods. It’s very easy to go from this and jump into github and see these patterns in use. Although he covers some patterns, I wished that the author covered more patterns, or delved more into performance and best practices. The author himself is very knowledgeable and through his work, I’ve found JSlint, which was a very helpful source in writing good JavaScript and avoiding pitfalls. There is a section in the book devoted to the bad parts of JavaScript, with alternatives and the “correct” way to correct it. All in all, it’s a great resource to augment his online resources, but falls short if you’re looking for something more advanced.
Beginning SQL Queries by Clare Churcher
Reviewed by Warren Jituboh
Review date 7/19/2011
As somebody new to databases, I found this book to be a fantastic read, essential for any new comer. The book systematically educates the reader in a way that is palatable and enjoyable. My confidence level has risen immensely and I would recommend this book to anybody seeking to become proficient in SQL whilst avoiding unnecessary technical jargon. This is a resource that you will enjoy referencing again and again.
Foundations of SQL Server 2008 R2 Business Intelligence by Guy Fouché, Lynn Langit
Reviewed by Lawrence Matias
Review date 7/18/2011
Foundations of SQL Server 2008 R2 Business Intelligence
If you need a book, that will give you an excellent foundation that will follow you, if you ever decided to be a BI (Business Intelligence) expert.
Well this is the book for you. This book contains all that you need to get started and use BI, using SQL Server 2008 R2. It contains all that you need to get started. Everything is already layout for your success in the BI arena. This book is intended for advance users as a refresher to solidify your foundation. I have heard like 7 speeches of Lynn Langit for the past 4 years and she is very enthusiastic with regards to what she is doing in Microsoft. She really knows what she is saying. This being said, this book is definitely a book to keep as a professional in the BI arena. This book has only 427 pages but every page is important in understanding the subject matter. It does not contain anything extra. This is a serious book to read for serious BI professional. I have learned a lot from this book and it is worth the $49.99 price tag.
Happy reading Lawrence Matias
Pro Android 3 by Satya Komatineni, et al
Reviewed by Richard Sang
Review date 7/18/2011
This is a wonderful book for Android developers. Well layout and easy to read. This book is targeting an audience with some Java programming background knowledge especially some Java UI experience. For someone with similar experience in C# could also be easy for them to pick. The examples are clear and instructions are easy to follow.
Overall this is a wonderful book for Android developers to pick up. I strongly recommend it.
Enterprise Service Bus: Theory in Practice by David Chappell
Reviewed by Zohrab Broyan
Review date 7/17/2011
Enterprise Service Bus: Theory in Practice
I was looking for a book that would give me a basic understanding of what an ESB is. This book exceeded my expectations by describing high-level fundamentals, patterns and implementation models. It does a good job discussing service re-usability and examining some core ESB services such as content based routing and XSLT transformations. The book is very high level and doesn’t go too much into implementation details!
How We Test Software at Microsoft by Alan Page, et al
Reviewed by Kenny Patel
Review date 7/9/2011
How We Test Software at Microsoft
There are lot of books that talks about how to test and what to test but do you want to know how testing is done at one of the biggest software company in the world then this is the book. The authors talk about what kind of skill set they look for when they hire tester and how they are trained. He then goes about talking about different testing methods and its purpose while using real world examples and stats on which methods are good and how they can be used in conjunction to provide more coverage.
I expected more technical details on testing but in terms of an overview book on software testing I think it is one of the better books.
Expert SQL Server 2008 Development by Adam Machanic
Reviewed by Rajkumar Ramasamy
Review date 3/27/2011
Expert SQL Server 2008 Development
When I read through the book i got a feeling like I have used/known most of what is in this book. There were only very few that I got to learn from it. Starting from the early chapters, such as methodologies, best practices, testing routines… these are known to any database developer even if he is not an expert. These are very basic. A OK description of Error handling by using try, catch.
In the later chapters describing Dynamic T-SQL, I was expecting more from an expert who is voicing out on Dynamic use of T-SQL in 2008 since its now used more commonly. At least more on the Dynamic SQL Security considerations. There was only a little brief about the security considerations just SQL injection, interface rules. also, Page 233 was a waste. (just has a summary which is the same as the summary in Page 232. ).
Some description on the later chapters about working with concurrent application, trees, graphs and hierarchies. that is OK too. I would say this book gives some knowledge to developers with very basic knowledge and haven’t worked much in the previous versions of SQL. Not recommending for an analyst developer, who would like to become an expert in SQL.
Inside Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008: T-SQL Programming by Itzik Ben-Gan, et al
Reviewed by Sudheer Maharana
Review date 2/7/2011
Inside Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008: T-SQL Programming
In my opinion, I would consider this as a sequel to one of the great reference books, Inside Microsoft SQL Server 2008 by the same author: T-SQL Querying. This book goes deeper in the T-SQL programming world in describing user defined functions, views, triggers, stored procedures. This also touches in a ore detailed manner on Transactions and concurrency, Error handling. I really enjoyed reading the chapters devoted to Spatial Data, CDC and XML and XQuery. Service Broker chapter could have been better with some real world scenarios.
