Programming Books

This book, published in 1997, is a real beauty. In May 2000 as I installed Exchange 2000 I needed to trouble-shoot SMTP at a low level. Chapter 2 with its instructions on how to roll your own SMTP session using nothing but telnet helped me find an access problem that had eluded me for days.

Understanding DNS was also a snap with this book. Banging around with ping still is an essential check on installation integrity when setting up servers and workstations. The common, low-level utilities, including system sniffers and logs, are nicely explained throughout the book.

The book is only 234 pages and many of the details on Exchange 4.0/5.0 will not be of interest for much longer. However, the essentials of Internet SMTP mail are covered so clearly that this book is one that I will retain in my library for a long time.

The book is lots of fun for those who like to hack away from the DOS prompt (and a bit beyond). However, if you think "ping" is something that goes with "pong," you can skip this one.

This book is concise, engaging, and informative. The author is clearly above par in his ability to define what is going on in the back ground of Exchange without boring you to death. And if your not familiar with the internals of POP3 and SMTP messenging, theres some interesting hands on with Telnet. A MUST HAVE BOOK for anyone starting to learn Exchange.

This book is a refreshing change from the 700 page "cover-it-all" titles. It's right to the point with plenty of background info about SMTP, POP3 and DNS issues as they relate to IMS. Current coverage of Exchange 5 and good diagrams. Reccomended as a great supplement to a generic Exchange book

Outstanding book covering SMTP mail and the Exchange Internet Mail Service/Connector. If I could only have two books on Exchange this would be one of them. Great explanation of SMTP and how to configure IMS.

Even though this book covers mainly exchange 4.0 the information here is wholly appropriate for exchange 5.5.

The book covers smtp, and pop3 and using internet mail with exchange using indepth material.

This book is excellent and also makes a good ongoing reference as well.

You can email me at expat.muller@t-online.de

cheers

The built-in vfp report writer, is with no question a powerful tool, but when it comes to end-user report customization, MS Excel is still the report writing tool of choice. This is a great book for those starting to get acquainted with office automation specially for those who wanted to make use MS Excel as the report writer via VFP. The accompanying ebook makes it a lot better...

After 28+ years in this business I have finally stumbled upon an author who knows how to write technical books. This one should be a "how to write" example for other alleged authors.

The book, is clear, concise, and well designed. No assumptions are made; yet it is structured in a manner that one can easily skip over items of familiarity. It is an ideal book in that it spans the needs of users at all levels of expertise and is loaded with real "meat and potatoes" practicality and minimal blue sky theory. No matter what your level of expertise (or the lack of it), you can be creating quality applications within the first hour!

My hat is off to these writers and editors!

This may be one of the best 'how-to' development books on the planet.

Generating complex Office output from any development language (be it VFP, VB, etc.) can be a daunting task. The first time you try it on your own, invariably you hit a wall and think to yourself, 'how do I do this, how do I get around that, etc.'

Tamar and Della do an incredible job of covering the details. I recently finished a project where I had to generate some of the most complicated formats in MS Word that I've ever seen. (Anyone who is 'new' to Fox should also check out Tamar's "Hacker's Guide to VFP", another strong title).

99% of the time, if I did a search through the PDF version of the book, I came across a meaningful code sample that helped me out...or at least pointed me in the right direction. This book could have sold for three times the price and I'd still feel the same way about it.

Even 5 stars doesn't do this book the proper justice. It has an almost endless supply of tips and techniques. The examples cover so much of Office Automation that the book is a 'de facto' reference manual as well. I've been in the business since 1988, and average about 8-10 book purchases a year. Along with Allen Holub's compiler books and Ken Henderson's 'Guru Guide to SQL Server', I'd rate this as one of the best technical 'how-to' books I've ever seen.

I wish someone would write a good .NET applications book along the lines of this book. The difference between a valuable reference book like this one, and a good % of the junk that's been published on .NET, can only be measured in conceptual light years.

Prior to this book, I had been dreading my foray into automation. Literally, within minutes of opening the book, I was automating Excel. And within a couple of hours, I had already built my first automation component for an application. These guys make it so easy!

Every book and article I have ever read by Granor and Martin has been superb, and this book is no exception.

A good book for combine two powerfuls application like vfp and office

COM is built on top of RPC. This book is a bit dated, but still a good guide for learning the technology that COM is based on. COM will make much more sense if you take a little time to learn RPC first.

using a microsoft rpc interfac

using a microsoft rpoc interfac

rpc programmin

The authors take the reader from the very first steps to rather complex applications of Remote Procedure Calls. Along the way, they explain how RPC works, and why it is one of the better tools for implementing true client/server systems.

