Programming Books

It's been my experience that while politicians have been quick to capitalize on the power of online reputation management, most of the governments that they lead have failed to grasp the possibilities. Concerned about negative comments, the potential for embarrassment, and media scrutiny, many local governments have avoided social media altogether.

Strauss and Beal make the case for why no one can afford to ignore the potential for engagement and the real dialog afforded by social media. And for those who can't fully implement their suggestions organizationally, the book is rich in advice for managing your personal reputation online.

When I first heard of this book, I thought it would be geared toward only large businesses with big budgets--meaning complicated and expensive. Happily for many small businesses, this is not the case. Radically Transparent contains loads of useful information and much of it is things any company of any size can do today for free. From participating in social networks to starting a company blog, this book shows you the right way to engage in these and other online media.

Andy Beal and Dr. Judy Strauss have laid out a step by step plan for any business or brand, to create, enhance, protect, and even repair their online reputation.

If you have a online or offline business it means you have a reputation. People online will talk about your company, products, and services whether you like it or not. Wouldn't you want to know what they are saying and where they are saying it? You can find out now by purchasing this book.

Everyday in my job I try to find new ways to help my clients be more successful or improve their reputation on the Internet. I bought this book off of a recommendation of someone else and absolutely love it. I'm using it as a basis to building a standard structure for working with clients and improving their online reputation. I definitely recommend it for anyone from the beginner to the expert.

The book was written by Andy Beal from Marketing Pilgrim and Judy Strauss.

Andy Beal is a SEO and fellow blogger who specialized in social media optimization, reputation management and public relations. He is like Kris Jones a frequent speaker at search marketing conference, such as Search Marketing Expo, Search Engine Strategies and WebmasterWorld's PubCon.

As the subtitle states, his book is primarily about monitoring and managing of your personal, your professional or your company's reputation online where it focuses heavily on using search engine optimization and marketing techniques as tools to accomplish your goals.

It also provides advice and recommendations for how to approach the social media space as a business in order to reduce the risks and possible problems that will arise, if you jump into this area of marketing without being prepared and ready for it.

The power of social media and the benefits your customers and your company can get out from it are a reward that is worth the risks. Yes, it has risks and it is impossible to eliminate all of them, but that does not mean that it cannot be done. Just eliminate the risks that you can eliminate and be prepared for the things that can happen and impossible to prevent for sure.

What I love about this book is the way it is laid out in a step by step process that leads you from confusion to clarity in the use of social media in business today. Be aware, this is not a book about blogging even though they discuss is a lot, it is a book about all social media and the precise steps you can take to begin and continue influential conversations that can change the face of your business.

The book lays out a clear path for becoming transparent in your business and leverages really good examples to demonstate how it has been done effectively . . . and points out the pitfalls and traps that exist if you don't follow a sound process.

You'll literally go through this book chapter by chapter and implement it one step at a time and to that extent the book will keep you busy for quite a while.

My only criticism is that I wish it had an addendum to cover the very latest technologies and talk about implementing those, so I'm hoping for a quick follow on book. Groundswell did fill some gaps but this book is much more usable for businesses that want to implement the technology and create the conversations themselves.

Excellent book for understanding social media. A must read.

After half a dozen years as a Mac traitor who got dragged kicking and screaming into the Windows-only world at work, I'm retiring from the work world and switching back to Mac-only at home. I waited for about six months for Robin's update for Leopard to be published and it was well worth the wait. While I'm just getting into the book, I can already see that it's going to be a member of my on-desk library of essential Mac reference books. Way to go Robin and John!

I switched to MAC about one month ago, bought the book the next day and found it very helpful. I went through it page by page and it was easy to read and understand and it was more than helpful. I recommend it highly for the first time MAC users.

