Software Books

Data quality assessment has become so much a part of many data quality programs that we assume that everyone knows how to do it well and efficiently. But this is not the case. Done well, assessment is technically difficult and demanding, often conducted under the press of time, short on budget, and long on conflicting management demands. Much can, and does, go wrong. So Arkady Maydanchik's volume is a welcome addition to the data quality literature. It describes the end-to-end assessment process and each step in a brisk, easy-to-read style.

I especially liked portions of Chapter 8. They lay out a process for actually creating business rules, another one of those nettlesome tasks that people underestimate.

This is the best book on the subject I have seen, and I read almost all of them!
Extremely well organized, taking the reader from the fundamentals through the process in an easy read. He has a way of presenting technical subject in such a way that anyone could understand them. All concepts are accompanied by examples taken from of every-day experience. All the examples are easily understood and well explained. After reading his explanation and examples of even the most complex and obscure data quality issues you are left with the felling of "Oh yea, I get it."

Book is well written, easy to read, great help for anyone who has to deal with data quality issues. It brings systematic approach to data quality testing.

My business, Northwest Database Services, has cleaned clients' data for over 20 years. In all that time I've only met two or three people who do this kind of work professionally on a regular basis. (Our conventions are small.)

With this in mind, it is easy to see why I was so pleased and surprised to find someone had written a book about the subject; especially as thoughtful and insightful a one as Quality Data Assessment.

Arkady Maydanchik brings years of experience and first-hand knowledge to the table, while organizing it into a logical, sequential and, most important, understandable manual. This book goes into the typical causes of data degradation as well as how to find it and begin the process of fixing it.

You can't even begin to fix your data until you have a clear picture of what's going on "in there", so data assessment is the first and maybe the most important step in achieving data consistency and reliability. If your work involves data assessment, migration creation or maintenance, you should have this book on your shelf. It's that simple.

But wait, there's more. This is just the first volume in a set of data assessment and cleaning processes, tips, tricks and tools books that will be forthcoming. I'm told that the second volume in this series will be published in October 2008. I know it sounds incredibly geeky, but I can hardly wait.

Data quality analysts and practioners needed this step by step guide to assess the quality of the data in their organization. The book is well organized, it's very practical and easy to understand. The examples are excellent and meaningful and the author has an interesting sense of humor.

I used the source code in this book when I implemented buddy system in my OS.
Bruno's code is very effective and the design is excellent too.
I've learned a lot of things in this book.
So, I'd like to recommend this book absolutely!

I think I said it all right there. Great for intermediate/advanced c++ users. It also contains sections on various algorithms which implement many of the data structures discussed in previous chapters. Just get the book already!

The book has a detailed introduction and explanation to the subject and clearly explains how to analyze and implement in programming. This is done all in C++ and it is suited to students in Computer Science Courses. The exercises at the end of the chapters are quite useful.

Believe the summary...this book is for 2nd and 3rd year post-secondary students. I am an experienced C++ programmer, but Grade 12 math isn't enough to cut through the explanations to get to the code, which I can understand perfectly well.

Who should buy this book? Students with a good grasp of basic calculus, who want a thoroughly academic treatment of algorithms in C++ in order to pass Computer Science.

Who should not? A C++ programmer that wants clear, effectively presented information on implementing standard algorithms and data structures in order to get their project done.

I'm of the Keep It Simple school of thought, and the practical theory and implementations in this book could have been presented much more effectively without the adademic bafflegab.

I am currently working on my calculus skills in my spare time, and as my familiarity with the mathematical notation grows, I may be able to put this book to good use. Untill then I wish I'd bought something else, programming doesn't need to be as dense as this book makes it.

