Software Books

We as users of the PSM with years of experience in the quality and measurements world tend to over complicate the measurement system we develop. This book is a yardstick and is a good tool to ground you when you are creating the measurements. It keeps your mind in the more simple and effective road to resolving the issues. Remember the old saying, "Keep it simple stupid (KISS)!"; this one helps guide you to accomplishment of this goal.

This is a good solid presentation of the subject that gives a good overview of the several types of approaches to measurement. While I would prefer that the subject matter also focused on software engineering as well, it does a good job of what it was created to cover.

This is a good read for anyone thinking about employing metrics for software projects. I have read several books and articles on metrics, software and program managment, in the last 6 months and this one of the few which was worth reading. Text is easy to read and the message and methods are presented in a straight forward manner. No, you will not find any amazing breakthoughs in software project managment in this book. What you will find is a good foundation for adding metrics which add value to software program management.

I would rate this book ****** if it were possible. If you are looking for material on how to start a "software metrics program", look no further. This is the ultimate reference on software measurement initiatives. The PSM method is compatible with the CMMI (Measurement & Analysis Process Area) and the foundation for the ISO/IEC 15939 standard. All of the authors are recognized authorities in software measurement and process improvement. Dr. Barry Boehm (COCOMO author) has written the foreword. The PSM process is sponsored by the DoD and the U.S. Army. The book itself is comprehensive, well-written, and easy to read. It provides ready-to-use templates such as "Measurement Construct Template", "Project Measurement Plan Outline", and "Data Verification Checklist". Chapter outline:

1 - Measurement: Key Concepts and Practices
2 - Measurement Information Model
3 - Plan Measurement
4 - Perform Measurement
5 - Analysis Techniques
6 - Evaluate Measurement
7 - Establish and Sustain Commitment
8 - Measure for Success
Appendix A - Measurement Construct Examples
Appendix B - Information System Case Study
Appendix C - Synergy Integrated Copier Case Study

Note: Appendix A provides 14 detailed, complete examples of measurement constructs ("metrics"). Appendixes B and C provide 2 comprehensive case studies (approximately 60 pages).

It would require at least a 2-day workshop to address all the information provided by this book (probably at 10 times its price). You can't afford to miss it if you are more than casually interested in software measurement. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

There is a wealth of material available from the PSM site, including the PSM Insight application and PSM Guidebook. However this book is not redundant because it is structured as a clearly written introduction to practical software measurement, that includes excellent guidance for implementing it into your organization. In addition, the 304 pages that comprise this book manages to convey the information contained in the existing PSM documentation, and does so much more succinctly.

I found the most valuable parts of this book to be the clearly described measurement model, and the way the authors distinguish between data that is useful to projects and organizational data collection and analysis. This material places PSM in context and is a sound starting point for an organizational SQA initiative.

The case studies reinforces the mechanics of PSM, and also contain advice and pointers for implementing enterprise-wide measurement. Although I've been following the PSM initiative almost since its inception and have read all of the copious materials available, I still gained much from this book. If you're establishing an SQA function or striving for CMM level 4 or above you'll find this book invaluable. The URLs provided will lead to even more material, including a free Windows-based software tool that fully supports the practical software measurement process.

This is by far the best book available on DNS. It is very informative and yet the reading style is entertaining (not fluffy though). Overall, it is a joy to read. The author is able to communicate effectively to both the expert and the novice. Look no further than here for a great DNS reference book. Way to go Ron Aitchison!

while the reference from Paul Albitz/Cricket Liu is sometimes hard to read and long winded, this text from Mr. Aitchinson covers everything and yet stays very clear and simple. I could configure and start a caching only DNS server in less than 30 minutes (well, after omitting the first few introductory chapters ;-). If you want to look up sth., there is also a big reference section. There is also an errata-page at:
http://www.netwidget.net/books/apress/dns/notes.html

I also found this book *much* more useful as the first, because of the fact that it is much more up-to-date!
I can recommend this book to everyone, who
*) wants to install/configure/start/maintain a DNS server
*) wants to get informed about the Domain Name System in general

Up to now, this book is really an insiders' tip!!