I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a great reference book on SQL programming.
Inside Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008: T-SQL Querying by Itzik Ben-Gan, et al
Reviewed by Sudheer Maharana
Review date 2/7/2011
Inside Microsoft® SQL Server® 2008: T-SQL Querying
One of the very good reference books I followed. As such, there is no doubt that Itzik Ben-Gan is one of the great T-SQL experts in the industry. With this book, he has categorically described the various querying features provided in SQL Server 2008. I would recommend this book for any beginner to medium level developers who has an intention of understand how SQL Server query engine works besides all the T-SQL enhancements that SQL 2008 brings. Chapter 8 goes in detail about Aggregating and Pivoting the data set which will be an essential tool for power business users working with SQL Server.
The book also provides a good explanation of Query Tuning, Index architecture and usages, tools for query tuning such as profiler, execution plans for mid level programmers. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in T-SQL features in SQL Server 2008
Smart Business Intelligence Solutions with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 by Lynn Langit, et al
Reviewed by Rajkumar Ramasamy
Review date 12/20/2010
Smart Business Intelligence Solutions with Microsoft SQL Server 2008
This book is a good overview for BI solutions such as SSIS and SSRS. For an experienced BI developer, this book is not a right pick. There is a very good overview on all the BI terminologies and covers information required to design, develop and deploy SSIS, SSRS and SSAS solutions.
For a beginner BI developer, this is a good book to start with. There is some help on BIDS which will help for a new BIDs user, connecting to source control, design, develop, secure and deploy BI solutions. There is a step by step help to create and manage ETL. The book helps to understand MDX core functions and few extended functions and a little bit about DMX (Data mining). More data mining samples might help a beginner.
Was expecting little bit more on Excel reporting (which is commonly used) and SharePoint reporting (which is more likely a future common reporting tool). Overall, this is a good startup book for beginners not a reference guide for an experienced developer
Accelerated C# 2010 by Trey Nash
Reviewed by Paul Nakashima
Review date 12/16/2010
This book is a very thorough as far as the C# Language is concerned and is a good reference, but it did feel like several of the C# 2008 books I’ve already read in the past. If you’re looking for a book diving deep into what’s new in C# 2010 and .NET 4.0 Framework, then I’m afraid you’ll be a little disappointed. If you’re familiar with the language then you may find the discussion about the framework evolution, the CLR, and OOP a bit cumbersome. The final chapter finally discusses what’s new with the language “Dynamic Types” and it did feel like a high level overview.
Personally, the book felt more like a comprehensive review of the language and would wait for a title more focuses on in C# 2010.
Beginning WF: Windows Workflow in .NET 4.0 by Mark J. Collins
Reviewed by Richard Trinh
Review date 06/24/2010
Beginning WF: Windows Workflow in .NET 4.0
I have never used workflow and felt this book is a great introduction to the subject. The first few chapters cover the basics, introducing different components to slowly build and enhance the sample application in the book. It does take a little bit of effort to get through this portion because it is very rudimentary, but you do get a sense of how to build your own application.
Once we laid down the foundation we start using the tools we learned in the beginning and start using WF with WCF, and Workflow Service Host, which was exactly what I was looking for, and was excited to read. But instead of explaining stuff, it became just code samples and explained the output, not going into how it actually worked.
I would still recommend this book to get yourself familiar with workflow, and pick up a more advanced book to go into the details
Visual C# 2010 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach By Allen Jones, et al
Reviewed by Richard Trinh
Review date 06/09/2010
Visual C# 2010 Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach
Most of the recipes in this book seem like they were copied over from the Visual Studio 2005 version. Granted I don’t have the 2005 version but I wanted to see more examples using Lambda Expressions and leveraging other .NET 3.X/4.0 features. Although this does leave the book backwards compatible with previous versions of .NET
I liked how the book explained HOW to use the language as opposed to WHAT it is. The reader will see a lot of gotchas, pitfalls and some best practices on how to use the language. The forward mentions this, and people looking for what’s in the language should pick up a reference book.
Visual C# 2010 recipes is better than C# 3.0 Cookbook because it does go over some new .NET 4.0 features like the new Parallel class, and it’s better laid out and easier to find what you’re looking for. But the C# 3.0 Cookbook does complement this well because there are always multiple ways to solve an issue.
This book is a behemoth at over 1,000 pages and well worth the price.
SQL Server 2008 Transact-SQL Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach By Joseph Sack
Reviewed by Sudheer Maharana
Review date 06/04/2010
SQL Server 2008 Transact-SQL Recipes: A Problem-Solution Approach
I read and review lot of SQL Server books. Almost every other book on SQL Server has something new or explaining same features in a different way. I ordered this book being drawn to the title of this book. This book is written by one of the SQL Premier Field Support Engineers from Microsoft. It is nicely laid out and definitely different from other books in explaining SQL Server features. The best thing about this book is “How it Works” sections. For most of the part, the author has done a good job for these sections in describing the internals of each of the features. However, I did find the explanation to some extent short for some important features such as Service Broker, Encryption, Database Snapshots and Query Hints. Especially, I was looking for some internal information on Service Broker.