Can these people write, or can they write? Thier books are always easy to follow, and presented in an entertaining fashion as well. If Robin Williams had written books about all the subjects I so disliked in school, I would undoubtedly have been very well read in all topics.
In a matter of minutes, I was able to unlock a few mysteries about my Mac...in days, I was using the applications without fear or hesitation. And while I am quite aware of how user friendly Macs are anyway, Ms Williams takes away the fears I still tend to harbor. I'm no computer wiz kid, I am FAR on the opposite end of the spectrum. But this book in particular, opened my eyes....from a place of feeling overwhelmed by all the things I KNEW this little box could do(that I didn't think I could) to a world of fun, and confidence. Cool Mac Apps is quickly becoming my favorite book. I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn anything about the iLife applications.

Book is very informative, easy to understand and use. I bought this book for school (I don't own a mac), but there were many things I learned about iTunes (only non Mac program I use) I wouldn't have known without reading this book. Definitely would recommend for anyone wanting to get the most out of their Mac.

As we have all come to expect from Robin Williams, this book is written in a clear, precise manor. The illustrations are all very helpful. I particularly like the way the windows of each application are illustrated with details about each item within the window.

I have been using OSX for over two years now and thought I knew my way around each of these applications, but I was able to learn a lot of easier ways to do things . I have also learned that there were a lot of the features that I was not even coming close to using to their full potential. I have been using iCal, iTunes, and iPhoto on an almost daily basis, so these new tips and techniques are a real timesaver for me.

I was really surprised at how much new knowledge I gained on using Safari. I am on the internet on a daily basis and just took the browser for granted. The quick Tips section was very helpful. The section on RSS feeds opened up a whole new world of information for me.

Cool Mac Apps is a must have reference book that every MAC user needs in their personal library. I would give this book an excellent rating!

The book came very fast in the mail. It was new in quality. I am able to teach myself Ruby from the book.

Superb introduction to Ruby and important programming idioms that every Rubyist should know. Shows you a small chunk of code, with significant lines numbered, and follows the code with descriptive paragraphs that show you what the code is doing. In effect, you learn how to read the code as you go through the book, starting with basic material and getting more advanced as you go along. VERY nicely done.

If you want to learn Ruby quickly and you can only afford to buy one book to do it with, this is the one I would buy! It has interesting little projects with well documented code which introduces you gradually to more advanced topics in the language. It is not a cookbook, but rather, a very well picked selection of programmes where new concepts are thoroughly explained and older concepts are reinforced. There are "hacks" to just about every script and I was able to learn more from this than I did from grinding through the Pick Axe. Amazingly, now when I pick up the Pick Axe it seems accessible!

Well worth the investment!

Ruby By Example seeks to teach Ruby by introducing a series of small scripts, explaining how they work, often by showing some examples in irb, Ruby's interactive shell, and reinforcing the explanations with some suggested modifications to the script to highlight the principles just expounded. The closest examples in other languages I'm aware of are Dive Into Python and (to a lesser extent) Wicked Cool Perl Scripts.

This is a very nice idea, and there are some examples that are a cut above the usual fare: chapter 9 includes a Bible Code generator, and an implementation of the 'methinks it is like a weasel' sentence natural selection program from Richard Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker. There's also mention of memoization, profiling and benchmarking, the Schwartzian transform for sorting, and even Symbol#to_proc. There's also quite a gentle introduction to Rails, which is probably sufficient for someone new to Ruby and Rails to move onto Ruby for Rails.

However, the execution isn't always perfect. Probably the biggest downside to this pedagogical approach is that there's not really one obvious place to describe how a particular feature works in depth, or the focus moves away from its practical use in a script. As a result, many of the explanations are compressed. Chapter 1 provides a 'crash' description of object orientation in 9 lines. Chapter 3 first mentions hashes, but compares them to functions, and not to arrays. Tail recursion is defined in a 4 line footnote in chapter 7. If you already understand these concepts, you'll be fine, but they won't teach you anything. If you don't, they aren't very helpful. At a couple of points the book also insists that everything in Ruby is an object, but code blocks (among other things) aren't until they're wrapped in Procs. For the more functional-esque techniques advocated in the book, this is a subtle point which could trip up a beginner.