After reading several of the chapter sections at the authors website, I needed a bit more understanding about how to install and configure Bind 9 onto our Windows box. I wanted to use Bind on old hardware running NT4. I fired off an email to the author and got several pointers that fixed the problems I was having. I realized the pointers he had given me were all covered in his book. After purchasing the book, I not only found out lots of stuff about what all the parameters are but also discovered how to manage bind over the LAN in a secure way. This book is a must have for anyone that wants to use Bind 9 for the first time. It has helped me several times already.

The Domain Name System is a critical component of any large network or any computer connected to the Internet. While a home user would not need to setup a DNS server, business networks of any significant size would benefit from an internal server, DNS caching router or other components. This book takes the reader through a very good explanation of DNS and BIND, how it works, how to set it up, how to test it, and how to troubleshoot it. There are many books on DNS and BIND but most either assume a certain level of prior knowledge, provide theory without implementation information, or provide implementation information without any theory so you have no idea how to troubleshoot a problematic implementation. Author Ron Aitchison does an excellent job of discussing both theory and implementation in this book so you end up with a thorough education. He even covers the implementation of a secure DNS server. This book actually takes the reader from a level of complete novice through advanced DNS administrator and does an excellent job of it. Pro DNS and BIND is highly recommended and one of the better books on the subject available.

Ron Aitchison's Pro DNS and BIND packs a whopping 550 pages of material which is easy to read for the novice or ongoing DNS administrator, and which is very well written (I greatly enjoyed the author's style). After a short introduction in which I learnt some interesting facts about the provisioning of the root servers, the author implements a first zone describing the necessary concepts such as resource records, queries and zone transfers very clearly, followed by the different types of DNS setups (master, slave, caching, forwarding and stealth servers); these are covered in depth in chapter 7. Chapter five covers IPv6 and its relevance to BIND. Throughout the book, references to other DNS server implementations are given, but the primary focus is of course BIND 9.3.0.

Aitchison leads the reader through detailed installation of BIND on Linux, FreeBSD and even Windows (ISC has an installer for Windows in its portfolio), after which common DNS tasks are discussed (how to delegate a subdomain, how to define SPF records, etc. read it on-line here) as well as a chapter on tools.

The third part of the book is dedicated to securing DNS configurations with topics ranging from simple administrative issues (chroot jails) through securing DNS updates and zone transfers with TSIG and DNSSEC.bis which is covered very extensively in chapter 11.

Chapters 12 and 13 provide extensive commented references on BIND configuration and Zone files. There is of course plenty of on-line reference information on these two topics (including the author's very good DNS for Rocket Scientists) but I like to have reference information on hardcopy (in the event my DNS servers fail, and I can't reach the on-line documentation :-) )

In part 5 the author shortly covers programming with the BIND API and the resolver libraries, and he follows that with an interesting chapter on DNS Messages and Records, good to have if you want to sniff your way through DNS traffic.

The publisher's web site carries a sample chapter as well as the source code to the book which is also available in TAR format on the author's web site together with complementary information and pointers to further resources.

My only complaint about this otherwise excellent book is that on two or three occasions I read a paragraph that I thought I'd just read before; some duplication must have taken place (or I was tired). For the next edition, I'd like to read a chapter on interoperability between BIND and Microsoft Windows DNS servers, specifically regarding DNSSEC.

This book is an absolute must have for anybody who needs to understand DNS in the first place (irrespective of the implementation he or she plans to use), and it is a must have for a systems administrator who is either intending to deploy or has already deployed BIND 9.3. I wish I'd read this book before the first mentioned above.

This book has some great examples to help you take your Sharepoint environment to the next level. It cover all the major Office Applications and includes great code ready to be built and implemented. Not for the beginner but perfect for the System Admin or .Net developer looking to take their sharepoint skills to the next level.

SharePoint as an application development platform is long on potential, short on guidlines. Pro SharePoint Solution Development guides the user through applciation development techniques that leverage the infrastructure (security, doc management, database access, navigation) of SharePoint to deliver application functionality. This book does not assume the reader is an advanced .Net developer, nor does it treat the reader as brand new to the concepts of application development. It cuts directly to the use of built in features and the creation of custom features and how to bind them together to create solutions.