It is definitely worthwhile to spend some time in reading this book. I would rate this book a 4 star.
Beginning ASP.NET E-Commerce in C#: From Novice to Professional By Cristian Darie, et al
Reviewed by Sudheer Maharana
Review date 06/04/2010
Beginning ASP.NET E-Commerce in C#: From Novice to Professional
I am a Database SME for the last 15 years and have not done any serious programming in any traditional language such as C, C++, and .Net for the last 8 years. Got a fascination to get into programming again starting with C# as the IT programming landscape is getting closer between DBAs and developers. I was introduced to this book by one of our senior IT engineers. I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book and more importantly going step by step programming in C#. I could not have asked for better. The book is guided by many worked out small scale projects which is useful and becomes interesting for beginners like me. The PayPal project was a good experience to get into details and work on a full fledged project.
At the end of each section, the “How it works” section is really useful and gives a glimpse of the internals.
I would definitely recommend this book for any beginners, especially database professionals embarking on learning a widely used language besides their comfort zone of “T-SQL” and hence a 5 star.
C# 3.0 Design Patterns by Judith Bishop
Reviewed by Vu Tran
Review date 04/20/2010
I have to admit that the author had a good layout for this book. Each pattern, the author explains clearly the roll of the pattern, illustration sample, design, implementation, and usage. Since the title of this book specifically said “C# 3.0 design patterns”, the author also introducing C# features where needed. I chose this book because I expected to see how new C# 3.0 features brought in each pattern. However, nothing much in this book.
If you are looking for a good tutorial to learn patterns for the first time, then void this book. You may be overwhelmed by many unclear illustrations. It is going to be hard for you to keep these patterns in your memory. I am familiar with design patterns. I had to skip reading many illustrations sections to avoid confusing. Also I don’t really like using the same sample for more than one pattern. So, it is just one of the design pattern book, and not really the one that I want to keep in my bookcase.
C# 4.0 in a Nutshell by Joseph Albahari, Ben Albahari
Reviewed by Brad Chau
Review date 04/15/2010
This is a great desktop reference book, the chapter mark on the side give clear reference to any chapter, so the reader does not need to go back to the table of content page. It gives a good overview of new language feature and good refresh on C# 3.0. However, this book is not for beginner, it is for intermediate to advance C# developer. I like Chapter 19, Dynamic Programming; it is short (only 14 pages) but concise, I am able to use dynamic after reading it. The LINQ is extensively covered in Chapter 8, 9 and 10, and the examples are loaded into LINQPad, good tool for working with LINQ. For the Parallel Programming, Chapter 22, a chapter is just too short to cover the parallel programming feature, it deserves another book.
Advanced Software Testing – Vol. 2 by Rex Black
Reviewed by Ilham Abouelhouda
Review date 04/12/2010
Advanced Software Testing – Vol. 2
This is a nice and easy book to read; it covers some of the necessaries skills needed to become an effective Test Manager. The combination of certain topics along with the study cases and the exercises made the chapters easy to read and follow. I would recommend this book as a good informational book (I am not sure about preparing you for the test).
Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Integration Services
Reviewed by Rajkumar Ramasamy
Review date 03/29/2010
Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Integration Services
This book is a complete End to End reference guide for SQL Server 2008 Integration Services. This book starts with a very good basic introduction to the all the tools and tasks available in SSIS. There is very detailed explanation of the basic tasks which are more frequently used such as Script Task, Execute SQL task and Send Email. Good description on the containers which we need for looping through a set of tasks which is more common in any development.
During development, the most common thing we would like to /need to do is making the package dynamic. There is a good chapter to explain how to use expressions effectively to have runtime configurations in the package. Other very good chapters to refer are Scripting in SSIS which explains the scripting capabilities using .NET and C#. The chapter, Accessing Heterogeneous Data, which explains how to access various heterogeneous data sources such as Excel, Flat File, XML, ADO.NET, OLE DB and many with examples.
The later chapters explain more about optimizing SSIS packages, error handling and event handling, Migrating DTS Packages. The chapter which explains accessing external applications is good but needs more examples to highlight the capability of SSIS accessing various external applications.
Too many pages, yes, the book has. But to refer SSIS with good samples and Screenshots (The screenshots are helpful in few instances), I wouldn’t mind reading these many pages.
For any new developer, who wants to know from the basics and a complete End to End flow of SSIS before start using SQL Server 2008 Integration for ETL development, this is one good reference book I would recommend.
Software Testing Practice: Test Management by Andreas Spillner, et al
Reviewed by Ketan Patel
Review date 03/28/2010
Software Testing Practice: Test Management
i read this book not for the ISTQB test but to understand the test cycle management process better and found that it could have used more details and example but overall i found this book to be good in terms for explaining test cycle management.
book starts off explaining test process and then giving examples of different SDLCs and how testing is done in those process.later chapters explain establishing test policy which describes and sets standards on quality and how to achieve it. Test Plan chapter goes in to detail on how to create a Test Plan and things it should include followed by chapter on Test Control which explains on how to monitor the testing process and reacting to test results, evulating if testing is complete and creating test result report.
