Software Books

This is a great book. All Oracle people must have this.

It covers majority of the database topics and is a very useful reference.

I am a MS SQL DBA learning Oracle and this was the first book I read after going through the Oracle's official curriculum. Here are my thoughts.

1)This book is definitely not for the beginners. I highly recommend you start with a more basic book that gives you an overview of Oracle. Oracle tools are highly unintuitive and using them can be a frustrating experience especially for MS SQL DBAs *smirk*. Learning to just to connect to an Oracle database is a learning experience that will take knowledge on how Oracle's network and security function.

2)If you already have a working knowledge on how to operate an Oracle database, this book will no doubt provide a more solid foundation for your knowledge (except RAC). I particularly found its chapters on RMAN and IMPORT/EXPORT utilties particularly helpful.

3)Perhaps the best part of this book is that it encompasses what the author believes is the most essential knowledge to becoming a highly competent Oracle DBA. The book does not try to be a reference for every Oracle topic. Instead, the author has smartly picked the most important information needed and presented them in a readable format.

4)My only issue with this book is that it is wordy. The book is 1200 pages long and it could easily have been 1000 pages or fewer.

An excellent book covering all essential DBA topics for Oracle 9i Administration. Explained very well covering In-depth details, Illustrations and examples makes this book invaluable. I use it as a true source of reference and I will strongly recommend this book.

I just got this book from the library and I decided to read through it before I buy. I think I will buy a copy of it. The book touched pretty much all the areas of Oracle 9i. It is a book to have on your desk as key reference. I will recommend this book to new DBA. The author did a pretty good job. The book seems too big but very useful. I give 4 stars.

I am a technical writer. A client asked me to update some of the instructions he sends out with his products. However, the documents were created in InDesign, and they needed to stay in that format. I had a copy of InDesign CS3 but I needed to learn the basics of how to use the program in a very short time.

I read the reviews on Amazon, and Deke's book got the most glowing reviews. Now I'm adding my own glowing review.

I bought Deke's book (and CD-ROM). After a long weekend, I was able to create a template, a workable layout, and a functional style sheet. The nice thing about Deke's training approach is that he provides all the practice files for you. Following his step-by-step instructions, I was able to add a few "extras" to the documents including running heads with variable text, anchored graphic frames, and autonumbering captions for those graphics. You might be tempted to skip the first chapter, where Deke shows you his way of setting up the interface. My advice: take the time to do it Deke's way. He knows what he's talking about, and it pays off in the long run.

Good book, but i was disappointed that the text depends upon the cd. If you are looking for a book to look up tools and how-to's, this may not be the book for you.

a very helpful tool for the novice. Index helps located area that is creating a logjam when your are trying to complete a piece. Essential for anyone not enrolled in classes.

This is the sort of book that you hold with one hand while running the program with the other. Well written (utilizing the CS3 software!)and entertaining, the book is laid out in an easy to understand format and the included CD makes learning clear, easy - and fun. This is a great place to start if you're new to CS3 - and there's enough depth that people familiar with the software can learn quite a bit as well!

While there are a number of quality tutorials (both written and video), Deke McClellen's teaching skills make this book a cut better than average. Chapters are organized logically with enough info to grow the novice and challenge the intermediate user. I especially appreciate McClellen's videos. They are neither too slow nor too fast and assume the viewer is starting from scratch. The book itself also serves as an excellent template or model for someone venturing into book publishing.

As a technical writer myself I am not a huge fan of the current style of most of the "How To..." books on the market. iPhoto 6 by Derrick Story therefore comes as a breath of fresh air in an arena so full of carbon dioxide as to leave one gasping.

Clearly written, entertainingly framed, wonderfully efficient in telling you what you need to know, when you need to know it. Better yet this wonderful manual is tightly organized around the nearly forgotten technique of creating a context for technique rather than simply spewing forth a breathless recitation of "Push this button, tweak this dial, buy this product."