Also, some of the examples are weak. Chapter 4 rushes through regular expressions, using them to compress whitespace, but why not also mention String#squeeze? Chapter 5 uses regexes to deal with XML and it gets the job done, but advice on using a real XML parser might have been more useful in the long term. Chapter 6 contains a truly contrived Buffy the Vampire Slayer-related example.

This isn't a bad introduction to Ruby, and it's a very admirable attempt to do something different, but I wanted to like it more than I did. If you already know some object oriented programming, this could make a good companion to a more tutorial-style book, like The Pickaxe.

'Ruby by Example: Concepts and Code' is the perfect reference for anyone that wants to learn how to use Ruby, one of the hottest programming languages to come around in some time. With over around 300 pages of content spread across 45 examples, this book will give you all the basis you need to go from a non-Ruby user to someone writing good code immediately!! I think that the No Starch line has some of the most unique layouts you will find from any publishing line. Chapters are usually broken up into small manageable chunks that make it easier for the reader to actually learn and dissect the information they are taking in, fonts are clear and concise, and it's just an enjoyable easy read all around. While this may seem low in importance I don't think that's the case at all. Especially for a book where the user base is someone new to a language, environment or tool, I want a book that is easy to learn from, fun to read and makes me actually want to LEARN and look forward to the next chapter(s). If you want to learn Ruby and build on your development skillset, pick up this book and move to the fast lane!!

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Beautifully written book covering almost all area of spoken language processing. However, despite of relative ease of reading, it is necessary to warn the beginning reader, that in some sections the deep enough acquaintance to their theme is veiled. It, for example, concerns questions of definition and application of delta function concept in chapter 5 (Digital Signal Processing).

What a wonderful book. Whether you are a computer scientist or mathematician with limited exposure to the discipline of speech processing, or alternatively you are a dedicated expert in this field, you will find everything you are looking for in this book. For two weeks, I couldn't put this thing down. And that's an extraordinary testimony to a book that's 800+ pages of technical detail. If you want a high level understanding of how speech processing works, or if you want to dig in and build your own speech engine, everything you need is right here.

A thourough and complete review about the subject, in which many disciplines (language, computer, probability, statistics, numerical analysis) converge. As a non-practitioner I have found it an enjoyable opportunity to refresh my knowledges in the field of signal processing, and a source of many hints I have been able to develop in other branches. In spite of notations and methodologies (e.g. bayesian) a bit far from I am used to, the near one thousand pages never seemed extreme related to the meaning compressed into them, spreading from base theory to advanced applications.

This book is a comprehensive overview of most of the major topics associated with speech processing. Divided into five main sections, the book is well structured with a clear division of concerns. The title, "Spoken Language Processing", may be misleading to some as language processing topics only accounts for one section of the book.

The first two sections cover the fundamental theories that should be understood before embarking in-depth into a study of speech processing. This may seem an obvious approach but many texts do not follow this pattern making their use as reference tomes limited. Separating background theory from its use is also useful in that it allows a rigorous approach to its description. Too often texts give a hurried imprecise overview of theories used before launching into a long and complex use of the theory; losing the reader instantly in a quagmire of formulae.

The first two sections of the book deals with background material, material that the reader should at least understand the key concepts of. The first section concentrates on speech in general (including production and perception), probability and statistics, and pattern classification. These last two topics mentioned are both important parts of the book and are dealt with in their own chapters. Both are well written with the right amount of explanation and background. Much of the remainder of the book expects at least some familiarity with the material presented here. These chapters, like all chapters in the book finish with a section entitled, "Historical Perspective and Further Reading". The inclusion of recommended further reading, in addition to the vast number of references appearing in each chapter, make the book as a whole a very good starting point for any work in speech processing.

