Internet Access Books

This book provides a comprehensive understanding and explanations of a lot of terms that you may not come up with any idea before you are taking this book with you. From the beginning level of entry, this book could be easily understood by student, or even professionals. It explores you the general view of internet security for business applications and how could mangerial mangement should take any serious approaches on it.

Although I'm not new to Internet Security, this book was helpful, and bring me clear explanations about the most important aspects of Internet Security. This book is not about technology, but a book to understand Internet Security to be able to manage it.

This is an excellent overview of Internet security. This book goes beyond just the latest technology and gives you the background for creating a complete Internet security policy.

It is nice to have all these RFCs(request for comments) in one book to help those who implement not to overlook some aspects of the implementation like say how to store a Java object in ldap directory service hopefully using JNDI and also how to find if your choice of ldap solution is 100% pure ldap. Not to mention understanding the real security of the ldap offered to systems, users and applications. What is the real Enterprise solution. I hoped this protocol has another friendly name like FarLook or WithinLook or even Enterprise Superman. Do not forget to consider the add-on ldap based applications, there are 30+ security apps. Good luck. ldapguru@yahoo.com

...can sometimes be a difficult task. Fortunately, the complier(s) of this big book of RFCs have done a great job at presenting the standards, in a single volume so when you are bored on a 6 hour flight, you can catch up on RFC 1617 and pour over the alias object class, or choose another and investigate what that cryptic attribute was *really* created to do, software vendors be damned :)

Overall, I think this is a great reference to have if you are an LDAP architect, developer or implementor, although not for the average person who is just looking at getting some knowledge of LDAP on the surface... Exactly what was needed!

My grandkids have all been after me to get a faster Internet connection. I'd been resisting because I thought I could never understand it. After reading this book, I was able to get myself hooked up with DSL with hardly any trouble at all. Now I'm able to see my grandchildren across the country every day via video conferencing! I owe it all to this book.

As a novice broadband customer, I found this book to be easily understood and helpful. It provided practical information that my cable modem company was not forthcoming about as well as some good suggestions for how to make use of the extra speed of a cable modem. As with all Dummies books, it was zippy and tried to be funny, but a little more information would have been helpful in spots.

My background -- I'm a senior software engineer, but haven't done much "web-work".

I'm in the planning stages of a large commercial website that will be mostly data-driven so I'm "consuming" as many [good] books related to this subject as I can.

I've found this book to be helpful. It contains many good tips, and a good overview of the different technologies that might be used to build a data-driven website -- along with the hows, whys, advantages, and disadvantages of each technology.

It's perfect for someone trying to design a data-driven site, or add (or improve) database capabilities to an existing site. This book probably isn't the ONLY book you'll need to put together a full-blown data-driven site -- but it'll get you headed down the right path, and you'll come out of the book with a good idea of what other (more specific) books you need (and don't need).

The one negative for me with this book is the number of typographical and grammatical errors that exist throughout the book. This type of thing is quite distracting to me -- and I have to say the number of errors of this nature far exceed that of any other technical book I've bought from a bookstore.

Fortunately, the technical content seems pretty sound.

The best advice I can give the author for "next time" is to find a good editor (if you had an editor last time, get a different one). Having been an author myself, I know the value of a top-notch post-draft review process.

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This is a good collection of relevant articles on the subject. However, most of the dozen or so chapters are publicly available on the web. Go to a library, write down the URLs from the footnotes and own the content for free.

Read this if you want to be up to date on internet censoring, filtering, etc.... MUST READ for those concrened with the RBL.

Good real experience as topic are treated, very good explanation of fine tuning and fine understanding of ISA in dept.
Advisable for purchase

For those who who have used the Shinder's prior ISA Server books and want a concise presentation.

It's hard to imagine a system today that isn't connected to the outside world. And with this connection comes (at no extra charge) a way for the bad guys to get access to your data. And unlike our normal custure, there are few (if any) cops out there to do battle with the bad guys.

Unfortunately that leaves the security of your system up to you. And to help you, all kinds of products have emerged to protect your system from undesired penetration from the bad guys, be they from across the globe, or down the hall.