Different technique, such as Six Sigma, CMMI, TMM, are explained to assist in approaching testing, improving development process, evaluating test process and performing audits. Deviation Management chapter explains documenting anomalies and Risk management chapter explain on how to identify and control the risk by using right test technique.
Later chapters talk about what is expected from QA staff and skills required by them, different test metrics and how to select test tools.
Professional ASP.NET MVC 1.0 by Rob Conery, et al
Reviewed by Adnan Masood
Review date 01/22/2010
I am not quite sure about the Pro part in the Wrox’s Professional ASP.NET MVC but it’s definitely a good introductory to intermediate hands-on starting book if you are interested in learning ASP.NET MVC framework. Starting with a `real world’ sample of Nerd-Dinner, the book is organized to facilitate the `learn by example’ method of training. Common problems, pitfalls and tips are neatly highlighted in the concise text filled with examples and sample code; not one of those overwhelming printed code books when authors decide to print the entire listing of their source code. Here, code is brief and in snippet forms; a balanced annotated mix and shown only when needed with screenshots of outputs. The text covers the core topics of ASP.NET MVC architecture and design including but not limited to models, routing, controllers, views, actions, filters and extended items such as TDD with MVC, Security Ajax and web forms hybrid approaches.
With a star studded line up of Rob Conery, Scott Hanselman, Phil Haack and Scott Guthrie, I found the book to be well written and non-encyclopedic (it’s a good thing). From what I can see, it’s not written to target a web forms developer trying to `upgrade’ to MVC but more of an introduction to MVC as a design pattern and how to build web applications using MVC in ASP.NET; this was a very good approach. Authors even provided introduction to platforms implementing MVC (Ruby on Rails, Django, Spring, Struts, Zend, MonoRail etc) when discussing state of MVC on the web which is quite informative for those new to the concept. What I liked most about the book was that it addresses practical problems such as modifying the existing lookup routes (url’s for views), aspect oriented features, error handling, discussion on view and domain models, url rewriting etc. All I can say is that along with Jeffrey Palmero’s “ASP.Net MVC in Action” for a more in-depth look, Professional ASP.NET MVC is going to stay on my desk as a reference for some time.
Pro SQL Server 2008 Service Broker By Klaus Aschenbrenner
Reviewed by Sudheer K Maharana
Review date 01/12/2010
Pro SQL Server 2008 Replication
Message based programming and asynchronous programming were new concepts in SQL Server world. There was always needs to process database transactions asynchronously. Microsoft dealt with this short coming in SQL Server 2005 in the form of Service Broker. It is a powerful technology and has started becoming more popular in companies dealing with SQL Server and distributed infrastructure with asynchronous programming. There are very few reference books out there in the market on the subject besides Books Online and internet references. Pro SQL Server 2008 Service Broker from Apress is one of the outstanding books on the subject as far as I know of. As the subject is new to the DBA and developer world, the book is organized in such a way that it gradually takes anyone from the basics of Service Broker objects to Service Broker implementation in real world scenario. It covers in a detailed manner on more advanced topics such as transaction management, encryption, high availability and most importantly the administration of Service Broker.
As soon as I got this book and having some background on Service Broker, I glanced the book and went straight to Real-World Application Scenarios chapter which has few examples on how Service Broker can be implemented. I also enjoyed reading the Administration chapter which describes on System Monitor and Troubleshooting. I guess anyone having a little experience with Service Broker such as DBAs will be benefitted with this chapter.
The chapters are well organized and contain enough information to give a beginner a jump start on Service Broker. The book has also example throughout the book that could be used to understand the concept. As I prefer reading books over reading internet, this book is a God sent. I will definitely suggest anyone in SQL Server world to refer to this book just to see how clear and concise the chapters are laid out with.
Knight’s 24-Hour Trainer: Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Integration Services by Knight, et al
Reviewed by Sudheer K Maharana
Review date 01/12/2010
Pro SQL Server 2008 Replication
It is one of the finest books I have ever referred in SSIS. In our company, we are going in a big way using SSIS starting from OLTP to DW. I was tasked to train application developers on SSIS. But this book made my job way simpler. In fact I don’t have to spend much time as this book does everything. It is a very good book. Any company wants to empower the developers with developing SSIS in no time, this is the book. Even though I have been doing SSIS for a long time, I read this book from back to back in one shot. It is well known fact that Brian Knight is a well known name in the SQL Server SSIS world. And this book is a great contribution from him to the SQL Server community on the subject. This book definitely gives a jump start on SSIS to a beginner to medium developers. The accompanying DVD is really amazing.
I especially enjoyed reading couple of lessons, describing the Sort transform, aggregate Transform, Cleansing Data, and Making a task dynamic using expressions.
I am definitely going to refer this book to anyone asking me to learn SSIS and be confident about it. I give this book a 5 star.