Despite a very few factual errors (the page on memory allocation using RpcSs contains one) and despite a too-short description of when to use which memory allocator, I rate this book at nine out of ten. For a perfect ten, the authors will have to include material on secure, authenticated, RPC, too.

If you do serious DCE or MS RPC programming, or if you are trying to learn the ropes: Try to find a copy. And no, mine is not for sale. ;-)

Its a must have book

This book builds on a basic understanding of SQL Server, showing real-world scenarios and advice on what to look for to make database application perform optimally.

I've read at least a half dozen books on MSC Sql/Server at this point, and this was by far the most useful. It's both a good guide to general DB development practices and a tutorial on SQL/Server. This book and the MSC manuals is enough to get someone started on SQL/Server. I took the time to write this review in the hopes of saving someone else all the effort I expended buying and reading the useless books.

This is, by far, on of the most usefull books on Microsoft SQL Server I have seen. It covers important information about optimizing queries, indexes and the database itself. A must read for SQL developers and administrators.

Really covers SQL tunning well. Gets a little too much into general DBA stuff in the end. I would recommend the Ken England book over this one, simply because it is more concise.

This book is a compilation of various functions and commands available to the VisualBasic 5 environment. It provides examples and supplimental information to help users with different levels of expertise.

Recommended if you want to really program in VB 5.0.

I found this book to be helpful with my everyday programming. This book contains example code for every command in it. This bok also gives you the correct arguments for each command. I find this book to be one of my best developement tools in my arsenal. I recommend this book strongly to anyone looking to do serious VB programming.

This reference book is a mirror image of the online help, but a lot more convenient. It contains pretty much all you need to know...and unlike the majority of tutorial books out there, the example code actually works.

How can you not love the VB5 Language Reference.

I teach VB for a living, and I tell my students to re-read this Reference guide every 3 months---there's always something new that you'll see in it.

Others will tell you that this information is provided with Books Online (and it is), but I prefer the printed version.

Though you can get the exact same information online, I find that sometimes it's just better to have the hard copy in front of me. The book does a good job of not only showing the syntax, but what arguments to use and situations where the item applies. It's proven to be very, very useful and people would do well to pick this up if they prefer to use hard copy as I do.

Derivatives are not simple things. It almost seems that complexity was a design goal when they were being set up. In order to determine their real value either today or in the future you almost have to model them on a computer.

This book covers dozens of different types of derivatives, including the common ones and some of the new even more esoteric ones. It talks about the structure of the derivative, and then presents models of them. The models are presented in the most common modelling 'languages' in use today. There is a lot of code involved, but there is not a CD included with the book. Instead, an access code providing a one time download for the code. Note, a one time download. Be sure and save the code quickly and on several media. This procedure allows the models to be updated as needed without regard to the time it takes for the book to move from being written to being published, but if you have a disk crash....

The biggest things this book provides are: first, you get to see what an expert in the field has done, and second, you get the code to run his models on your system, and of course you can modify them if you find some other aspect suits your needs better.

This is a new book, first printed in December 2006, so it is current with the derivatives being marketing at that time.

I highlight two points:

1. The inclusion of Matlab and Excel code in almost all topics of the book.
2. All the content is new and more advanced, there is no recovered topics of his previous book.

This book offers prebuilt, modifiable code that you can use for energy, power, weather and many other derivatives applications. The download process is fast and easy. For those who use Matlab, C++, or Excel, there is no competition. A great book with unique content and code.

This book was my ultimate go-to resource on several financial engineering projects (on the buy side). It covers many different derivatives and provides example MatLab and C++ code that is easy to modify and extend.

The instructions for setup and downloading the code could be more clear, perhaps on a CD.

Great book. But the code downloading process is a bit weird. Don't know why they just attach a CD.

Not a beginner's book: The technologies presented are relevant to (gasp) some real life problems. The treatment of Distributed Constraint Satisfaction problems was well written and usable. The initial treatment of all subjects was broad, delving into details after laying a sound foundation. Assumes a bit of mathematical sophistication on the part of the reader, but on the whole, well written, well organized and well worth it.

I have been using this book probably for an year now, and this has become indispensable to my work. The collection of authors in this book reads as an 'who's who' in multiagent systems and distributed AI research. Although, its' difficult to maintain continuity in edited books, the editor has done an commendable job. The authors provide a readable introduction to their area of expertise, and supplement them with an excellent bibliography...enough to get u started fast.

Thogh edited the book looks like a single authored text. The definitions are clearly presented with illustrations. The presentation is highly comprehensive. The book is thus highly readable with minimum effort. I liked the chapters on distributed problem solving and planning (Chapter 3),Learning in multiagent systems (chapter 6), Formal methods in DAI: Logic based representation and reasoning (chapter 8)and Groupware and computer supported cooperative work (chapter 10) very much.Readers of diverse interest in distributed artificial intelligence will find the other chapters equally interesting and useful.The book should be on the desk of anyone interested to learn the concepts of multiagent systems and technology.