This book gives an overview of the whole problem from a very good description of the threats, to the general rules that any IPS system has to have. As it was written by a couple of Cisco folk, this book tends to follow Cisco concepts in software, hardware, and usage. This isn't all bad because Cisco has a good set of products in this area, arguably the most complete and best integrated together set of tools available. And if you're not using Cisco, this book will still be of use as you'll know what to look for in comparing your equipment with that from Cisco.

The book is clearly written, does not assume previous knowledge. If you need a place to start, this is a fine place to start. However, the content is very dated. Charts end at 2003, examples include Nimda, the land attack, slammer. Please don't get me wrong, those are all oldies, but goodies and each teaches an important lesson, but it would be nice to see something from 2005/2006. More effort should have been invested in a discussion on "zero day" attacks, the authors mention attacks may occur that have not been seen in the wild, but do not offer stategies for this. Since "zero day" attacks are not uncommon these days, the issue must be considered and addressed.

The last one third of the book includes the Cisco specifics, e.g. Cisco Security Agent, Policy Feature Card, etc that you expect to see in a Ciscopress book. I enjoyed this part of the book immensely. If you are a manager of a Cisco shop and want to know that you have implemented defense in depth well, this is a great discussion. If you are considering the Cisco product line, this will be truly helpful for you, the authors don't sell, but they lay out how to implement a number of the Cisco security tools in a clear, concise, complete and accurate manner.

This book is good, but it contains too much information. The book is overkill on Access VBA. More information than anyone can handle. The code examples can be too long. You can learn, but you have to stay awake and remain alert. If not you will fall asleep. I don't recommend it to beginners at all. For all beginners out there, stay clear of this book. If you don't you might end up hating Access VBA. I thought the book could have been written a lot shorter. I recommend this book to experienced users who want to read a few pages a day.

It seemed they assumed more than the beginner knows. Their explanations on why the code works did not provide a clear enough explanation for me to understand what is going on and left gaps that I am still stuggling to fill. Also: it would have been nice to better explain how you decide what variables are required and how you decide the syntax of the commands. All in all, the books starts out ok but then leaves the beginner in the dust as it continues. I would recommend the Step by Step book over this one.

There does not seem to be a good book on VBA written, but this book is the best of a bad lot. If you have no programming or computer science background at all, then this book would be considered an intermediate text and you may wish to try one of the SAMS learning series books instead. However, if you have any background in programming, this book will help you acquire the nuances of using Visual Basic with Access.

The book takes a very practical approach of walking the reader through the various elements of how a VBA application is structured and developed. The chapters are: Designing Applications, Events, Creating Code, Flow Control, Objects, Recordsets, External Data, Reports, Advanced Techniques, Error Handling, Class Modules, Optimization, Libraries, OLE, Internet interfaces and miscellaneous notes. Using a consistent sample application, the reader is walked through each step in the construction of a VBA application.

I find that the use of single demo, which builds upon itself, to be much more effective that snippets of code and incomplete/unrelated examples. With little effort, many of the techniques in the sample code may be modified to fit your own needs.

Overall, the book is a good text as well as reference for sample code. It is not organized as a reference text (use the online help instead). As a systems integration professional, I have purchased this book for more than one of my junior programmers in order to get them started.

It seemed they assumed more than the begginer knows. Their explanations on why the code works did not provide a clear enough explanation for me to understand what is going on and left gaps that I am still stuggling to fill. Also: it would have been nice to better explain how you decide what variables are required and how you decide the syntax of the commands. All in all, the books starts out ok but then leaves the beginner in the dust as it continues. I would recommend the Step by Step book over this one.

I'm a hobbiest programmer and recently purchased this book to start to work on databases. With little previous experience of VBA I have managed to now create quite sophisticated databases that pass information to other MS Office applications. I thought the chapters were very well written, and provide the depth of information that I needed. I would say this is an ideal book for anyone wishing to get a toe hold in this area of technology and a must buy for any serious would be programmer.

I have over 5 years of JavaEE development experience, mostly with Struts/EJB2 apps and more recently with JSF/Seam/EJB3 apps.

There is a lot of useful information in this book. This book covers a very interesting and complex topic (using Object/Relational Mapping in your persistence tier) but the book needs a lot of help. It is one of the most confusing Java books I've read and would only recommend you use it if your employer pays for it (i.e. don't buy it yourself!) Hopefully, ORM books like these will become obsolete when OODBMS takes a firm grip one day in corporate enterprise environments. But until then, we're stuck with solutions like JPA and Hibernate.