Pro SQL Server 2008 Replication By Sujoy Paul
Reviewed by Sudheer K Maharana
Review date 01/12/2010
Pro SQL Server 2008 Replication
Are you new to SQL Server replication in SQL Server 2008? Or are you experienced enough in SQL Server replication? If so..this is the book for you. The book is organized very well. It first gives you the basics of each type of replication, goes on to describe on how to configure replication in 2 different ways: GUI and T-SQL. I always preferred to use T-SQL for various reasons. It is easily deployable in different database environments and the scripts can be backed up as normal SQL scripts.
I liked all the “internal” and “optimization” chapters on each type of replication. The author has described these chapters well. The book also gives a step by step approach to configure the replication which helps. However, I expected some more details on replication monitoring, replication security/permissions and providing some real world scenarios on replication troubleshooting. I guess there are so many books out there on SQL Server replication but these advanced topics would have made the quality of this book even better.
I will give this book a 4 star and would highly recommend DBAs to refer this book when they are in need of configuring replication.
SQL Server 2008 Query Performance Tuning Distilled by Grant Fritchey, Sajal Dam
Reviewed by Rajkumar Ramasamy
Review date 12/21/2009
SQL Server 2008 Query Performance Tuning Distilled
A very good reference book on SQL server performance tuning on diverse directions.
On the initial chapters, you can find a good introduction on Performance tuning, Performance analysis and on the Database Engine Tuning Advisor. There are various analysis and optimization techniques explained in later chapters. There is comprehensive information about most common performance issues that occurs due to Query designs and deadlocks.
We can find more information on tuning indexes like when and where to apply what type of index. Later, the workload optimization techniques explains ways to identify and research expensive queries and jobs and “What not” to do to avoid performance issues. This book helps not only to write individual queries without any performance flaws, it also helps to find where the flaws are in existing queries. I would like to mention that there are good of examples of queries (which everyone look for) which make the reader to understand where performance issues or bottlenecks occur and what to do with it.
One good sense I had when I started reading the book is it isn’t that hard to read through the book even you are new to performance tuning in SQL server. I would strongly recommend this book for all database performance professionals (Even the beginners in Performance Tuning).
Expert .NET 2.0 IL Assembler by Serge Lidin
Reviewed by Jeff Bergman
Review date 12/08/2009
As an engineer, I like to understand how things work, part of this was a curiosity about the semantics of IL. This book satisfied me by clarifying the details and instructions of IL. In addition, there is detailed coverage of the assembly file format and metadata. The book is well written and after the first few chapters, I had a clear picture of the basics of IL. The rest of the information is mostly specific details that is likely to be valuable only to people who will actually build tools that need to process or generate IL.
Overall, I am not sure how valuable the information is to the average programmer. I can think of few cases where I will need the information in here. But, for a hacker with a curiosity to know what’s happening one level closer to the machine this book makes for an interesting read.
The book is the only one that I have found on this topic and it is clearly written, and it may inspire you to take on a new project in IL.
Agile Retrospectives by Esther Derby, et al
Reviewed by Kevin Au
Review date 12/03/2009
This book isn’t just for Agile development…there’s a lot of good practical things anybody can use. Plus it’s easy to read, has lots of examples and includes many “hints”. A lot of the activities I’ve heard at one time or another such as Five Why’s, SMART goals, +/Delta, but this book does a good job of putting them together in one place.
Professional SQL Server 2008 Programming by Robert Vieira
Reviewed by Sudheer Maharana
Review date 11/23/2009
Professional SQL Server 2008 Programming
Professional Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Programming from Wrox is a well formatted programming reference book for medium to advanced SQL Developers. The chapters are laid out well with useful examples. Especially, I liked the chapters on XML Integration, Advanced Queries, Index structure and Transaction & Locks. I will suggest this book to anyone who is from other RDBMS background to get up and running with programming in SQL Server. However, I was looking for information in Service Broker in detail as this is one of the programming areas which scales SQL Server to different level. Chapters such as Replication, Performance Tuning, Data Warehousing and Reporting were not explained in great detail. However the book solves it’s purpose to provide a general guideline on SQL Server 2008 programming.
I will recommend this book for other SQL Server professionals who want to understand the new programming features in SQL Server 2008 and also keep this book as reference in their SQL Server library
Professional SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services by Paul Turley, et al
Reviewed by Sudheer Maharana
Review date 11/20/2009
Professional SQL Server 2008 Reporting Service
I had the 2005 version of this book and found this version of the book to be very helpful. The book covers both administration and programming aspects of SSRS. Honestly speaking, it is very good for reference. I found some chapters have gone too detail in explaining and some chapters are laid out with basic information. I am currently working on a proof of concept project to integrate reporting services with .Net application to render all the reporting type of information via.Net Applications. Chapter 15 gave me a jump start in this along with publishing reports on sharepoint. I am sure SSRS has come a long way to stay in the reporting arena and this book provides very good information for developers in SSRS or who are transitioning to SSRS from other reporting tools.