This is a great book for one who has had a formal study of undergraduate Calculus/Algebra and a very good understanding of the C++ language. The book starts off with explaining the fundamentals that will be applied to measure the effectiveness of a piece of code, and is very helpful for those who wants to understand the basic theory applied in the later chapters. This books treats almost all the basic data structures and have been presented in a very simple non-profounding way, like keeping the class design and hiearchy the same throughout. All the data structures have been explained using the (easy to use) arrays as well as link-lists. This makes it easier for a novice to grasp the fundamentals and go on to implement more complex and effective data structures using link lists. Overall, I found this book extremely helpful in getting a sound footing on this topic.

This is a good introduction to data warehousing for business process owners, project managers and service delivery and support professionals. Like all books in the Enterprise Computing series this one follows the people-process-technology pattern, with a focus on business value.

The authors start by showing how data warehouses fit into the context of IT architecture, and how this relates to fulfilling business needs. This is followed by a clearly presented section on concepts that will be easily understood by non-technical readers, especially business process owner who are exploring the benefits and advantages of data warehousing.

Scope and complexity of designing, implementing and deploying a data warehouse are discussed in detail in Section II, starting with some excellent material for developing a business case and determining the cost/benefit ratio of a data warehouse initiative. Information in this section is also useful for planning a data warehouse project because it provides low-level details on roles and responsibilities. A key point here is the way the project is structured with both technical and business resources. I like this approach because it involves all of the major stakeholders and IT customers from the beginning instead of the more common practice of waiting until the last minute to involve the business. This approach will go a long way towards making a data warehouse project a success and ensuring that the business gets what it really needs instead of what IT thinks the business needs.

The technology section of this book is an excellent description of data structures, meta data and topics that need to be understood in view of the large difference between a data warehouse and an online transaction processing system. I learned a lot from this section and appreciated the way the information was clearly presented. I also liked the fact that the authors included a section on production and maintenance. Other books stop short of this important milestone in a development life cycle, which leaves a lot of unaccounted for issues. This section completes the total picture of a data warehousing initiative and sets realistic expectations for the true costs, resources and effort required to implement and maintain a data warehouse throughout its entire life cycle.

This is a nicely done book that is accessible to both technical and non-technical readers, and is one of the best resources with which to get up-to-speed on data warehousing without getting bogged down with too many technical details.

Dispite the 300+ pages, I was able to finish this book in a day. It provides clear and concise information on how to manage a data warehousing project, caveats & pitfalls, and differences between DW technologies & strategies. The first half of the book focuses on step-by-step DW project management and methodology. The second half focuses on technologies and concepts. However, I felt that the second half of the book was not as strong as the first (probably because technology changes constantly). If you want a book that gives you a step-by-step task list that can be easily transferred to a MS Project plan, then this is the book you want!

Data Warehousing covers a lot of territory, but does not go into depth. If you know this in advance it sets your expectations that this book is more of an educational tool for managers than a "how-to" for data architects and DBAs. I recommend The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit by Ralph Kimball for those who are seeking an in-depth technical treatment of the subject.

This book will give you a solid foundation of the basics, expose the issues and provide a high-level process for planning and implementing a data warehouse. It is divided into sections, the first three covering people, process and technology.

Section One starts with an overview enterprise IT architectures, how data warehousing fits into the scheme of things, and associated business and technical perspectives. I like the way the authors emphasize business perspectives, which is a consistent thread throughout the book. They use a framework called "InfoMotion", which covers all of the requirements, but (to me) is too wrapped-up in "consultant-speak". For example, they litter this section with nonsense such as "InfoMotion = Information/Data * motion. While it makes perfect sense from a conceptual viewpoint, there is no way to compute it, so why express it as a formula? Parenthetically, data is easy to quantify; measuring information is difficult, but can be done. The motion part of the equation is plain silliness because there is no basis given for measurement. But I am nitpicking here.

You are next introduced to data warehouse concepts. This gives a foundation that is complete and covers all key elements, such as reports, definitions of data warehouse and data mart and operational data stores. I thought this was an excellent introduction. Also included is a brief piece on cost/benefit and return on investment. It was short and hit all of the key points, but would have fit better in the prior discussion of the business perspective.