The second section concerns itself with the DSP topics which relate to speech processing. In this section the reader will find everything from FFTs to multi-rate signal processing and speech signal representations to speech coding. Again the section is well written and the reader is not forced to refer to other texts to understand what is written. If a topic is not expanded upon here then it is an indication that is not dealt further in any great depth in the remainder of the book.

The third section of the book covers speech recognition and is probably the section which will find most use with many readers. This section is very thorough in its treatment of the subject. It starts immediately with a discussion of Hidden Markov Models which is almost exclusively the method employed in the pattern matching stage of speech recognition. Any algorithms that are mentioned are also detailed which really make the book useful. In fact algorithms are presented throughout the book making it a practical reference as much as a theoretical one. This is important because there is a big jump from understanding theory to being able to implement an algorithm to exploit that theory. Other topics covered include an excellent chapter on environmental robustness with one of the best discussions of microphones I have seen. Language modelling and search algorithms are given a thorough treatment. I would like to have seen more detailed information on front-end processing and endpoint detection, as this remains a critical stage of the recognition process. Perhaps the level of detail reflects the fact that this is currently a hot research topic with potential for significant advancement.

Section four, on text-to-speech processing, is a good overview of the field and better than any book I've seen on the subject. It shows numerous block diagrams of what you need to build such a system and gives numerous algorithms in pseudocode. It also dedicates a subsection to each block of the text-to-speech system block diagram, discussing in detail what you would need to do to implement that particular block. Since much of the individual blocks have been discussed earlier in the book, it refers you back to specific earlier sections for details.

The fifth section is a short one on entire systems and shows some case studies, concentrating on what Microsoft was doing at the time this book was published, since that is where the authors' research came from. I would highly recommend that anyone anticipating getting into speech processing have a copy of this classic nearby.

This is a great book if you want to know the future of what Microsoft's top researchers like XD Huang etc are thinking and working. Dr Huang is a super star of the field and it is equally worthwhile to read his excellent book.

This book is a must have to a DBA. It contains all the little gotchas in managing SQL Server. All the items that we come across while searching for something that I think"Man I gotta remember that". 99% of them are in this book, so I don't have to print them out and maintain a seperate library.

Not a book to buy if you are looking something to read to learn SQL Server. This is a reference for someone who already is using it extensivly.

Ross

Overall, this is an excellent book that covers a wide variety of topics useful to any SQL Server 2000 DBA. At this time, though Apress hasn't posted the Table of Contents on Amazon.com, the Table of Contents is posted at the Apress web site.

I took away one star for the CD. It is extremely handy to have a copy of the book on the CD in PDF format. However, rather than having a single PDF file with a Table of Contents linking to each chapter and topic, each chapter is contained in a separate PDF file on the CD. Unless you know which chapter you want to reference, it is tedious to look in separate files for the Table of Contents or the Index, then try to guess in which file the item you are looking for can be found.

A less significant complaint is that the CD holder is found about three-quarters of the way through the book, rather than at the end of the book, which makes it more difficult to quickly flip through the book.

Other than these minor complaints, it is an excellent book.

This is an easy to use reference book. It has a useful index and directions are written in a step by step format.

This book has 100s of relevant and useful "How Tos". Very useful.

Not a tutorial, but a practical working guide to administering SQL Server 2000. Lots of "How to" items covered.

You don't need to read the entire book in order to benefit from it. Specific topics are covered using Checklists to make sure you don't miss anything important. Highly recommended!

This book is one of the best programming language books I've read, along with "Oh! Pascal!" by Cooper and Clancy. It's use of humor and simple, straightforward examples, grab your attention right away and keep it through the entire book. It's hard to believe a programming book can be hard to put down, but this one was.

It also explains complex concepts in simple, elegant ways, just like good programs should be written.

I would recommend it to anyone learning FORTH, and I would recommend sections of it for people trying to understand specific concepts in any language. For example, the explanation of stacks was excellent!

I bought my own used copy of this book, but it is available in its entirety online, so it is unlikely to ever be reprinted.