This book has explained well on installation and configuration of SSRS which provides the report designers and developers, information on the internal architecture of SSRS.
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning Distilled by Sajal Dam
Reviewed by Sudheer Maharana
Review date 11/18/2009
SQL Server Query Performance Tuning Distilled
A great reference book on SQL Tuning.
One of the finest book on SQL Server Perf Tuning. To be honest I used to have the SQL Server performance tuning book by Ken England on SQL 2000 and looking for it’s sequel on 2005. I went to the book store and ordered the book but it was disappointing. Then this book was given to me by one of my friends. A great reference book as I was expecting. Lot of theories and matching examples make this book stand out from the rest. SQL Server is just not SQL Tuning. It includes Database System tuning. This book has given a dedicated chapter in making you understand the same. It gives you a perspective on how to approach to a performance tuning from identification of the performance bottleneck to troubleshooting the problem. I enjoyed reading chapters on indexing and Index, Statistics and Execution Cache Analysis. However, I wanted to see more detail on tuning XML and Service Broker.
I will suggest this book for other DBAs and SQL Programmers who want to know the theories behind Index and Statistics, Blocking and Deadlocking, Fragmentation.
Pro SQL Server 2008 Analytics by Brian Paulen, Jeff Finken
Reviewed by Sudheer Maharana
Review date 11/15/2009
A book to give Jump Start on SQL Server Analytics
I referred to this book while doing a prototype in building a Sales dashboard for a company. It gave me a jump start in using Microsoft technologies to come up with a dashboard in a short time. To be honest this is the first book I am referring to on this task. Especially I liked the case studies chapter at the end of the book to be very helpful. The chapters provide covers well on details around SQL Server analytics but I was looking for examples in each chapter to get me though. But this book solved it’s purpose for me.
I will recommend this book to other like me who want to start working on dashboards and analytics using SQL Server tools.
Professional ASP.NET MVC 1.0 by Rob Conery, et al
Reviewed by Jesuraj Innacimuthu
Review date 11/12/2009
Professional ASP.NET MVC 1.0 by Rob Conery, Scott Hanselman, Phil Haack, and Scott Guthrie is a very good selection to read if someone is new to ASP.NET MVC Framework.
All the concepts are explained with simple code samples in this book. This gives beginners a good start on the ASP.NET MVC Framework.
- NerdDinner.com walkthrough gives better understanding on MVC concepts.
- Gray boxed hints are really useful tips.
- The following concepts also explained enough in this book: AJAX, Validations, Application Security, Test-Driven Development with ASP.NET MVC, Testable Design Patterns
I would recommend this book to someone that’s new to ASP.NET MVC Framework. This is a very good book for beginners.
SQL and Relational Theory By C. J. Date
Reviewed by Sudheer Maharana
Review date 11/10/2009
I have been a SQL guy for a long time especially specializing in writing better sql code. This notion was with me until I read this book. However, after reading this book, I felt that so many things I was missing behind my working on SQL. The book well covers the theory behind relational database management. I have read few books of the same author who can be arguably called as one of the pioneers in Relational Theory in database management. Anytime, I ventured to read any of books authored by him, I get fascinated by his way of explaining the SQL in relation to mathematics, set theory etc.
Initially, while reading the book I struggled to concentrate and relate the information to my daily working on SQL. The book really related the theory behind of working of various concepts in SQL such as constraints, views, operators, joins etc. The author has particularly stressed upon the reason behind various theories in SQL in various database platforms.
I was impressed on the topic on using logic to formulate sql expressions. It opens up the idea in readers mind on how to approach to a sql deduction.
I suggest this book to all the database professionals who want to know the why’s of database theories. Trust me, it really helps and you will be amazed to know how much more you will know on SQL.
C# 3.0 Cookbook by Hilard, Teilhet
Reviewed by Karen Ngo
Review date 11/08/2009
There are parts of this book for all levels of developers. Error handling and logging for new ones, and LINQ and Lamda expressions for others. This is a solid reference book, but I don’t think it is absolutely necessary to have in one’s library because you can get similar and relevant examples from MSDN. If you find that it takes more time than it should for you to search MSDN for reference information, then you probably should get this book. If you are a non-developer with a basic understanding of programming constructs, this book also may provide some value to you, as topics such as strings, characters,and collections are all covered.
Expert .NET 2.0 IL Assembler by Serge Lidin
Reviewed by Naveen Razdhan
Review date 10/22/2009
Coding in assembly language requires a little different way of thinking, and being aware of lot more low level details, compared to writing the code in a high level language like C# or VB.NET. Since I have not written an assembly language program in a very long time, it was quite a challenge to follow this book. But I must say that, the author has done a good job of laying out the concepts in a way a novice assembly programmer like me can benefit a lot from it. I can’t claim that, after reading this book, I have become very good at IL, but I am quite confident that a second run through this book and more practice in IL coding will take me closer to being there.