While perhaps this should not be your first book in AI, it should definitely be your first book on agents. It took me years to accumulate the knowledge present in this book, and it's a great survey of the field for the beginning investigator. However, while this is a great way to get started in agents, understand how agents can be used in intelligent applications (from distributed AI type problem solving, to resource optimization problems), and "get the agent paradigm," coverage of agent software engineering techniques is light. This is not a fault of this book - you will simply need other resources to understand the difficulties and current research in engineering multi agent systems (or indeed any concurrent distributed system). So if you are trying to figure out what to do with agents, or how agent systems work, this is the book for you. If you already know that and want help with formal specification of an agent, verifying your agents meet the specifications, etc. this is not the book for you. Understand that to build systems you will need both!

This is one out of very few books that exist on multiagent systems and distributed artificial intelligence which won't take for granted the reader. It has really taken me from elementary concepts up to industrial applications, passing over the actual "nitty gritty" of programming an agent. Many papers on artificial intelligence are just too mathematical for many readers, and those which have any application would describe what the program does, but only sometimes you get into knowing *how* the program does the trick. I personally would say the book is a "must-have-it", not only for those seeking to understand in concrete distributed artificial intelligence or multiagent systems, but also for any mathematician, physicists, computer scientists and engineer whose background touches somehow the concepts of artificial intelligence as a whole. Come to think of it, even any cunning philosopher of science could take real advantage of this book. Now then, concerning those industries which would like to have this book on their shelves, they would have to take in mind that this book is a departure point. A good one, but nevertheless only the start for deepening towards a concrete application the industry would have in mind.

Murach's C# 2008 is a good book on C#, but it is not great. Too many areas are either lightly covered or not covered at all. To be fair if he had included the coverage it would have been a much bigger book, but Dietel does it and I would expect Murach to have been more complete. For example, in many coverages of methods of objects avalable in the .Net Framework the coverage is incomplete. If your going to cover a subject, cover it completely, either in the book or via a reference to a web page. I think the solution when providing the type of coverage displayed in this book is to have a web site that completes the coverage on each subject. That way the book doesn't weigh thirty pounds and the customer gets the needed complete information on a subject.

Learning a new programming language can prove to be highly difficult for many people, and "Murach's C# 2008" is a complete and comprehensive guide to help readers learn everything they need to know to learn how to use it, and then learn to use it to the maximum of its abilities as if they were a college graduated professional who had worked with the program for years. Leaving nothing out, "Murach's C# 2008" is highly recommended to anyone with interest in the language and for community library computer collections.

If you are new to C# this is the book from which to learn C# 2008. It is written in a clear understandable manner and can be used with Visual C# 2008 Express Edition. The exercises used in tne book are a great help in the learning process.

"Murach's C# 2008" follows the Murach style where there are two books in one. The even numbered pages contain text. The odd numbered pages contain related diagrams, tables and bulleted lists.

The book targets beginners to experienced developers in Java/C++/VB/.NET along with being useful for training and reference. I'm a little skeptical when a book tries to be all things to all people, but the author does a great job with this. The "paired page" format really helps with this because you can read the most appropriate one (or both) for you at the time. I'm a Java developer. While I was able to skim some sections, I was never bored.

I particularly liked the focus on idioms and skills. There were a lot of "how to do ________" examples along with techniques such as refactoring. The end of chapter exercises were also great.

The book also walks you through features in Visual Studio 08. I like how the author highlights differences between the professional and express editions. The chapter on using the debugger was excellent.

There were only two minor things I didn't like. First, there was one significant difference from Java that was in the text section and I almost missed it skimming. The other was that sometimes the text would continue after turning the page which made it harder to follow the paired pages. I'm impressed that these are the worst things I can write. I recommend the format.

This book is an updated edition of Murach's C# 2005. Section 1 covers the basics of using the Visual Studio IDE and the .NET framework. Section 2 and 3 continue using the "paired pages" format: How-to on the left page and examples on the right. This style contributes to the effectivness of the learning process. The basic skills of learning LINQ which is a new feature of C# 2008 are presented.

This is a great book on C# for begineers through intermediate developers.
You will learn by reading this book.

"My Hero" is an insightful, satisfying book - a pager-turner of thought and reflection. I had my favorite stories and I'd say there is something here for everyone. They run the gamut of human experience and are held together by the weaving of inspiration, deep wisdom and hope. We are an intelligent species. We do our greatest work when passionately creating and laboring over what we love best. But what makes us truly remarkable (and this is what "My Hero" reminds us over and over again) is when we never lose sight of those other human beings among us who are in need, and we do that angelic thing we do by acting on it.