The next section addresses the people part of a data warehousing project, begining with the project sponsor. Answers to some incisive questions are given in this part, such as "how will the data warehouse affect decision-making processes?", "how will it improve financial, marketing and operations processes?" and similar business-focused questions. These draw your attention to the real reasons for data warehousing. This section moves naturally into project management considerations, and exposes some common problems like defining project scope, underestimating time and project overhead or factoring the operational support issues after the data warehouse is rolled out and in production. One of the best parts of this section is how the authors counter common problems and risks with advice on how to eliminate or mitigate them. I liked the approach to measuring results, which gives some sound key performance indications that you can use to baseline some total cost of ownership drivers after the data warehouse is in production. This section continues with roles and responsibilities of the project team. The authors have crafted a sound team structure that consists of business and technical representatives who are overseen by a steering committee. This is an excellent approach. I thought the inclusion of users from various business domains was one of the key strengths, because these people know the data's value to the business a lot better than the technical side of the team. On the other hand, I thought it was naive of the authors to state that this group would be required 80% of the time during the project. While I fully agree with this estimate, it is nearly impossible in practice. I wish the authors would have shared how they sold the business side on making an 80% commitment of their best and brightest.

As this section moves into the actual project there are some things I loved about their approach: breaking the project into four parallel tracks and the proposed rollout strategy. These give you a good understanding of the scope and magnitude of a typical data warehouse project.

Section 4 covers technology, and gets a little too technical for a business user in some places, but is just right for an IT manager who is not a DBA or data architect. I liked the discussion of metadata, why normalization is not appropriate for data warehousing, and the treatment of fact and dimension tables.

The final section discusses maintenance requirements once the data warehouse is in production. This prepares you for the realities of managing these systems. I wish the authors would have addressed some of the workload and scheduling issues that are a part of the territory - refreshing the warehouse is going to require a fine balancing act that is going to affect maintenance windows, other production jobs and a plethora of other production headaches if not planned for in advance.

Overall this is a good book for the audience I cited above. I strongly recommend anyone considering a data warehouse to also read Improving Data Warehouse and Business Information Quality by Larry P. English.

Excellent book that explains all the steps necessary to implement successful warehouse project. It approaches it from organizational point of view as oppossed to technical. It will complement many technical warehousing books out there.

A serious textbook about Data warehouse real world issues.

It provides material not covered by other textbook, the laterial about meta data in particular.

A must read

This book does justice to the many issues facing any corporation today when designing their software. It has a balanced blend of theory and practice. While it can be used very easily in a college classroom, it is also well-suited for a more practitioner oriented audience. Practicing managers will find the chapters and corresponding steps very useful as they try to design and implement higher quality software.

My favorite chapter was chapter 5. This chapter presents a very clear list of steps that need to be addressed when designing trustworthy software. The authors do a great job integrating the various literatures on management of change. The implementation steps would probably apply to many more change issues in organizations - showing the versatile nature of the book.

Great text!

Design for Trustworthy Software is an excellent book for developing robust software designs. The book explains very well the principles and methodologies that can help in developing of software with emphasis on prevention rather than corrective action.Professionals have been looking for a good book which can describe and help them in the reliability side of the software. This book just does that.

I particularly like Part II-Tools and Techniques of Design for Trustworthy Software. Although these tools and techniques are well known



and applied for a long time on the hardware side, their application for software is very well rxplained here. The book is excellently organized for students and beginning practitioners. In each chapter key points are are braught out at the end to confirm the understanding and then the exercises and questions challenge that understanding.

The authors have demonstrated their knowledge of wide array of concepts and principles.At the same time, their keen grasp of those concepts and princples is clearly evident.

I will strongly recommend this book for the students of the subject as well as professionals who are working to achieve robust software designs.