First three chapters of this book dive straight into an IL program and compare it with a C# program. I thought it was great way to open the book by getting your feet wet quickly without overwhelming you. From fourth chapter onwards the book goes into details of windows PE file and arrangement of Metadata into modules and assemblies. I have not found this kind of detailed information about Metadata layout anywhere else. It is tons of information and still does not overwhelm you. This information is useful even for a high level language programmer and therefore I would recommend this book to all .NET developers.
As author says, .NET universe is like a great pyramid turned upside down and CLR is the tip on which this pyramid stands. ILAsm is the language that describes every feature of the CLR and therefore learning ILAsm language will help all .NET developers build a strong foundation, and that is where this book comes very handy
.NET Domain-Driven Design with C# by Tim McCarthy
Reviewed by Vu Tran
Review date 10/16/2009
.NET Domain-Driven Design with C#
This book was entirely describing the design and implementation of SmartCA application using domain-driven design pattern. The author put every detail of steps in building this application from class design classes, creating solution, configuration, writing unit test… I did not run sample code so I did not know if it actually worked. My focus was the design. The author also provides detail of MVC model for SmartCA application
About the topic, the design was very interesting to me. I used this approach in my past company ( about 10 years ago). However, the design in this book was much cleaner with the favor of .Net 3.5. I like the concept of “the domain model is ignorant of how its data is saved or retrieved from its underlying data store or stores” . The introduction of unitOfWork and Repository objects for each aggregate was good in the design. I think chapter 2 was most important chapter. This described the architecture design of the application, what layer needed, how they interacts with each other. This must be understood completely before moving down to the detail. Once the design pattern was clear, the later chapters provided detail implementations. The structure was similar except each chapter focus on a particular aggregate entity.
I think this book is definitely not for C# beginner. It can be a good reference for higher level.
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Bible by Paul Nielsen, et al
Reviewed by Sudheer K. Maharana
Review date 10/06/2009
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Bible
I was introduced to this huge informative book by one of my friends at work place. This is a great reference book for almost everyone starting from beginners to advanced database programmers/admins. It is very difficult to cover all aspects of SQL Server in a single book. However, the author(s) have done a good job in covering almost all the features of SQL Servers. This book helps developers who want to know one and everything in SQL Server. However, certain chapers such as “Service Broker” could have been detailed out more considering that these are more advanced. I especially liked the Partitioning, LINQ, Change Data Capture. It has touched upon the Business intelligence and it could have been done better. However, as I said it is already a huge book and adding more materials would have been even more. Rather this solves the purpose to a great deal as a reference book for almost all domains DBAs and developers to jump start in SQL Server.
Expert F# by Don Syme, et al
Reviewed by Jeff Bergman
Review date 10/05/2009
As someone who currently works with C# and .net, I was excited to learn about F# and functional programming.
Looking for a book to get started with the language, I chose Expert F#. I found this book to be well written and concepts clearly explained.
One thing you find is that as a mixed-paradigm language, there are many different ways to attack a problem in F#. Expert F# helps guide you through these decisions by giving suggestions on where to use functional techniques and where to use imperative programming techniques.
It also does a great job of showing how to use the existing .net libraries from F#.
My only complaint is that the book doesn’t quite emphasize functional programming strongly enough. So, if you aren’t familiar with functional algorithms and such you may need to supplement this text with an additional book.
Programming WCF Services by Juval Löwy
Reviewed by Vu Tran
Review date 09/28/2009
I was trying to learn WCF for a few months. I was looking for a book that could provides me the detail of WCF framework from ground up, then I would move to WCF advance later – well might be from other book. I picked this book based on recommendation from my co-workers. I also owned “Pro WCF” from Apress publisher. This book has turned into great resource for me. It covered every detail of WCF from the basic concept of service contracts, hosting, addresses, and binding to higher level such as concurrency, or security. The author provided a lots of examples in depth explanations. It was great guide for WCF starter and good resource for advance programmer. It was much better than “Pro WCF”
Book review for Learning C# 3.0 by Jesse Liberty
Reviewed by Bala Dharmarajan
Review date 09/21/2009
This is really a very good book to begin C# and takes up to the intermediate level.
The way in which the chapters of the book are organized is excellent.
It extensively covers:
- .NET Framework
- Object-oriented programming basics
- Debugging
- Exception handling
- Strings
- Interfaces
- Lists and iterations
- Generics and collections.
Some missing things, which I personally felt reading the book, are:
Some missing things, which I personally felt reading the book, are:
- Lacks more examples & explanations in ADO.NET
- Less exposure to WPF
To conclude, this book is a good one to refer C# in a nutshell.
Pro ASP.NET MVC Framework by Steven Sanderson
Reviewed by Sean Xiao
Review date 09/03/2009
I highly recommend this book. The book not only helps you understand what ASP.NET MVC is, but also explains how ASP.NET MVC framework works in detail.
The first part of the book gives reader a clear idea of what MVC is and why MVC is needed in current ASP.NET development. Chapter 1 to 3 helps reader established fundamental knowledge base of ASP.NET MVC. Particularly, the author emphasizes Domain Model is not the entity classes simply generated from LINQ to SQL. The author introduces Domain-Driven Design (DDD) in this chapter, which helps developer to fully understand what is `Model’ in MVC. Following the well organized example from chapter 4 to 6, you should have enough knowledge to start your own practical ASP.NET MVC application at work.