Somebody REPRINT THIS BOOK!

"Starting Forth" is the only Forth book I own. After reading it, I was able to implement a Forth runtime system, compiler, and interpreter, from scratch, in 8086 assembly - the results can be found at home.earthlink.net/~jknapka/jkf.html . I credit this mainly to Leo Brodie's skill as an expository writer. The book is a gem; if someone were to reprint it, I for one would buy several copies, just in case.

The reason no one will reprint "Starting Forth" is that Forth is not sufficiently trendy. If we rename the language "JavaForth", we'll be drowning in reprints...

Sigh.

This book is a very clear introduction to programming and the stack. The cartoons are very entertaining and descriptive, and the book would make light reading even for beginning programmers. Those who program, but not yet in Forth, will also be happy with the quick introduction.

Why on earth is this fabulous book out of print?

A wonderful book. I bought mine in 1980, and a week later I had an old Northstar Z-80 computer running real-time behavioral experiments in FORTH at (so it seemed) blinding speed.

We need this book!

I bought "Succeeding with Use Cases" primarily for Part 3 on model-based specification. The book gives a "Blue Collar" approach for specifying operations in terms of change of state. The approach is highly pragmatic and aids writing precise, testable specifications. The author clearly explains what to do. I highly recommend this book.

I was really happy to see Richard's new book. I have always thought that if you are going to go to the effort of writing good use cases, then you should make use of that information as much as possible in the project. This book has a prominant place on my professional bookshelf, and I refer to it often.

Richard Denney gives some great information on using your project use cases in project management, quality control, and reliability. He has a wealth of experience that he shares throughout the book. His book is well written and easy to understand. I am not aware of any other book that covers this information in the context of a software project.

Once you are comfortable with writing use cases (and of course I must recommend my own book Applying Use Cases: A Practical Guide for that purpose), then definitely start exploring what you can do with the use cases once they are written by getting a copy of Richard Denney's book, Succeeding With Use Cases: Working Smart to Deliver Quality.

Example after example; model after model! After reading this book, I was ready to begin implementation! Chapter 3, Operational Profiles, will convince and evangelize engineering and management. The degree of detail is perfect for the professional. Great Work!

This book is about uses of use cases in software engineering. The focus is on doing and managing projects.
Topics are among others selection of standard products, management of project portfolios, or grounding projects in business goals. The last topic is an application of use cases to QFD, a process originally from the automobile industry. Other topics are reliability engineering, modelling and project management (this list is not complete).
All the topics of the book have use cases as a common factor. It is not an introduction into use cases. The application of use cases in this book goes further than what is described in the Rational Unified Process for example. Therefore other books are better in introducing the topic of use cases.
Demo excel sheets are available from the author. The examples are worked out excellently and instructive. The book focuses on the practicalites of software engineering and addresses primarily project leads, designer, architects and testers. Most of the material was new to new, although I have been using use cases for years. It will have the most value for organizations already modelling their software. In my opinion extreme programmers will not find it as useful.

I'm a software engineer, specializing in requirements and software quality. I've known about QFD and the House of Quality for over a decade, and I've been using Use Case methodology for years. This is the first (and perhaps the only) book which combines the two methodologies and explains in a straightforward yet sufficiently detailed way how to use these methodologies. If you are struggling with many requests from multiple customers and are trying to identify what is really important, you should read this book. In particular, if you want to satisfy the customers who drive your business, i.e., generate revenue, you need to read this book. This is a low-tech approach; all you need is a spreadsheet. Understanding Use Cases, QFD, or House of Quality is not a prerequisite. Even if you are already familiar with these methodologies, I think you will still learn a lot from this excellent book.

I loved this book. It covers the history of Open Source and explain WHY people do open source and HOW they make it happen!

The Success of Open Source in a not a just wistful paean to Linux as the title would suggest. Rather, it is two books in one.