ASH SAHNI
PRESIDENT,ASH AND ASSOCIATES
International Consultants in Quality and Compliance Management

College-level students of quality assurance will welcome this integrated approach to software quality issues, which tells how to prevent bugs in implementation rather than discovering them after. Case examples of DFTS technology include FMEA, QFD and more, and provide a blend of theory, applications, and exercises designed to test student knowledge. Classrooms in particular will find it excellent. Its authors are a CEO of a quality assurance company and a chairman of a consulting group, and professor.

Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch

This thoroughly researched book begins with an excellent summary of the state of software development methodologies. It provides a useful description of the important strategies, life-cycle models, and process improvement methodologies. The theme of the book comes from applying Taguchi Methods to software development. This approach to trustworthy software shifts effort "upstream" from testing to design: Build software right in the first place rather than waiting for a huge quality assurance department (or worse yet, customers) to find the bugs for you. Several chapters provide detail on how to apply these principles to large scale software systems.

The authors have pulled together material from an impressive set of resources into one, admittedly lengthy, book. The shear number of methodologies (including corresponding acronyms!) contained in this volume is staggering. The chapter endnotes document these sources and web references give many pointers for additional information. They also include several case studies written by practioners who have used the methodologies described in the book.

This is an excellent book providing exposure to a new technology in software design. Design For Trustworthy Software is well written. The quality initiative ideas are quite innovative.
I like the fact that the book's focus is on building quality into the product at the early design phases. Bugs found further downstream in the development process get more and more expensive to fix.
The exercises at each chapter's end are well presented to allow for better understanding of the material.
This is a great resource for both students and software professionals for producing high quality software.

Eric Eaton's "Designing Web Site Interface Elements" is perhaps the most comprehensive book on the design of web site interactive elements (links, buttons, forms, windows, etc.). This relatively narrow focus-most "web books" have to widen "the lens" to fill their pages with enough useful insight-allows for very in-depth treatments of interface design topics. For example, in the section on links, Eric talks in great detail about links styles (text vs. graphical), arrangement, density, grouping, placement, description, color, etc. The sections on button and form element design are similarly comprehensive.

Topics covered:
- links;
- buttons;
- form elements;
- control elements (window controls mostly; important if you're using DHTML or Flash to create your own windows, sliders, etc.);
- metaphors (physical world, paging, tabs, etc.);
- custom and experimental interface elements (again, good resource for those using Flash or DHTML to create their own interface elements).
- a good selection of case studies with discussions of what works and doesn't work, and why.

Overall, this book will make a worthy addition to any web designer's library. Also recommended: Paul Gokin's "Interface Design for Ecommerce Applications" (search for this one on the web), and Bob Baxley's "Making the Web Work."

It has tons of ideas for how to go beyond the same-old same-old in Web
design, Eaton gives scores of examples and techniques for designing
interactive interface elements, but without the pedantic, how-to
language that people like me hate. Before you know it, you've learned more about usability and site design than you would expect. A few too many pages are spent on the basics, from site architecture to how links work; but half the book is relevant to advanced interactive Web design. Not quite as edgy as the stuff he wrote for Webmonkey, it's as humorous as a useful guide can be. A useful tool for a wide range of designers.

It has tons of ideas for how to go beyond the same-old same-old in Web
design, Eaton gives scores of examples and techniques for designing
interactive interface elements, but without the pedantic, how-to
language that people like me hate. Before you know it, you've learned more
about usability and site design than you would expect. A few too many
pages are spent on the basics, from site architecture to how links work;
but half the book is relevant to advanced interactive Web design. Not

quite as edgy as the stuff he wrote for Webmonkey, it's as humorous as a
useful guide can be. A useful tool for a wide range of designers.