I am involved with SharePoint developer education so I buy and scan through every single SharePoint title when it becomes available. There are plenty of SharePoint books out today that all cover the same basic topics. This book was special because it had a significant amount of content that I have not seen anywhere else. In particular, I like the way this books explains how a developer can integrate Office 2007 office applications together with SharePoint 2007. It goes beyond the typical 'hello world' examples and offers plenty of gems that could only have been gathered from real-world experience rolling out projects in a production environment. Congrats to Ed and Susie!

This book offers an indebt review of how SharePoint fits in the Microsoft Office ecosystem. It delivers a variety of advanced examples, richly illustrated with sample code, downloadable from Apress, and step by step instructions and illustrations in the book itself.

The organization of the book is very convenient and the first four chapters allow the reader to brush up his knowledge about MS Offices and SharePoint with abundant external links. Each consecutive chapter after that represents a standalone example based on a real-world scenario. The examples are focused on the integration with a particular MS Office product. For example Chapter 5 demonstrates a scenario where MS Word integrates with SharePoint and Chapter 9 shows how to construct PowerPoint slides using content stored in a SharePoint list. Every example starts with an introduction and walkthrough, which allows the reader to start reading the chapter directly without losing context.

The complexity of integrating products of the MS Office family in enterprise solutions requires quite a bit of knowledge and experience thus I do not recommend this book to beginners in SharePoint and MS Office programming. While this book has a plenty of introductory and historical information about MS Office development and SharePoint customization, it does not emphasize on important steps of professional SharePoint development such as creation of SharePoint solutions, list and site template customization and provisioning. However if you are already familiar with SharePoint (WSS 3, MOSS 2007) concepts such as solutions, features, workflow etc., this is the book to put all these features in the context of enterprise applications.

The software and hardware requirements for the examples in this book are quite high, so if you want to be able to implement them on your own you need to allocate some time to prepare a system with MOSS 2007, MS Office 2007 Enterprise, VS 2008 Professional or Team Edition and for the first example MS Office 2003. In addition there are several manual actions, which require a bit more time.

Something, which may not be obvious from the title, is the heavy use of the new MS Office document standard - Office Open XML (commonly referred to as OOXML or OpenXML). This was my first exposure to this format specification and I found its use throughout the book very useful.

Overall this book is of great value to intermediate and advanced developers, working on enterprise applications based on the MS Office system or integration projects with third party vendors. The examples can be read independently and each one of them not only demonstrates the implementation of a particular scenario, but also provokes ideas for other projects.

This is the 5th book on MOSS 2007/WSS 3.0 that I have bought so far and it is the best as far as SharePoint development. Each chapter after chapter 4 describes a real-world project for integrating SharePoint with Office. The book assumes that you already understand SharePoint development and .NET programming. You can download the code and I have not had any errors compiling it so far. The book makes heavy use of the System.IO.Packaging namespace and so there are many examples generating xml-based office documents. This book gets straight to the point with lots of code. I highly recommend it.

I have read several books on this topic, but this book was very structured wich made it easy to follow. It gave a very clear explaination on both base- and advanced OOP programming concepts. Many things I'v not read anywhere else and many times I yelled 'AHA!' and 'WOW!'. Yes, it was great fun to work trough all the 'Fun with...' examples.
I really can recommend this book, however NOT if you are a beginner!
I also learned that I'm a Generic Type, because I drink a lot Of T. :)

This book covers what programmers need to know. The pillars of OOP are presented and clear examples are shown.

I refer to this book often because it gets to the "meat" of things rather quickly and is not for beginners.

My only criticism is that this book's examples are 90% console applications. Nobody uses this in the real world. But I understand the focus is on the code, but I still like the Deitel approach better. Use Windows applications NOT console, take the time to get the screen shots. (Just my opinion).

Don't get me wrong, I can easily translate over what he is trying to convey, but still I see great authors such as Francesco Balena showing most examples with the console window. I don't like this trend. But hey that's me.

Very good book though..

This is best VB.NET I ever had. This book explains OO concept very clearly with easy to understand examples. I am still in middle of the book. So eager to finish till end. Waiting to read more books from this writer. Thanks for Excellant Work.