The first book is one of the very best recapitulations of the open source movement and all of its predecessors. The second book is about how something that just seemingly shouldn't work, works so well, and how those principles behind its working extend to more than just the open source movement.

The author, a university professor, draws liberally from the traditions of historians, economists, sociologists, and psychologists to paint a compelling picture of why the forces behind open source are not going to go away any time soon. Read in best companion with The Cathedral and the Bazaar, which IS a bit of a wistful paean to Linux, it illuminates its subject wonderfully.

Steven's book brings a rich articulation of the social practices innovations unleashed by the Open Source collective: a new understanding of private property that better fit the tech forces and the challenges of the present. His book it is not a model; it is not the list of the 10 reasons why...; it is not the defense of an emerging theory; but an historical account in which anecdotes, facts, historical moment, tentative hypothesis, set the background to allows the reader to reshape her/his own questions. The book gave me a perspective I have been testing with IT architects, programmers, software designers...I feel myself much more prepare to engage in conversations about the future in a meaningful and effective way. Thanks to the author!

For the serious reader (and who indeed thinks open source is hilarious?), Weber provides a detailed history of how this idea developed. He traces it from the advent of unix in the 1970s, and the generous (ie. low fees) licensing terms by ATT. Which led to the BSD Unix that flourished in the 80s. Also during this time, GNU took off.

But the bulk of the book deals with the 90s onwards. Especially as linux grew from Torvalds' seminal contribution. Its intellectual roots in unix and GNU are studied. We also see the rise of the Free Software Foundation and Apache, as articulate enablers and promoters of open source. All of which was aided by the invention and meteoric growth of the Web. This played a vital role in enabling a global audience of programmers to hear of and contribute their efforts.

I'm a commercial software developer, and found the author's history of the UNIX culture and the story of its evolution into what we now call Open Source to be fascinating. That alone made it a good read for me. Add in the thought provoking analysis of the "whys" (the real point of this book), and it's a killer combo.

Warning: the book is *full* of sentences like "Pluralism at many different levels is being enabled by communications technologies and by experimentation with property; together, these are reducing the marginal cost of adding voices toward an asymptote of zero." Despite that, I've been able to read it at the pace of a thriller, not a textbook.

In days past when I was up to my tush in alligators while attempting to drain the swamp (of IBM mainframe applications) I used only one reference each and every day: this book.

This may be the only book in the world that makes IBM's condition code job control understandable.

With this book you can make IBM's JCL rock and roll to your music.

This is the bee's knees.

MVS Job Control Language explained in easy to understand language.

There is lot's more than just JCL. There are, for example, explanations of file Data Control Blocks, MVS Utilities, compilers, linkage editors and many more subjects of interest to anyone working on MVS.

An absolute must if you write JCL. I have it to hand on my desk all the time.

I have used Brown's books since his first 370 edition. Brown explains the often obtuse JCL with clarity not often found in technical books. It is an elegant presentation of the most central tech skill to mainframe systems. His handling of utilities is equally well done.

This book is the "bible" for all Mainframe programmers/analyst. I've had his original book....OS360 JCL decades ago and it taught me everything I needed to know about JCL. The new version is just as good....probably better!

I really like this book and I would recommend it to anyone who needs a reference to JCL and to grasp JCL concepts.

For those not acclimated to the mainframe environment I would recommend reading chapter 21-22 first. They cover ISPF and TSO which is the Mainframe "IDE" in the JCL Context. It is the method in which you code JCL, submit JCL, Debug JCL. I know the focus on the book is JCL, but I would have thought the ISPF TSO Chapters would be in the beginning. Still, a well written book.

This book is about web testing in general, not just performance testing, and is a must have for the professional testing engineer. Chapters 7 and 8, on performance and scalability give a very good introduction to the subject, and include a great sample performance testing plan.