This extremely well written inside look at iPhoto 6 is all you will ever need to get up and running. If ole Steve Jobs was smart he'd kidnap this guy and put him to work advising the techies responsible for fine tuning future versions of iPhoto.

Well done Mr. Story and please keep up the good work.

And Mr. Pogue, you are forgiven for the mess you made of my life with the Missing Manual for Appleworks6!

Some say lightening can never strike the same place twice. The Missing Manual series proves that wrong. David Pogue and the O'Reilly gang constantly hit the mark and spark creativity and knowledge in a variety of programs.

IPhoto 6 covers absolutely every aspect of digital photography on your Mac, leaving few stones unturned. In order to make sure you get the great photos you need and minimized the editing needed in iPhoto, Derrick Story and David Pogue make sure you buy the right digital camera for your needs and tells you the basics of lighting and composition. After reading that chapter, I looked at my own iPhoto library and understand why I liked certain shots and why others ended up on the digital darkroom floor.

After explaining how to buy a camera and create great photos, the authors take you through the steps of using iPhoto in logical order: importing, managing, outputting and of course backing up. More technical manuals need to do this. Instead of taking you through the features, they take you through the workflow.

The writing was typical of the series: clear, understandable with plenty of screen shots to explain the concepts. While I consider myself an expert on iPhoto, the book was full of subtle tips and tricks to shave hours off my digital photo management.

The strength of the book was definitely the extensive chapters on what to with your photos after they are in iPhoto. Photos are meant to be shared, not locked up in your hard drive. He went over not just the specifics of all the printing options such as photo books and calendars, but also using iMovie, iWeb, and iDVD to share the photos with the world.

The final chapters covered some more advanced options such as AppleScript and Automator. Unlike other Missing Manual books that simply point you to the website to download utilities, Pogue and Story explained some of these programs and how they can help you expand your iPhoto capabilities. The Appendix was definitely the icing on the cake handling practically every iPhoto error and it's solution, as well as walking you through the basics of every iPhoto menu command and its implications.

My only complaint was somewhat weak coverage on desktop printing of photos. I always get confused about the way to feed the photo paper and how to configure settings to get the proper output. iPhoto, the printer's software, the printer, and Mac OS X must all be in alignment to print properly. These days, I simply upload it to the drugstore website and print it there. Printing to services other than Apple's wasn't really covered either.

While iPhoto basics are simple and quick to learn, "iPhoto 6 the Missing Manual" helps you become the hands down master of digital photos on your Mac. Others will tremble in fear of your massive knowledge after reading this book cover to cover.

Pros: Covers every aspect of digital photography and makes everyone an iPhoto wiz.
Cons: Needed more coverage of desktop and third party printing of photos.

ANY question you might have, any project you might conjure up.....this book has all the answsers in the most easy format. A must have if you have an iMac and a digital camera!

As a beginner with digital photography,there is a great deal of iPhoto that is intuitive;however,there are so many options and errors that can be made,at least in my limited experience,that this book is a constant reference guide. I previously purchased "Switching to Mac,The Missing Manual",and found it so valuable that I bought this "Missing Manual".This series of books has been both informative and entertaining.

Might not have much for experienced power users - but for me as a Mac newcomer it did the trick. iPhoto is easy to use and most things you can figure out by yourself, but this book is a big timer saver in doing so and has also some tips that you otherwise might not have figured out

The problem I've seen with technical books is that either they are in tutorial/textbook format which includes lessons and then review questions at the end of each chapter, or they are purely reference type books ideal for looking up things on occasion and not really good for a beginner to learn the subject matter. This book was the first one I felt that was ideal in both textbook form as well as a reference book for looking things up.

The chapters were basic enough for the beginner to grasp the material, and the lessons were rife with hands-on examples which I thought was the best part. I like to try things out as I go through the lessons and so the material was very useful for me.