Web pages are truly a functional art form. The best are a combination of complex functionality, have a small digital footprint for quick downloading, can easily be deciphered, and are pleasing to the eye. This is a tall order and although design principles have been studied and refined for years, most do not satisfy all of these high requirements. Eaton has written a book that shows you many of the simple features that can make the difference between a site that blocks and a site that rocks.
One very striking feature of the book is the high quality of the pages and the images. The paper is slick, and nearly all pages are in full color. From this, you can see exactly how the pages would appear on the screen. In fact, very few screens would render them in this vivid a form. The advice, sensible, but also artistic in nature, shows you how to appeal to the facets of art appreciation that nearly everyone possesses. As humans, we share a common heritage for forms, some of which attract, others which repel and those which can do both, depending on the context. Eaton understand this very well and does a good job in describing and demonstrating this knowledge. Not all mouse clicks or buttons are created equal, and it is essential that the web interface designers understand the circumstances that make them different.
Packed with essential knowledge, not all of which is obvious, this is a book that should be read by all people who code the parts of a web site that will be seen.

¶
The aim of the DesignWhys series is to focus on the Why of interface design, not the How. A lot of work and creativity went into this book but it fails embarrassingly every time the author ventures into the How.

The author has much to teach and he does it well with vivid illustrations. His contention that Web widgets often imply assumptions and behaviors with surprising implications is something every Web application designer should pick up on and learn from.

Unfortunately, the author veers from his plan to be agnostic on technology and from beginning to end makes implementation recommendations that defy modern practice. It is as if his coding experience ended with Netscape 4 on the Macintosh, a particularly unfortunate combination.

He defines "traditional HTML" in a way that strips it of its current power and dynamism -- and then unfavorably compares it with Flash, naturally enough. Cascading style sheets (CSS) are introduced more as a complication rather than a systematic solution. The first positive mention of CSS is to point out that it can be used to get rid of those horrid link underlines -- a recommendation certain not to please the usability people.

The W3C-deprecated and destructive FONT tag is used throughout the book. On page 124, he warns that a drawback to using JavaScript to change form elements is that it forces an entire page refresh. This was true of Netscape 4 but not of any other browser released since 1997. His references to "Netscape 5," a version never released to the public, indicates that some of the book is refurbished from old material.

Whenever the author gets into implementation, beware. For instance, his suggestion that a 50-item dropdown be divided into two 25-item dropdowns. There are more elegant and usable ways to handle that situation nowadays.

Following the author too literally would result in sites and Web applications very expensive to develop, even more expensive to maintain, and with a severely restricted usability.

The book ends with illustrations of sites the author considered ennobling. People who make Web interfaces for real people, not for other designers, will find them tediously irritating. The book would have been more valuable if it had covered the widgets of our daily bread a tad more seriously.

When it comes to Web design Why's, do as the author says, not as he does.
¶

Most artists can't do everything - usually they are somewhere in the middle of a chain of production responsiblities that don't include the skillsets involved with presenting a portfolio, digital or otherwise. Many points of insider knowledge are invaluable - I was on the cusp of using PowerPoint for my CD portfolio (my wife has strong skills with this) before being warned that this bussiness presentation software's would be viewed with derision by art directors, and that a high resolution version of a website format is the way to go here - this one parcel of knowledge was worth the price of the book alone, but it is far from the only lesson imparted. Highly recommended - it doesn't stray into realms of esoterica for the sake of pagecount.

This handbook is targeted at beginners in designing portfolios to submit their artwork or photos when job hunting. It is filled with information, however most is very basic and will only be a review for most readers.

If you set can aside the near 100% focus on digital media (though it is excellent for that kind of format) and not hyperventilate in feeling like you need to come up with Flash or DVDs after reading this, it offers solid points on portfolio content, whatever format you choose.

It covers what should go in, what should not go in, how much should go in, how/if to deal with process pieces, storyboarding,
thematic ties to pull a disparate portfolio together, and sage advice on basics like the kinds of written copy you want to include, such as design briefs, problem statements, and tag lines. It's my favorite book for this effort right now. My husband's, too. I have to pry it off his desk.

It's also savvy when it comes to marketing, so I think it will have a long shelf life in my library for the days when I need to market myself on other things besides landing a job, like marketing my firm.