If you're writing a JSF/EJB3 application, you'll most likely use JPA 90% of the time and Hibernate for the remaining 10% that is not supported by the JPA spec (e.g. Criteria API, soon to be supported in JPA 2.0) Remember that if you ever need to port your application to another persistence provider and/or runtime environment, using the standard JPA interfaces only is an advantage over using JPA and Hibernate or TopLink API in your code.

So if you're working on a Seam application, for example, which uses JSF and EJB3, then you'll be more interested in learning about and using JPA. If you're working on a Spring/Hibernate application, then you'll be more interested in the Hibernate-specific information in this book.

Unfortunately, it's difficult to filter out the information you're interested in because the JPA and Hibernate examples are typically juxtaposed and this is extremely confusing, especially when you first begin to read this book. Often times, the authors go back and forth between Hibernate and Java Persistence in the same section, making it difficult to follow (see examples below).

For the following reasons, I am giving this book a poor review mark:

incoherent presentation of topics and explanations (e.g. section 8.2.2: integrating stored procs does not state if it's using JPA- or Hibernate-specific API or configuration in the beginning of the section and whether or not JPA even supports stored proc integration)
another example of confusion: in section 2.2.1: Using Hibernate Annotations, the authors state "let's first use Hibernate Annotations to replace the Hibernate XML mapping files." Then in the code list 2.10 we see the following import statement: "import javax.persistence.*". Are these the same as Hibernate Annotations? Perhaps similar, but if you download Hibernate Annotations 3.4.0.GA, you'll see that the @Table and @Entity interfaces are both in the org.hibernate.annotations package, not javax.persistence package. Very confusing to the reader.
sections 2.1 and 2.2 cover starting a Hibernate project and Java Persistence project, respectively. The coverage keeps switching back and forth from Hibernate and Java Persistence and it's very diffcult to read and follow.
Generally speaking, the book is too long and too heavy. It should have been released in two volumes.
Although well-written and consise, the Seam chapter is unnecessary and makes the book even longer.

cursory coverage of Hibernate 2nd level cache and whether or not the cache is available in JPA (added Cache interface in JPA 2.0)
CaveatEmptor Seam application is not available book website


Better alternatives:

Pro EJB 3: Java Persistence API by Mike Keith (uses Toplink Essentials RI persistence provider examples instead of Hibernate)
Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0 by Bill Burke (covers JPA)
POJOs in Action by Chris Richardson (covers JPA and Hibernate)
Hibernate in Action by Bauer and King
JSR-000220 Enterprise JavaBeans 3.0 Final Release (persistence)
Hibernate Forums online
Hibernate Reference Documentation online
JBoss Developer Support subscription

On a bright note, the index in this book is decent and helpful for reference purposes.

I have finally found a great resource on persistence. This book allows you find enough detail quickly to get going and enough in-depth knowledge and understanding to keep you coming back. A must own.

Hibernate in Action is a great book that I go back to again and again. It was very well written for a technical book.

Java Persistence with Hibernate is disappointing. The first half adds very little to what is available in Hibernate in Action and the second part is half-baked. The authors should have waited for the specs to gel and written a book purely on implementing JPA with Hibernate. They should have left out the first part of the book and pointed people to Hibernate in Action.

Bigger books are not necessarily better books.

This is a boring book and hard to understand. If you want to learn Hibernate, don't buy it.

Some of the reviews for this book are a little harsh.

This is the most complete book on Hibernate on the market. It covers everything, and I mean everything. From mapping to annotations, to whatever, it's in here.

The book is written by the makers of Hibernate, and you can find an answer to pretty much every question you'll ever have explained in extreme detail, and in a very, very technical way.

The book uses the Caveat Emptor application as a reference. You keep going back to that example, which you can download from the hibernate site. It is a very complete and intricately developed application that is a reference for how to develop enterprise ready applications that could be deployed to pretty much any mission critical environment.