This book covers just about everything: The .NET platform; VB language fundamentals; OOP; Assemblies and classes. In each chapter the author gives a simplified example and then progresses thru to a complete module. He explains each step in detail and give many of the most-likely errors.

This is not novices. The author expects some level of programming experience with VB, C, C++ being the best. It is also best for a Visual Studio 2005 environment, though it is not required. If this is you and you are looking to move to VB.NET, this book is absolutely for you.

If you are looking for a Visual Basic book that covers a lot more than books like Wei-Meng Lee's Visual Basic 2005 Jumpstart than this book should be at the top of your list. As well as the basics this book is very good at explaining advanced concepts like Interfaces, IEnumerable Types, Generics, Asynchronous Delegates, and Multithreaded Applications. The author has an excellent writing style. He stays on track, does an excellent job at expaining complex concepts, and provides a lot of hints about how the topic he is writing about now is related to the big picture. Apress should also be commended for the graphical layout of the book. It is very easy to find information on a particular topic in this book as all of the book is divided into clearly labeled short sections.

I had little knowledge on the subject of AJAX, but this book enlightened me. I could scope out the capabilities of this technology by reading a few key chapters. Now I understand the AJAX used in the enterprise level application I now maintain, plus a lot more. If you're a .NET programmer, I think you'll like the way this material is presented.

Matt and Dan's ASP.NET AJAX book is an excellent one. It is packed with useful content, and contains a lot of great code examples that demonstrate real-world usage examples.

The book covers all of the core ASP.NET AJAX Scenarios:

- Server-Side Controls (UpdatePanel, UpdateProgress, etc)
- Client-side libraries
- Networking Stack
- Application Services
- AJAX Control Toolkit

Matt Gibbs is the development manager of ASP.NET at Microsoft, and led the ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 development team - so obviously knows his stuff well. Dan Wahlin is a great trainer and presenter of ASP.NET and ASP.NET AJAX. You are in very good hands with them.

I highly recommend this book.

Very well-organized, easy to follow and provided a great starting point for the ASP.NET AJAX framework. Even if you've been surfing the ASP.NET AJAX documentation you'll still pickup some good tips and information from this book.

I have nearly completed my first tour through the book. It is well-organized, written with considerable clarity, possesses a reasonable number of focused examples, and covers ALL the bases in good depth, including deployment and custom controls. Some very minor deficiencies are a scattered few forward references and a muddling of the details of JSON serialization when accessing web services, but the errata and future printings will hopefully clear these up soon.

Thua I strongly recommend it as the FIRST book to introduce yourself seriously to mainstream AJAX 2.0.

Just got a copy of this new book on ASP.NET AJAX and it looks great. It should be because Matt is the Development Manager for ASP.NET so he deeply understands the product. He has also worked on several other books and I can personally attest to the fact that he can indeed form complete sentences. ;-)
Seriously, this book is straight from the source and contains good, detailed information about the ASP.NET AJAX release that applies equally well today and in Visual Studio 2008

Not a typical Wrox title, generally these tend deal with specific technology in "no-nonsense" fashion. This book has more theory in it and is not technology specific, you will find it valuable if you program in just any version of Visual Basic .Net and any type of application. Not likely to become obsolete very soon, since basic premises of refactoring will continue to be relevant even in upcoming versions of VB.

Arsenovski has done a great job with this book. It is clearly written, easy to follow and very practical. A great one to keep on the shelf and reference as needed. The free tools that he covers in the book are a bonus! They really help to get you applying what you've learned quickly.

I highly recommend this book for any .NET developer, not just those who use Visual Basic.

I am working with group of developers that came to VB .Net from VB6. Currently we are in process in improving the way things operate using some agile stuff. The overall disposition is pretty good, team has already been formed and things like daily stand-ups, client involvement or short iterations are generally welcomed by all. However, when more technical, code level stuff is discussed, there is more discussion (if not opposition). These folks pack years of experience and will not accept that you can teach them their job just like that. There is no way you can force things like unit testing or refactoring. You have to be able to hold your ground and answer all the questions with some good arguments.
This book gives you in-dept view of refactoring with a lot of practical, code examples. This means that you are well prepared to answer any uncomfortable question. It builds up gradually, so it is easy to follow.
Almost every chapter ends up applying the stuff that was just exposed on a sample application with a lot of code. Surely author spent a decent time on this title. You can download the code and see it progress from chapter to chapter. This gives a great insight since you can read and debug the code at the same time and not just some toy or isolated example.
Here is chapter to chapter break-down of the book.