It has some printed web site design examples which offer visual eye inspiration for printed page layout. It even has great image workflow tips, towards preserving the best image quality with the least needed resolution, that are comprehensible to the lay person as well as meaningful to someone with a high degree of digital photographic processing background.

For several months I searched for an appropriate textbook for a course that I was developing. Several days prior to the deadline for the course outline, "Designing a Digital Portfolio " was published. After reading the book, I realized this was the authoritative text for anyone in a creative field. The book asks and answers all the essential questions. It is perfect for the technological savvy multimedia programmer or for any artist with limited technology expertise. I urge anyone who is even considering developing a digital portfolio to buy this book. Without qualification, this is the most valuable book on the market

Multimedia Portfolio Instructor/Art Institute/Art Institute Online
Subject Matter Expert / Curriculum Development Multimedia Portfolio

This is one of the best books on its topic that I have ever seen. From the title, I expected to find advice on preparing images for the screen, how to put them on a CD or DVD, etc. Those things are there, but the book begins in a logical place that I wouldn't have considered. Brown's approach is truly holistic.

Check out page 23 for the first page of a three-page self assessment check list. It has you evaluate your professional strengths and weaknesses, goals and personality.

Chapter 3 asks you a bunch of questions to help you identify who your audience really is and focus on them.

The rest of the book covers various digital formats, how to organize your work, how to get images of 3D and oversized work into your portfolio, including choosing a camera and setting up for shooting.

Ms. Brown covers editing your images to remove the most common problems, such as moire, sharpening needs, bad crops, etc. And ... she devotes a section to creating written content to accompany your stunning images, telling you how to write to that audience you defined earlier.

She explains the differences between a monitor screen and a printed page. You need to know that to design the correct interface for your portfolio. She also has a full chapter devoted to marketing and copyright issues.

The entire book is scattered with quotes (in friendly green type) from experts and those who have gone before you. The quotes tell you what agencies are looking for in a portfolio, how others have found success at this, what things you can do to streamline the process, etc.

The book provides many useful examples of core technology issues in building a JWS powered web site. Its treatment of the upcomming jsp standard (in JWS 2.0??) is helpful, but points to the fact that compiled pages (jhtml) may be short lived.

The clearest explanation I've seen of multithreading and synchronization

The authors explain the JWS, administration server and admin tool in very clear terms. The second part of the book does an excellent job in discussiing JSP, Servlets, and other advanced topics. Very practical.

This book is without peer. It is succinct and yet covers the JWS in depth and detail. The writing style is fluid and the organization is excellent. Alas, now that this superb book is available, Sun has announced it is pulling the plug on JWS!

With regard to this talented author and developer, all I can say is Larne Pekowsky ROCKS! This book is a great investment -- Larne Pekowsky truly IS Java Web Server Development.

Well-balanced, and easy to follow, this book is very well-written.

Based on years of real-world projects, it strikes a balance between no documentation and a bureaucratic paper trail. It introduces the concept of a workbook which groups documentation under the following headings: Requirements, Project Management, Analysis, User Interface Model, Design, Implementation, Testing and Appendix, with detailed traceability information. The section dedicated to User Interface Model is a welcome change, acknowledging what so many have concluded: that UI design is a formal part of the design process, seperate from system architecture design. It's a light on exactly how to evaluate interfaces effectiveness, for this I refer you to usability guru Jacob Nielsen's book "Usability Engineering" also available at Amazon I'm sure.

Notation draws from Booch and Rumbaugh. Lots of worked examples makes the first project using this book a pleasure, and following projects even easier. Thoroughly recommended.

____________________

This book is extremely well organized. It includes outlined summaries of techniques and products as well as detailed text. A refreshing emphasis on detailed implementation practices and case studies.

Scope includes analysis, design, Use Cases, Design patterns, and reuse.