Also available in an MP3 format (1400151988, $19.99), My Hero is an unabridged audiobook compilation of essays by genuine American heroes co-read by veteran narrators Alan Sklar and Ellen Archer. Sponsored by the nonprofit My Hero Project, whose mission is to inspire the hero in us all, My Hero includes the writings of celebrities, athletes, and public figures such as Michael J. Fox, Dana Reeve, Senator John McCain, Mayor Rudy Giuliani, astronaut John Glen, baseball great Yogi Berra, and many more. A singularly inspirational and motivational testimony to human greatness. 5 CDs, running time 5 1/2 hours.

This book is wonderful because it gives you courage. It speaks of Heros, and defines Heroic Acts. All of the People in this book have been committed to producing great services for people. MY favorites were Colonel Jack Jacobs,Senator John Glenn, Sue Bird,and Dr. Bernard Lown. Each talked about their successes and their disappointments. This book speaks from the heart. It promotes living a quality life full of meaning and discipline. All of the people in the book were extremely disciplined. It was the reason they were able to accomplish so much. I think this is a book that the whole family can enjoy. I could imagine a family sitting down to read this book together.
It simply inspires and shows how dreams do come true. I highly recommend this book.

The My Hero book is a spirit lifter that highlights the importance of
recognizing and commemorating those people who inspire us and who add
fuel to our creativity so that we may achieve great things. The intro by Karen Pritzker and forward by Magic Johnson provide a great back drop to this
collection of hero stories. I really enjoyed reading the essays written by Muhammad Ali,Frank O. Gehry , Rob Warden, Kathy Eldon,Erin Gruwell, Senator John Glenn, Senator John McCain and Elie Wiesel. We all learn from example, and people who accomplish amazing feats all have heroes or inspiring individuals whose ideas or actions made those accomplishments possible. This book enticed me to identify my heroes and as a result I came a way with a positively warm feeling of
thankfulness.

I highly recommend this book for a holiday gift to those you admire
and as a gift to some of the people you know that might be searching for
some inspiration of their own.

I have two books to recommend to readers if they are looking for books that focus on finding Inspiration. One is Michele Geraldi's Calling in the Night, and the other is Karen Pritzker's My Hero. These books show the importance of finding inspiration and applying it to your everyday life. My Hero is a vast collection of inspirational stories, written by some of the most influential people in the world, during some of the most controversial and trying times the world has ever seen. It does not try to be inspiring, so much as it focuses on the importance of a person finding something in his/her life to be inspired by. There is a big difference there. I found the stories uplifting, and I came from the book knowing that My Hero is a good read and a good tool that teaches a person to always keep his/her eyes open for the one little thing that might move the spirit to become better, and then hopefully, eventually move the spirit's of other people as well.

If you are looking for good introduction.
This book is your best choice.
Very consistent, without any "poetry" (like in last Richter's book).
Mr.Tapadiya's two book about COM+ and .NET must have any Windows developer.

This book isn't as code oriented as Ferguson or Troelsen's text on c#, but seems to deal more with concepts and common trouble points with the language and environment. Much like Tapadiya's last book, it is well thought out and demonstrates a good insight in the subject matter. A good read.

This book is a treasure trove of .Net information. It is underrated and not seen often in bookstores. This book complements Richter's book on .Net Framework programming and is a boon for any C#/.NETer.

A concise, no-nonsense book. All topics are cut to the chase. This book is for C++ and Java pros who want to master C# in the shortest time possible. I also have 3 other C# books. Only this one calms me down and gives me the joy of reading while learning. However, for people who is new to programming, I recommend "Learn to Program with C#" by John Smiley. My 3rd book, "C# in a Nutshell" is a good choice for reference. My 4th one, "Introduction to C# Using .Net" is good too, but the topics covered are not as broad as this one.

For donwloading this book's sample code, it points to www.phptr.com/tapadiya/dotnet/, which no longer works. Instead, go http://www.tapadiya.net/pradeep/ComPlusBook.htm#CodeSamples, a link I finally found after 10 minutes of Google search.

I liked this book. It starts with very basic things about .NET (what .NET is and what it's for, tools, basics of C#, etc.) and takes you to advanced topics. My employer wanted to move our development to .NET platform, and with this book alone, I was able to master .NET enough to get to a pretty advanced level quite fast.

When a new topic is covered, the author provides an introduction to the problem. It often helps to get the right perspective on what you study. It's very far from being a dry reference book. I found it to be written in an easy to understand the language, detailed enough and not too wordy, and to explain things in a practical way. I like Tapadiya's style, in general. I liked his other book (about COM programming) too. I enjoyed reading it.

The book is not for those who are looking for a general programming tutorial. I think it requires some experience in software creation, although maybe not a whole lot.