Chapter 1
Intro chapter, defines refactorings end code smells and explains the kind of baggage VB carries because of its origins. Cool section on misinterpretations, this will prepare you for some tough questions that might come from uninitiated developers or managers.
Explains the importance of writing simple, comprehensible code. For example:
Dim oXMLDom as New DOMDocumet() vs Dim portfolio as new DOMDOcument.
The first statement gives you no idea of what first DOMDocument represents, in second it's the portfolio, and if you know the application context you will know what to expect.

Chapter 2
Teaser chapter but also good single-chapter sample of some typical refactoring work. Captures well typical process of development of VB applications. Starts out with few event-handling methods, ends up with number of domain classes and some inheritance thrown in.

Chapter 3
Chapter on refactoring tools, also gives you some insight of how different tools like refactoring add-ins and unit testing framework fit the big picture of agile development process.

Chapter 4
Intro chapter on application that is used to illustrate refactorings throughout the book. Explains the business case, requirements, lists some use cases. It is important to understand the context of the application to be able to follow-up on refactorings. Also some funny stuff here, like freshman developer that takes pride in copy-paste development.

Chapter 5
In-dept discussion on Static vs. Dynamic and Strong vs. Weak Typing that is rarely dealt with in such depth. This is basically controlled with Option Strict and Option Explicit options. If you program in VB, you must be aware how these work out.

Chapter 6
Chapter on error handling, especially legacy vs. structured error handling. Again, something everyone should know, but rarely explained in such depth. Cool stuff is step by step recipe for converting legacy to structured.

Chapter 7
Deals with some core refactorings like Dead Code Elimination, Scope Reduction etc. It's like cleaning up your code for some serious refactoring stuff.

Chapter 8
First step in structuring your code is getting serious about the problem (or business) domain. Also explains Rename and Safe Rename refactoring, talks about Interface vs. Abstract class, Open-Closed principle etc. some serious OO stuff.

Chapter 9
Some core refactoring stuff. Teaches you how to eliminate duplicated code and why it is the worst thing it can happen to your code. Explains Extract Method and Replace Magic Literal with Symbolic Constant variable. Nice and simple example based on circle geometric shape on how procedural design is transformed to Object Oriented design (Module and Shared method rings a bell?)

Chapter 10
If only method extraction would be as simple in real life... This chapter goes further with method extraction and deals with some common problems like temps.

Chapter 11
Where do objects come from? How you design classes? Some core OO stuff in this chapter, including Extract Class, Move Member (Method or Field) refactorings, smells like Database Driven Design or Data Class, Large Class, OO principles like Single Reasonability Principle etc. Lot of stuff and handful of pages in this chapter.

Chapter 12
Build upon previous chapter. Deals with inheritance, polymorphism, genericity. Explains the difference between class and interface (or implementation vs. interface inheritance), difference between delegation and inheritance and criteria to chose one or another, list some common misuses of inheritance etc. Again, a number of refactorings like Replace Inheritance With Delegation or Extract Interface, Extract Super etc. Some heavyweight OO concepts in this chapter, takes a time to digest.

Chapter 13
Explains what is important when taking a birds-view of software. This chapter is especially important for software architects. Talks a lot about dependencies in software and why you should minimize dependencies in your code.

Chapter 14
Single chapter for huge subject, still a lot of material covered. Design patterns are the most advanced subject in OO, so refactoring your code in order to make use of patterns is in no way child's play. Mostly deals with creational patterns. First mention of Dependency Injection in some VB book I come across. Now taking into account that Unity application block [...] has been released in April, this is really cutting edge stuff!

Chapter 15
Talks about latest VB improvements that come with VB 2008. Starts with XML enhancements like XML literals and then the rest is about LINQ. Explains a LINQ implementation called LINQ-to-SQL. This is first Microsoft Object-Relational Mapper (ORM). Again, cutting edge.