The printing of the material was interesting and draws the reader into the subject, important notes and pitfalls are highlighted between the text to avoid the paragraphs from becoming too long and drawn out. The writer's diction is sometimes humorous to avoid the reader from losing interest.

The book is kind of bulky and thick so as a consequence of regular use, the glue based binding gave way somewhere in the middle of the book so when I open it, the first half of the book is attched merely by a shred to the second half, so I have to be careful now when I lookup things in it. I wouldn't trade this book for anything.

I have never taken any instructional classes on Perl scripting and can safely say that everything I know about Perl scripting I've learned from this book. That being said I am able to write fairly sophisticated perl scripts and have the ability to understand fairly obfuscated perl code without difficulty. I use perl as a very strong and useful tool in my day to day tasks for scripting and text processing needs and I often dazzle and amaze my colleagues at work with the tricks I'm able to pull off by using perl scripting and I owe it all to this book.

In short, I give two enthusiastic thumbs up for this book and the 5 star rating that I gave this book was merely due to the amazon limitation on the number of stars you can give in your review.

I started learning Perl two years ago. I first browsed libraries, free tutorials, news groups etc... It was nice for the beginning but soon enough I understood that's not the way :)

I started looking around for good Perl books and somehow got to this one. I think I can clearly say, that this book did the work. Teached me Perl from the ground up. I'm now planning on buying "MySQL and mSQL" to start working with databases. I also consider buying "Mastering Algorithms With Perl" & "Programming Web Graphics with Perl & GNU Software".

Anyway, if you want to start learning Perl, buy this book. I also use it as a reference.

The book is a good and detailed tutorial for all novices who want to learn Perl. No hit around the bush stuff and the chapters were well thought of. Credit should be given to the author and the publishing group for these helpful information. The Source codes on the CD-Rom comes handy when when you want to test out the sample codes in the book. The questions at the end of each chapter is a good revision after scanning the chapter. I strongly recommend those who want to learn Perl to get a copy of this book as their first book.

After the Camel book, of course. This book is very well paced with well thought out examples. I needed it as a refresher last year, and now use it as a reference.

The only down side is that the Web Based interactive segment is no longer available. not a big deal since it's the same quizes as in the book, but there was a gee-whiz, isn't it fun factor to have it available online.

This book covers everything from soup to nuts. It starts the learner off slowly with the basic perl syntax and then smoothly moves into subroutines, OOP, DBI modules, Security, etc. all with the same interesting and amusing style.

I don't know if it's mentioned in the Editorial review, but the author is the Editor of The Perl Journal (www.tpj.com) which is a magazine devoted to the perl programming language. So Jon Orwant *knows* his topic.

I've read and use most of the Perl books out on the market today, but none comes close to getting you going well with Perl as does Jon Orwant's book. I still use it as a reference today, but it is the best any money can buy for learning Perl. I'm back buying another copy because I loaned mine to a friend and I miss it so much that I want to make sure I'll always have a copy handy. My old copy is so well worn that a fresh copy is enticing also. As for extras in the book: the quizzes are great for testing your understanding, and someone has done a great job at proofreading this book -- I don't know whether that person is at the Waite Group or is Jon himself, but I know that anytime I have questioned an answer, or a script, or anything in the book I have always found the book to be accurate on closer inspection. It is very much like the Camel Book in being authoritative -- what Jon says is Perl Gospel Truth - if I had to pick two Perl books, I'd pick this one for learning and the Camel Book for ultimate reference. Jon's book should be rated a 5 and a half star - this is the best that it ever gets!

No obtiene la quinta estrella por no hacer referencia alguna al manejo de los archivos BVH. Por lo demás, genial!

This book has become one of my references for Poser 6. It's clearly written and covers topics from basic to advanced. I recommend this book for anyone learning or using Poser 6!

It was very easy to follow and made it easy to learn Poser 6.

I avoid buying software books because many of my past purchases were a complete waste of money. The authors rehash the software's free manuals and provide explanations and tutorials so basic that it seems their target reader is somebody who bought their first PC just last week.