The project management process described in this book iscentered around defining and producing a set of deliverables (WorkProducts) and has the following characteristics: · Focuses on Work Products organized into a logical repository known as a Work Book. Each Work Product is concisely defined in the text as to its content, structure, purpose, value and traceability (relationship to other Work Products). The list of Work Products is adaptable according to project needs and extensible in terms of defining additional WPs. The authors define WPs in terms of Objects in the Policy Management domain and present a class-definition style view of their properties and relationships. END

This book is simple for the beginner and covers some advanced concepts for not the beginner. Overall a must read for a serious OO programmer/designer. I recommend reading this book as a first or second book on OO design. The case study is great.

I found this book to be very thorough and well-written. It strongly emphasizes a separation between analysis and design, and describes every possible work product I can think of in an OO project. One small criticism is that the coverage of Use-cases is fairly weak (Scenarios should probably be requirements work products rather than analysis).

The author gave some great historiography infromation concerning various religious sects as to how pastoral care emerges from each group. The book was not to finite with detail, but it was precise and breif enough to encompass a broad perspective. The CD that comes along with the book was just as useful to use as the book itself.

The Dictionary is useful for readers across a wide spectrum, not only for pastoral carers. Contains concise and practical information. The theological import of each entry is spelled out. Each entry has a bibliography for further reading or cross reference. I found myself browsing at leisure!

Anyone who has worked in the area where psychology and religion interface will appreciate this solid, thorough and carefully edited work that is without par in the field. Grounded in the actual experience of the "theology of living documents", the articles are as much practical as theoretical and academic. Thoroughly ecumenical, this massive reference work promotes dialogue between faith and theology and clinical theory and practice. If this is the kind of subject that interests you then you need to own this book.

F.X. Charet Phd

This a comprehensive and well-written reference work with more than 1200 articles and 1346 pages. For the parish minister or pastor who needs guidance, this book should definitely be on the shelf as a mandatory reference work. For seminarians, it might be overwhelming, but would be a wonderful book to own. For more experienced religious leaders, pastoral counselors and pastoral psychotherapists, however, there is much here that can be gotten more easily and in more sophisticated form from smaller, more specialized books on theology and especially aspects of psychology/psychiatry. Still, it is an admirable piece of scholarship and one that most caregivers will want and use. (Non-religious mental health workers could also use it for working more effectively with religious populations.)

The Dictionary is useful for readers across a wide spectrum, not only for pastoral carers. Contains concise and practical information. The theological import of each entry is spelled out. Each entry has a bibliography for further reading or cross reference. I found myself browsing at leisure!

If you have DocBook markup that you need to turn into html or pdf YOU CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT THIS BOOK! That's right I'm shouting. This book is really that important, and that well written. Do bear in mind that you need to know a thing or two about XSLT and XSL-FO or you won't understand a thing you are reading.

The DocBook stylesheets have been carefully written to be both customizable and extensible; after all, no two organizations are likely to have the same format requirements for their documents. This book describes how you can develop your own customization layer between the DocBook stylesheets and your formatted document. Most developers, even those with a lot of time on their hands, would be unlikely to discover all of the techniques described in this book for accomplishing that task.

This book is especially useful if you need to produce pdf documents using XSL-FO. The html output is nice but you can easily format it with CSS. XSL-FO is a large and complex specification for marking up text and images to produce pdf documents. XSL-FO is so detailed that it takes a ton of markup to create even a modest document. The DocBook stylesheets generate a ton and a half of XSL-FO markup and the beauty of the techniques described in this book is that you only modify those things that represent the special needs of your document. I totally agree with previous reviewers, this book is essential.

This book is, without a doubt, one of the most helpful resources available to anyone seeking to understand DocBook XSL. Bob Stayton has done an incredible job gathering everything you need to know regarding this topic, and he presents it in a style that is both easy to navigate and easy to understand.