Chapter 16
If you still deal with VB6 code, than you know that migrating to .Net is no easy ride. This chapter explains some techniques that will help you migrate your code and make it .Net in sprit, not leaving it crippled by simple migration that will only make it execute in .Net. VB6 lacks inheritance, generics etc, so you need refactorings to make it VB .Net.

This book has no real competition as far as I know, no book on refactoring or agile for VB .Net developers. The one that come close is Agile Principles, Patterns, and Practices in C# (Robert C. Martin Series) but it is for C# developers and requires a lot higher starting point.
When other books come up, I am sure Professional Refactoring in VB will continue to hold its ground. Highly recommended!

Really great book on refactoring. Although it is based on Visual Basic examples, same advices can be applied to C#, Java or any other OO language.
Martin Fowler finally has a fair partner on my shelf ;).

First of its kind for VB.Net developers. While it does not contain a complete catalogue of all known refactorings, you get a thorough study case used throughout the book, tooling, how to use refactoring for upgrade of legacy VB6 code, a chapter on VB 2008, some important object oriented principles and even short intro on refactoring to patterns.
This book is deep and takes a while to digest. However, it's not about showing off some irrelevant academic knowledge. Author is not afraid to mention "Dependency Injection" or "Single Responsibility Principle" but all of these are demonstrated to be relevant and get illustrated through very practical and real-life examples.

An excellent guide for understanding BAPIs and RFCs, complemented with good explained VB programs which are useful for learnig how to develop interfaces whith SAP using VB.

I bought this book knowing VB but was new to R/3. Within days I had a working interface to SAP. If you want to use COM objects to connect to R/3 and make remote function calls this is the book. Great examples on using late binding too if you want to put the functionality into a dll without having a control bound to a vb form. Of the many computer books I've read, this is one of the best.

Details with examples. Good for all SAP R/3 tools and application developers. Explains BAPIs, RFCs, bussiness object repository (BOR), SAP DCOM Connector component etc.

"Professional VB SAP R/3 Programming" - demonstrates how to combine existing Visual Basic tools with the new extensibility tools, so that you can develop robust enterprise applications based on SAP R/3 from a non-SAP programming environment. It also explains the fundamentals of SAP, including the new SAP tools and technologies. SAP R/3 business objects and BAPIs are implemented and a guide to the SAP Business Framework is illustrated. The SAP R/3 Automation tools are used to replicate SAP functionality from VB and the DCOM Component Connector is used to generate business object proxies, aswell as programming the core components of the DCOM Component Connector. Browsing the SAP R/3 Business Object Repository is demonstrated and working code samples of both inbound and outbound SAP R/3 operations are included...

I'm not a VB programmer. I obtained this book to better understand how BAPI's worked and could interface with external applications based on a project team demand to develop better masterdata loaders. The first three chapters alone are goldmines of information that are neatly tied together and explain the concepts and framework used. After reading them I understood why SAP went this route and better understood some of the potential areas where BAPI's could assist our development team. The latter chapters get into more VB oriented issues but are useful regardless of VB experience (or lack thereof). Our VB developers all own this book.

This book really helped me to have a kickstart to become a professional access programmer.... it contains the best tricks to do whatever you want with Access....Besides the writer has writen the book in a way that is very comprehensive for every one....After this book I`m a real fan of Rick Dobson...He knows how to lead you to make you professional....

I have read your book and applied some of the programming methods mentioned in it and found it very helpful.

I have 20 years of software development experience mainly in the
mainframe area both here in Sydney, Australia and Boston, Mass. I recently decided to start my own consulting firm and develop business applications using Access. In the past four months, I have used your book to learn Access in order to develop an
inventory and billing software package for one of my clients. I can honestly tell you that I learned a lot from your book, and I can even say that without your book, I would've not been able to finish the project.

Being a seasoned Access Veteran, I found the book most helpful in explaining ADO (New in Access 2000), explaining class modules and using Access with SQL Server. Most MS Press books in the past that have dealt with Access / VBA have been fairly "light" on these subjects, but this one goes in depth on these subjects. Also the chapter on XML does a good job introducing the platform to novice developers.