Based on strong reviews, I took a chance and bought Practical Poser 6. I'm not going to cover the content, which is already described very thoroughly in other reviews here. I'll just say that if you have tried to use Poser without any tutorial or learning aids, this book is for you. I had a copy of Poser 5 and had just bought Poser 6 a few weeks before getting this book. My measure of a good instructional book is how much it taught me that I didn't know already. I estimate 50-60% of this book contains info that I'd only have learned by painful trial-and-error, and was really useful to me. And this is not to say that it's for experienced users only -- whether you're just starting out with Poser or already have a few years of experience, there's some explanations, tips and general good reading in this book for you. Highly recommended!

I found Practical Poser 6 a valuable training tutorial into the world of 3D graphics. Not only did it explain the functions and usages of Poser 6 in understandable terms, it illustrated examples in easy to follow, step-by-step instructions. This book is a recommended must-have for individuals who are thinking about entering the realm of 3D graphics or serious artists who want to refine their technique and squeeze a little more 'mileage' from their programs. A first-rate, well written book in it's field.

While this book covers all the significant technology in the area, it is a much better read for all those things you wondered about in Sci Fi Could they really do that? Also the policy issues are critical to our privacy rights and conversly national security.

Anyone who uses a mobile phone, relies upon oversees Internet connectivity, or worries about personal security should get acquainted with this book. Mr. Vacca has once again produced a very accessible yet easily readable tome on the dangers and promise of satellite encryption. Pick it up and you'll learn about or government policies regarding satellite communications management and security. By the time you put it down, you'll understand everything from pagers to the electronic battlefield. It's a must-read!

Great book - detailed and technical, but still a good read

As always, John Vacca provides an incredible level of detail in a readable manner. The Internet implications are particularly applicable to almost any reader. In our case, where the line-of-sight constraints of radio transmission in our wireless WANs are forcing us to look at satellite options, this book is an invaluable resource. And the tales told herein about encryption break-ins and techniques make fascinating reading in their own right.

Technical from orbit to chip, and immensely readable as well!

I think that the tittle of this book is a bit misleading. If one reads through all the enthusiastic reviews of the book one can actually get a clear picture of what it is about. It is a general overview of politics of encryption with some technical information included in between. I cannot understand the reason for more than one hundred pages of information about different types of military equipment. Yes, this book is interesting but it is not about cryptography and encryption. These subjects are only a small part of the book. I returned Satellite Encryption after very thorough consideration.

I've flown for 30 years, always in pistons. Recently I went to Flight Safety for a week of training on the Cessna Caravan. My background is in electrical engineering, not engines, so I knew I desperately needed some understanding of turboprop engines before I arrived. Not only did I learn the details of the engines, I learned about how some things on the electrical side are done differently than I had thought. I wrote about the week at Flight Safety on my blog at http://www.maxtrescott.com/max_trescott_on_general_a/2008/11/cessna-208b-caravan-training-work-but-fun.html#more

Here's a quote directly from that posting:
"Getting Greg's book was a good choice and I recommend it to anyone stepping up to turbine and jet aircraft for the first time. While manipulating the controls of these aircraft will be familiar to anyone who's flown a small plane, the systems, particularly the engines, are significantly different. The beauty of reading his book is that I actually understood the sentence describing the engine in the Caravan's POH: 'Free turbine, two-shaft engine utilizing a compressor section having three axial stages and one centrifugal stage, an annular reverse-flow combustion chamber, a one-stage compressor turbine, a one-stage power turbine, and a single exhaust.'"
by Max Trescott, 2008 National CFI of the Year

Great book. Was recommended reading for a college class. Class or not, excellent book. A must read for all pilots.

It's a very good reading for flight enthusiast, simple yet complete; not so good for aviators or flight ground school. Only drawback: the cd is very poor, since its contents are little more than the book figures. A short index of turbine airplanes could be more up-to-date and more detailed.