DocBook XSL: The Complete Guide takes the reader from the very beginnings of how to create custom output (whether print or HTML) using DocBook XSL. It includes information on the tools you need and how to set them up, giving you all the information you need to get started. But this book doesn't stop there--it continues with detailed, organized information on the myriad of ways you can create custom stylesheets that will generate your project precisely the way you want it. Everything is covered--from titlepages to bibliographies, this book leaves no topic unexplained.

It is extremely rare to find a book that truly is a complete guide to its subject matter. DocBook XSL: The Complete Guide more than lives up to its name--you will not find a better resource for understanding DocBook XSL.

This book needs to be beside the computer (and I do mean RIGHT beside) anyone who is attempting to support or modify docbook applications for the first time. Do that, and you may just be able to put away the extra strength excedrin. Without it, you might have a few problems......

Here's why:

Last year, I had the pleasure of implementing docbook for a large company down in Oklahoma. However, I didn't know much about XSL at the time or for that matter docbook; other than how to markup documents and make changes to the DTD. In other words I was a rookie. I had two tools at my disposal; the definative guide and docbook documentation. Any developer would understand what a rookie who is trying to muddle through docbook documentation is trying to go through..... I had a bit of consulting from Arbortext but other than that I was on my own. The definitive guide has very little information on publishing XML information and barely even mentions XSL. Thus, my modifications consisted of looking at existing code and attempting a patch job. Even with the training I'd had on XSLT it did not help me to find files that I didn't know existed. This book solves that problem and gets you off the ground running.

While the book is NOT a tututorial on XSL is does give a brief overview on the subject. This book talks about implementing XSL in a docbook environment as there are plenty of books in the market that teach you how to code XSL. An understanding of XML is expected and knowledge of docbook is certainly helpful. Topics covered include how to find docbooks XSL stylesheets (or obtain them for free, if you don't already have them)and tells you how to set them up, customize them for your environment, use special stylesheet output features and work with docbook options.

In short, if you need to learn how to implement XSL in a docbook environment; get this book in your hands and don't let it go. It's too valuable a commodity!

I purchased that book as soon as it came out: I just knew I'd need it some day. That day came three weeks ago and I got into the book with a vengeance. I needed to utterly customize the docbooks stylesheets and produce 12'000 different pdf's in four languages out of a huge documentation DB. With the book next to me it was a breeze. Extremely well written, knowledgeable, accurate, just verbose enough to get the point across and and and.

Beware: this is a book for people who are already very well versed in docbook in general, and in XSL in particular.

One does wish the author would have offered ant versions of his scripts as well as Make versions. But that's a matter of taste.

With this book and "DocBook: The Definitive Guide" in-hand, I
really can't imagine any other DocBook guide you'll ever need.

The book thoroughly covers just about every possible aspect of
DocBook publishing (that is, generating HTML, PDF, HTML Help, man
pages, etc. from your DocBook XML source) -- from general tool
setup down to the level of stuff like fine-tuning content of
headers and footers, title pages, cross-references, indexes, etc.

I have reviewed and used it a lot, and tried hard to come up with
suggestions for Bob for topics that should be added to it. But I
rarely manage to find anything that it doesn't already cover. When
I have a DocBook publishing question, I can almost always find the
answer in this book.

And if you're not familiar with the author, here are some details:
in the DocBook world, Bob is basically "The DocBook Answer Man" --
he is the most active contributor to discussions on the
docbook-apps mailing list (where DocBook publishing and tools
discussion takes place) -- patiently answering "How do I..."
questions posted by new users and following up on DocBook XSLT
stylesheet bug reports.

He's also a member of the DocBook Technical Committee, responsible
for overseeing refinements to the DocBook vocabulary, and he's a
major contributor to development of the actual DocBook XSL
stylesheets themselves.

Which is all a roundabout way of saying that this guy knows his
stuff, and in buying and using this book, you'll be benefitting
from a wealth of knowledge and experience with DocBook that you'll
not find anywhere else.