Software Books

I bought this book as a graphic design student upon a teacher's recommendation and it saved my butt on many a homework project when I needed to figure out how to get something done. I've since gone on to become a professional graphic designer and though I'm up to QuarkXPress 6.5 this book is still valid and has still come in handy for looking up the odd hotkey or some odd paragraph formatting.

The book is clean and concise and very logically ordered. The index in the back makes it very easy to find what you're looking for and if you can't think of the name for something you can find it easily by browsing since the book is so well organized.

Each element is plainly described and accompanied by a picture - don't let the greyscale images fool you, they get directly to the point so you can see exactly how to accomplish something.

I've seen a lot of XPress books out there, many 5-times the thickness of this book but all those other books seem to add superfluous text just to fill pages where this book gets to the point. Of all my books for design and design software, this has by far been my most helpful and most used.

Just what I needed to learn QuarkXPress!

If you're like me, and you'd rather jump into a manual than sit in a classroom, then this Visual Quick-Start is for you. This is the fourth VQS book I've bought and it doesn't disappoint. Actually, I'm a Quark Xpress power user, but needed to train some non-design trained coworkers on basic Quark usage. The simple step-by-step sections are easily digested and build on each other as you progress. Alternately it serves as a great reference is you just want to learn how to do a single task.

I'm a graphic design student and bought this book to aid me with the learning process of Quark. I found the book helpful and easy to read. There are parts that need more work, but it explains how to do things step by step. A beginner can use this book to guide him/her through the process of making a layout and using all the tools available in Quark.

I bought this book as a last resort because my Computer Graphics professor told us we would need lots of tutoring in order to pass with good grades. I was totally "Quark illiterate" before taking this course and buying the book. Honestly, this book explains a lot more than a tedious 3 week course in class could. The book has taken me step-by-step through all the process of learning style-sheets and type-boxes. This is all stuff I would have never been able to learn if not for the book itself.

Elaine Weinmann's very well illustrated and easy to read/follow excersises are what any student needs to reach their goal in QuarkXPress. My copy is different in color to the one sold here, but it looks exactly like the one my professor uses.
And, because the book is not really that thick, it can fit in either a backpack or a briefcase. The only main problem I have with the book itself is the paper-back style. It will fray and dog-ear pretty fast, so take good care of this "Bible for Quark".

And...for those whom are not too sure of their Keyboard shortcuts, thank God, they put them in the back of the book.
At least I don't have to search my binder for my photocopies! That little extra is a Godsend. Especially when you are being tested on the shortcuts.

Get the book. Hope my review helped you.

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

The Book explain the SAP R/3 model in an excellent way. However the book is outdated and need update to reflect the progress made in SAP ERP during the last 10 years. I urge the authors or SAP to update the book with the latest developments.

Abdullah

After you go thru this book, you will find a very clear picture on how SAP works is already in your mind. This book gives your detail explanation, so easy to follow it up. Highly recommend this books!

From almost twenty SAP books that I have read, this book is what I need for large scale implementation. I will not complaint the length of the book. It is guiding what to do as a consultant.

I'm a FI/CO consulant with 6+ years experiences, after reading the book I find there are still some areas and key points that I just ignored or left uncertain in the past, the authors Gerhard Keller and Thomas Teufel present their knowledge and ideas in a very structured and comprehensive way.

Although process mostly keeps the same even with R/3 upgrading, there would still have some big changes between version 3.0 which this book refers to and the version 4.X. And I really hope this book could have second edition and explore more on the MTO process instead of only 30 pages in the last chapter.

This is really the best SAP book I've read!

If you want to understand what SAP's R/3-system really does, this book offers you the best way to get a grip on it. By mapping the system's transactions to the underlying business processes you can easily follow and understand the core functions of the model company. The EPC-methodology provides a perfect framework for describing processes in such a way that the user can understand the different threads as well as the guys who implemented the system. Reading this book I realized for the first time how I can benefit from the use of SAP in my company.

BTW: The book has more than 840 pages, not 448 as mentioned in the book information!

Gary has done an excellent job with this book. I came to Director with a programming background, and basically this book and Gary's Advanced Lingo for Games books have allowed me to do whatever I can imagine with Director. Doesn't treat you like an idiot. Clear. Understandable. Practical. Highly recommended, and I'm going to buy the MX version when it comes out.
David Downie

Great book ! ( I just received my copy of Using Director 8.5 "Specialedition") It is really great for me since I haven't been using Director since version 5, and so much as changed !

I have been browsing through the book to get the missing or forgotten info I need to get our project up, and I have found almost every answer I need in the first 15 minutes !

I am confident this book will get me back up and running in no time, If you want to learn Director Fast, Buy this book !

Great book ! ( I just received my copy of Using Director 8.5 "Specialedition") It is really great for me since I haven't been using Director since version 5, and so much as changed !
I have been browsing through the book to get the missing or forgotten info I need to get our project up, and I have found almost every answer I need in the first 15 minutes !

I am confident this book will get me back up and running in no time, If you want to learn Director Fast, Buy this book !

Weighing in at about one-thousands pages, this book has some of the best information for practical production techniques and getting things done in Director. Having compared it to a half dozen or so other books before purchasing, it was the only one to truly address Lingo in a serious way. There seems to be a hole in the market since a few Lingo specific books that had been available at one time (from O'Reilly and another from the defunct Hayden Press) are either out of date or out of print.

Though its a heavy application, most of director is not that hard to learn (being proficient and artistic is another matter). But taking it to the next level requires an understanding of Lingo and integrating it into the rest of the programs features for practical use. Mr. Rosenzweig has done this, and with great enthusiasm and love of subject. It is an excellent book and the most advanced one that I could find on the shelves last year.

The beginner should take heed that this may be overwhelming, for all others I highly recommend it.

This book is probably the best book you will ever find on how to use Director. I read it without knowing anything about programming and i am pretty advanced now. If you feel that you are a really slow learner and/or you have no experience using a computer, don't try to learn anything about director. If, however, you are a motivated student, Gary Rozensweig will teach you from the ground up about this ultra-powerful program. For 36 dollars, it's almost a must. This book will also be great for advanced director users as a reference. get it quickly. The only drawback of this book is the fact that one of the most important appendices is almost totally missing(publishing error). There is a downloadable version of the appendix on QUE's site (HTML & PDF). Don't let this tiny glitch stop you from owning the best book on director out there!!!

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.

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!

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.

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.

I have never seen such a complete book in Data base. I am hoping to find a good book related to SQL Server like this book.(Anyone can help me?)

Very nicely written. Lot of care has been taken to make things as clear as possible.

The book provides an excellent understanding of Access97. You read and it seems you haven't learned much, yet you can do alot. The split up on each day makes the reading process easy and on a schedule. The book also covers the basics which form the complete advanced sections of Access97. Finally, the book covers the program well and allows the reader to know what has to be done and then has the option to use help to figure how to do it.

If you really are new to Access, look no further for a book to aid you.. Paul Cassel teaches the way you want to be taught, by example. The best $23.00 I could have spent to learn something.

If you want to learn how to use Access 97 this is a great way to begin. You can work your way through the book at your own pace. Each "day" teaches a new concept. When you are done, you will have a good basic understanding of how to use Access.

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

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.

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).