Very informative book, a must have for any pilot transitioning from pistons to turbines. Each chapter gives precise details of what the airlines would ask you about systems etc...

If your looking for a good way to learn about turbines and advanced flight principles, this is the book!! It covers things ranging from a turbofan engine to pneumatic systems to flight controls to FMS systems! Great book to be pre-studying for that airline spot!

This book is a quick way to get up to speed on C# 2.0. Highly recommended for developers new to 2.0. My only complaint is that it neglected to mention the new SqlBulkCopy class, an important addition to ADO.Net.

I've had this book for almost two years now, and I consider it (along with Liberty's classic "Programming C#" [I have both first and second editions]) one of the most useful books for helping me move from "beginner level" C# to "journeyman" mastery of what has become my favorite language and daily working tool of choice.

Liberty's books join with my books by Sells, Petzold, Gunnerson, Archer on that small shelf ... within arms reach ... which I consider essential tools to have as I work in Visual Studio.

What I find unique about "A Developer's Notebook" is :

1. Content : the sheer amount of immediately useful information and code samples. This is a book, imho, for people who've already reached initial mastery of .NET, and are ready for intermediate-advanced topics. There's more technical content, more information, "per square page" in this book than in many books on .NET and C# that are 800+ page "whoppers" :) And I do have the sense that every bit of code in this book has been "refined" to the efficient minimum without losing its "educational punch."

2. Book Design : imho the design and structure of the book are a "tour de force" of technical book design : it's in the form ... almost ... of a laboratory workbook; the "asides," or comments, in italic script font in the margin of the pages add a very useful commentary that evokes and provokes thought.

3. Immediacy : I get the feeling that Jesse is right there talking to me as he takes me through the intricacies of IEnumerable, Generic Interfaces, Delegate Covariance. Very good terse introductions to technologies like ClickOnce.

4. Technical Format : the book has a format of presenting a concept concisely, outlining the structure of the classes or methods involved, describing a practical usage scenario, and then, in a section titled "How Can I Do That ?," presenting a key code example that demonstrates the technique in use. I find this similar to what I perceive as the "experimental" method in Petzold's books, and, for me, this is a compelling way to learn.

4. Writing Style : As in JL's other books, I personally experience him as one of the clearest writers of technical expository prose I have ever read. In sections typically titled "What About," or "How Can I Learn More," for each major topic, he succinctly addresses questions that imho any intelligent developer might be asking about the limits or side-effects ... or the "gotchas" ... of the techniques presented.

I like to compare learning a programming language with learning a musical instrument. It seems to me that initial mastery of C#, like learning to play the guitar, involves a required period of just learning the general way you use the tools (the Visual Studio environment, the .NET compiler, assemblies, WinForms, Classes, Interfaces, UserControls) : until you have that initial "vocabulary," imho, you can't really "play a tune." But once you do have the initial comfort level and mastery of the tools, you are ready to start with studying simple "Etudes" which are designed to be musically satisfying in themeselves and, at the same time, help you progress in mastery. Using that analogy, I consider "A Developer's Notebook" a book of "Etudes," an excellent one !

In summary : this is one of the best technical books I've ever read. I do hope that at some point JL will do another book in this format, and structure, probing, in the same "experimental method" other topics in .NET 3.0 and 3.5 like LINQ, sophisticated uses of AppDomains and Contexts, the ability in WPF to get WinForms controls across domains, etc.

best, Bill Woodruff
dotScience

I purchased this book to get prepped for 2.0 development. As usual , Jesse delivered with additional benifits. He is a great, clear speaking, author. I needed the facts and he delivered.

Well worth owning for those of you transitioning from 1.1 to 2.0.

This is a very good "delta" book for moving to 2.0. It doesn't spend a lot of time with "object oriented programming began in 19..."-type gibberish. Instead it moves directly to some of the new features and talks to you like you know what your talking about.

Easy read.