Michael Czeiszperger
Web Performance, Inc. Stress Testing Software
http://www.webperformanceinc.com

When industry leaders such as Cem Kaner and Bret Pettichord extol the virtues of this book you can be assured that it is great - everything they and other reviewers have said is on target. Moreover, you'd be hard-pressed to walk into the testing area in any company and not see a copy of this book on someone's desk.

That said, instead of this book you should get the second edition, which is a major rewrite, and also expanded in scope to include testing mobile systems. This edition is titled, "Testing Applications on the Web: Test Planning for Mobile and Internet-Based Systems" ISBN 0471201006, and is everything others have said about this first edition - and more!

Even with a better second edition, this book deserves the five stars I gave it because of the influence it has had on the testing profession. Moreoever, this first edition is not out-of-date, and is still a great book if you don't need information about testing mobile web systems at this time (although it's a safe bet you will in the future).

Grey box testing is based on a general understanding of a system's architecture and components. This understanding drives test strategy and identifies opportunities to test components in isolation.

The shade of grey can vary from white box testing (full review of source code) to black box testing (no review of source code). You choose what level of information to gather depending on your budget, capabilities and judgment.

This book provides the first detailed approach to grey box testing, focussing on web-based application architectures. These architectures are based on a heavy use of components: application servers, web servers, load balancers, databases and the like. This book describes these components, suggests how they can fail and what you can do to anticipate, trigger, or detect such failures.

This approach is supported by the author's extensive experience testing web-based (and other) applications as president of a software testing company. It is augmented by plenty of good advice on how to communicate test results clearly.

I have been in web testing for 3.5 years and this was the first book I found on the subject. My only complaint is that it took so long to come out, but I won't hold that against Nguyen or Wiley. It is a superb introduction to the complexities of web testing, which despite the protests of standalone application testers, is much more difficult and technical than traditional application testing. Not only does the tester need to know the basics of application testing, he or she has to know about the complex technology behind the site or application, and Nguyen's book is unbeatable. I've recommended that everyone on my team read it, since they are all new to the art of web testing. I read it cover to cover and it didn't really cover anything I had not learned in 3.5 years of experience, but had it been published when I started, I would have been able to ramp up so much faster. I also recommend that application developers read it in order to understand the role of a tester and to develop professional respect for a much-maligned profession.

This is good book. If you test web apps, you should buy it.

Hung Nguyen and I are co-authors of another book and good friends. I am not an unbiased reviewer. On the other hand, I wouldn't write this review if I didn't believe every word of it.

Hung's book breaks new ground. It will be useful today, and I believe it will have lasting value and influence.

Once you get beyond the superficial (not unimportant, but much less difficult) issues of usability testing that dominate so many discussions of web testing, you run into the really tough problems of web application testing. Hung Nguyen's book is about those harder problems.

The web-based application runs on a wider range of platforms than any other type of program in history. It doesn't even have control over its presentation layer (the user supplies the browser and the multimedia plugins, and these applications might change any time). What will the application look like on the changed browser? The application probably also relies on third party databases (which can change any time), third party network connections (which can change any time), third party security systems and other access control (which can change any time), etc., etc. Almost anything in this system can change any time. How do you deal with a system that has so many unknowns?

Hung's view is that web application testers must learn more about the technical details of the systems and understand how external variables can interact (and fail) with the application under test.

To help testers learn about the interaction (and testing) of applications with other system components, he wrote the field's first book on grey box testing.

This book has substantial value for what it teaches us about testing on the web. Beyond that, it teaches about thinking clearly and thoroughly when your application interacts in complex ways with other systems. I think his approach will have lasting value and lasting influence long after many of the detailed issues that he describes have been resolved and replaced with new ones.

Along with the original approach, Hung gives a powerful real-world example. He is the president of a company that publishes a web-based bug tracking system. To illustrate the types of tests that you can run and the types of bugs you can find, he opened his records and described real tests, real bugs, and real testing problems. It's a rare treat to see a discussion of testing experience by someone who knows testing, who also intimately knows the software under test, and who isn't constrained in what he can say by a nondisclosure contract.