This book is amazing. Some reviewers have tried to use this as a Dummies book or How To book and have been frustrated, and have given this book poor reviews. That's not fair. Imagine trying to learn to swing a baseball (or cricket) bat by taking pitches from a major league pitcher. You wouldn't learn a thing, as every pitch zoomed by you at 100mph. This book is like the big league pitcher, helping you develop and design applications that are ready for the big leagues. When you understand that, you can understand why people who are new to the technology, and looking for very simple and straight forward examples, can get frustrated with this book and give it 1 or 2 stars. Really, those reviews are not fair.

If you are new to hibernate, you should start of with something a like Hibernate Made Easy: Simplified Data Persistence with Hibernate and JPA (Java Persistence API) Annotations. If you are using mapping files, then Hibernate: A Developer's Notebook is the other book you should get.

Overall, this is a five star book written by the people that know Hibernate the most. We're very luck to have a book like this to help guide us through the really, really, really tough stuff.

This is a great book for people who already know that they want to deploy a free open source firewall solution to secure their network. While somewhat dated (e.g. Linux: ipchains and not iptables, OpenBSD: ipf and not pf), the book gives detailed and comprehensive directions for buidling a firewall platform, deploying a firewall and event sheds some light on the security policy development and maintainance such as securing various network services.

The books covers basic security, continues on to choosing the "right OS" (providing an enlightening discussion on Linux vs OpenBSD) and getting the right hardware for the job, and then dives right into building stuff, complete with commands and "cut-and-paste" firewalls rules.

The last part introduces the reader to the basics of intrusion detection and system monitoring, both valuable parts of any firewall setup.

One of the great features of the book is the author's humorous style. I rolled on the floor laughing about "naked penguins" and "hairy sysadmins".

Overall, get the book if you are planning to build the open source firewall solution or even if you believe that security books can be fun to read.

Anton Chuvakin, Ph.D., GCIA ... is a Senior Security Analyst with a major information security company.

This book is VERY well written. It was one of the very best technical books I have ever read. Some of the info is a little dated, but the topics discussed are GREAT history. I personally get tired of security writers dismissing older exploits as they are still being used today. In addition, the majority of the first half of the book is devoted to security background and explanation of the types of major exploits.
This was the first tech book that I have ever read cover to cover. It was that interesting. The authors had a very conversational style that keeps you hooked and entertained.

I HIGHLY recommend it.

This book is awesome. It assumes no prior networking experience and walks you through networking basics as well as basic security issues such as Denial of Service, spoofing, etc. Chapters with complete step-by-step installation instructions for both Linux and OpenBSD Unix are included, so it's very easy for any beginner to build a firewall for their home (or office) network.
Tell people that you've personally built your own firewall using OpenBSD and you'll be guaranteed an approving nod from even the cockiest alpha geek!

As an funny and well-written introduction to firewalls and why they are necessary, as well as a paen to OpenBSD, this book is excellent. As a guide to building one's own using OpenBSD, there are better methods and more up to date instructions on the web. The book's companion website is a mess and has been under construction for months.

Two things are particularly out of date. First, it seems that more effective OpenBSD firewalls are configured as "bridges." This configuration is not mentioned in the book. Second, the book discusses a version of OpenBSD that is several generations old, one that was apparently arranged differently on the distribution CD. Moreover, the key piece of OpenBSD for constructing a firewall, according to instructions in the book, ipf, is apparently going to be removed from future distributions because of licensing problems. (I believe it has already been removed from the lastest OpenBSD distributions on the OpenBSD website but may remain on the 2.9 distribution CD.) Figuring out how to install and configure the latest version of ipfilter will send you on one of those time-consuming webquests. There's no help in the book,

If the website were functional and updated the book, the book's other content (primarily background but useful background), might make this book worthwhile. As things stand now, it is better avoided. (Try a Yahoo! search instead.)

This book is useless to anyone able to use an internet browser. I love the style, but it disguises a useless waste of paper. Two years ago, this would have been a marvelous book. Now you'd be better off flushing your dollars down the tube. If you connect to the internet via DSL, this book won't help. If you connect via a dial-up and want the latest firewall configuration, this book won't help. If you want to know about primitive hacker attacks or where to buy outdated OS CDs, software available in newer versions on the web, this is the book for you. (The book's website, touted on the backcover, in the book, and on the publisher's website, is a stupid mess. It does not contain the information the book says it contains and consists largely of empty pages linked together. Polite questions and requests to get it together go unanswered. Give it a try, and you'll see what I mean.