However, the introduction says something to the effect of "this series skips the 'hello world' applications and is instead the often frantic scribblings of real developers performing real tasks" or something like that. In reality, none of the examples was terribly realistic. It was the same type of examples and 'hello world' demonstrations you would find in any other book. And the "scribblings" in the margins were often just pullouts from the text--just like any other book.

Overall - good book. But the marketing hype for the series is just that--hype.

I just borrowed this book from the library as I'm trying to cut down and only buy true reference books. I didn't have a whole lot of expectations, but this book was exactly what the doctor ordered. I knew C# for VS.NET 1.1 and am gradually migrating to 2.0 and all of it's extra features. I just wanted a book that covered the new stuff... and could come as close to just injecting the information into my brain without all of the extra fluff. This book does exactly that. If you're new to .NET don't get this book... but if you're looking for an incremental upgrade book (as I was) that is concise, full of examples, and covers the whole spectrum of VS.NET 2.0 then this is IT! That said, the title is just a bit misleading... the first chapter is about the new C# keywords and constructs, but this book covers changes with Forms, ASP.NET (Themes, Master Pages, ...) and so forth. This books has been hard to put down and I'm seriously considering buying this one to add to my reference collection. I've learned a lot from it in just the past 24 hours.

Incredibly helpful practical techniques. Don't even need to read the book, just watch the videos and you're good to go.

I am sure if you are a Google fan you now know that they offer SketchUp for free. Dr. Fukai's book assumed you had a limited amount of time (480 minutes) using the SketchUp 4.0 trial version included with his book. I can say that his book is truly one fantastic way to learn a lot about the details of modeling with SketchUp. Dr. Fukai's interactive "shorties" allows you to go over as often as needed to learn the details of this 3D software. I was having some difficulty part way through the tutorials and emailed Dr. Fukai and received detailed instructions on how to proceed. He is an excellent teacher and his book is highly recommended.

When the book/CD came I had problems getting the CD to work Didn't know if it was me or the CD or my PC. I contacted Mr.Fukai and he e-mailed me back immediatly. He stayed with me through a dozen Emails trying to help me.
The CD was bad BTW and he had his wife send me out a new one that worked just fine.
I was a bit exhausted from it all by the time the CD came but stuff happens to the best of us.
The CD is incredably helpful along with the book of illustrations. I haven't gotten through even half of it due to my work load but I'm sure when I continue with it I won't have much trouble in spite of being PC challenged.
Mr.Fukai I think has this book geared for people like myself as well as hard core PC users.
He seems to be doing his best to take you through it one step at a time slowly and deliberate.
I highly recommend this book/CD

Yes, you can still learn of lot from this book, as noted in the other reviews. But it is now showing its age. This book was written for Sketchup 4.0 when only a time-limited trial was available for free. Sketchup is now at version 6.0 and free from Google (except for the pro version). The advice in this book on how to squeeze a tutorial session into a time-limited trial is just distracting. More importantly, you will not be introduced to the new features in 6.0, such as styles and better organization of model structure. It would be very useful to have Dennis Fukai's advice on how best to use Sketchup 6.0.

The book is awsome! The instructions are so detailed and outlined. I plan on building my own family home, this is the Book!

As for the author, a master of his craft!

Mr. Fukai and Mrs. Babara Fukai, You have both left a wonderful lasting memory in my mind!

Thanks You

Michael in San Antonio Texas

It's been a good reference so far and will definitely help with real cases when I'm finally out of school.

I'm a veterinary medicine student & I found this book very useful! it's worth buying it!

If you are a veterinarian and don't have this book, get it! Great client education handouts on cd included.

This book is awesome! Does not go indepth, but has ALL the pertinent information related to specific diseases/clinical signs (definitions, Physiology, symptoms, lab work, treatment, follow up care)all on one page! A VERY useful book so far, especially from a tech's point of view!

Just replaced my 3rd edition, the 4th addition is a bit better has some new information, doseages for new drugs and a CD with Client education handouts.