The second part of the book will help developers to get in-depth knowledge of ASP.NET MVC framework. With the ASP.NET MVC source code provided by Microsoft, readers can take a more systematic look at each aspect of the MVC framework and fully understand how Routing, Controller and View work, and learn how to implement AJAX and classic web forms with MVC framework as well. No matter you are a new starter or advanced developer of MVC, you will find it is very helpful for your MVC web development.
Professional SQL Server 2008 Integration Services by Brian Knight, et al
Reviewed by Sudheer K. Maharana
Review date 08/29/2009
Professional SQL Server 2008 Integration
I have been working with SQL Server Data Transformation Services (DTS) for the past 12 years and now in SSIS for the past 4 years. Normally, my experience during SSIS 2008 development is to get some reference in internet which was a limited one. This book is very informative to an extent that I can say this is by far the best book I have referred in SSIS. It gives a jump start to a DTS developer to the world of SSIS development in SQL Server 2008 using C# or VB.Net and covers widely in all the Control Flow and Data Flow tasks. The authors have provided due attention in providing example code in both the languages for the reader to try where ever necessary. In this book I especially liked the chapters Using Expression and variables, scripting in SSIS, Accessing Heterogeneous Data, Tuning SSIS, WMI integration. Coming to WMI, the book could have covered a little more in this particular chapter but it definitely helps extending the imagination of readers on the power of WMI using SSIS.
I will definitely recommend this book to my peers out there who plan to extend their ETL development skill using SSIS.
Advanced Software Testing Vol. 1 by Rex Black
Reviewed by Ketan Patel
Review date 08/27/2009
Rex Black’s `Advanced Software Testing Vol. 1′ book starts off with brief overview of testing in SDLC process and different type of test, and how to plan, implement, execute and do reporting on the test result. Risk based testing has been covered in detail displaying how to analyze the risk in project and plan the testing based on the identified risk. Lot of examples has been used throughout the book explaining each topic. Good half of the book is used to explain specification based testing or black-box testing and structure-based technique or white-box test design technique.
As a senior tester I felt that the book title didn’t reflect the book and personally didn’t feel like reading the book added to the testing knowledge that I already have.
Although I would definitely recommend this book to junior and mid-level tester since it does a good job explaining everything with lot of examples.
Professional WCF Programming by Scott Klein
Reviewed by Hyung Lee
Review date 08/04/2009
Professional WCF Programming: .NET Development with the Windows Communication Foundation
This book is hard to follow.
It could be useful as quick reference for API details but I would not recommend this book to new learners.
You can find definitions on lots of classes and methods but it does not provide realistic code examples or diagrams that help visualize conceptual frame works.
Beginning C# 2008: From Novice to Professional by Christian Gross
Reviewed by Balagopalan Dharmarajan
Review date 08/02/2009
Beginning C# 2008: From Novice to Professional
Beginning C# 2008 From Novice to Professional by Christian Gross is a good choice to learn C# for any programmer with no or less .NET background. The way the book is organized is excellent and the very good part is, it has lot of samples with description. This book gives a diligent exposure to Types, Exception handling, OOP basics, .NET generics and Multi threading.
My personal opinion on the harder part of this book is, the analogies used, which are confusing and sometimes I have to read it twice or thrice to understand the idea behind the analogy.
Overall, it’s a good book for any beginner in C#.
Pro ASP.NET MVC Framework by Steven Sanderson
Reviewed by Richard Trinh
Review date 07/27/2009
Pro ASP.NET MVC Framework by Steven Sanderson is THE go to book for ASP.NET MVC. Not knowing a lot about ASP .NET, with the help of this book, I was able to get most of the answers I needed for my project. Sanderson keeps the reader captivated with his sense of humor while delivering a lot of content to the reader.
After reading this book, and comparing it to the free chapters from NerdDinner. I felt that this book did a better job on introducing MVC, and seemed to flow better. Instead of going over each topic one by one, we start building a simple e-commerce site and slowly added other features.
I would highly recommend this book to other developers, and even though this is a “Pro” book, developers from every level can benefit from this. I look forward to reading Sanderson’s other books.
Software Engineering: Principles and Practice by Hans van Vliet
Reviewed by Richard Trinh
Review date 04/27/2009
Software Engineering: Principles and Practice
Software Engineering Principles and Practice by Hans van Vliet is a good textbook which delves into the WHAT of software development, and takes a user through the normal Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) from requirements gathering to deployment in a production environment. And like good software, each chapter is loosely coupled allowing the reader to get more information on the topic of interest.
This book however does not go into details on the HOW, and was left me a little unsatisfied on best practices, and how to improve my skills as a software engineer.
This book is great for students as well as professionals involved in Software Engineering. It gives students an overview of what to expect in a software shop, but is more of a reference book for professionals to give a little further insight into the different aspects of the SDLC.