Next to The Access Developer's Handbook Series by Litwin, Getz etc..and F. Scott Barker's Power Programming, I would say this is a "must have" for any serious Access Developer.

This book builds on Dobson's prior book "SQL Server with Access 2000" and ferrets out good solutions to some everyday needs like image processing and dynamically populated combo boxes. I'm a small business owner whose time is precious, but needs to get big picture solutions so not to be reworking stop gap efforts to streamline my operations.

Being pressured to grow my application to many users (both trusted LAN and anonymous Web) and being comfortable with the graphical interfaces of Access, I found the the need to learn about programming ADO recordsets, Data Access Pages and ASP while determining the best solution. I have been overwelmed by the flexibility of MS solutions and options that are possible and needed some guidance in plain language to explain such terms as Objects, Properties and Methods, and what they meant to be programmed. Chapter 2 does a good job of that which is followed by a useful summary of the ADO library. Data Access Projects are lined out well along with some practical tips to incorporating SQL Server 2000 as a data source. He further builds upon this model and shows how to dynamically (!) create web pages from the Access Project using MS Frontpage XP, the resultants being Active Server Pages! I have found while the Access 2002 graphical tools are helpful, Dobson explores how to control the code behind the power of the XP Office release.

I have found the code to be tight and well commented. I'd urge anyone interested in harnessing the full power and speed of deployment of Access 2002 and the Office XP suite to add this book to their "How To" library.

This complete reference book is actually three books in

one. It is the clearest available introduction to VBA

coding. It provides explanations with a huge collection

of Access VBA code. And it is a thorough presentation

of what is new and powerful in Access 2002, especially

concerning integration with SQL Server.

This book is just the thing for anyone who wants to

become a serious Access user or developer. It is the

answer to the prayers of many Access users who have

wanted a reference that would finally take them from

the limited GUI Access interface into the more full and

flexible features of VBA coding. The coding in this

very large book is so extensive that I bet you could,

if you wanted to, do every future Access project with

just code and without reference to the GUI interface.

You can tell that Rick Dobson loves to code and to pass

on what he has learned.

The explanations are very readable and give you the

background necessary to actually understand why things

work the way they do. Much attention is given to

keeping you out of trouble by conveying a very clear

understanding of operational issues not covered

elsewhere. This includes successful integration of

different versions of Access and SQL Server, getting

the reference libraries correct, and even using Access

with FrontPage (now included in Office XP

Professional).

If this reference indicates the way Microsoft Press

books are headed, then I am going to look to add more

of them to my reference collection in the future.

Clarity, comprehensive, and Code, code, code!

Love Perl but wish it had the ability to work with the .NET framework? Well, this is the book for you! Let me tell you, if you program with Perl, then this book will earn its purchase price again and again. I've always loved the ease of programming in Perl, especially how well it works with sockets and network programming, but these days, you've got to be able to program Graphical User Interfaces. I've never been able to master programming GUI's using Tcl/Tk, but the C# like format of programming Visual Perl made creating Windows Forms a snap. The book gives so many examples of working with the .NET classes in any practical situation. Its got a great format including a discussion of programming with the .NET framework, a strong overview of programming in Perl, and of course the definitive guidelines to programming in PerlNET. It covers creating your own classes, components, forms, database interaction, and working with ASP.NET. It also gives an overview of working with the CPAN modules which is invaluable. The authors are intelligent, well-spoken, and are clearly experts in this particular area. You have GOT to buy this book!

Hi, All!
I am the lead author of this book. Together with Michael Saltzman and Robert J. Oberg we tried to make this book as good as possible.
The book will be useful for you whether you are an experienced Perl programmer that wants to learn .NET technology or you are new to Perl.
The first part represents a tutorial of Perl itself. In the second part we dive into exciting world of programming Perl inside the .NET Environment.

I hope you will enjoy reading and our code samples will be useful and helpful for you.

Happy reading and programming!

This book was not only extremely valuable to me in understanding how to use Perl in the .Net Environmental, but also contains the best presentation of how to build pure Perl Modules that I have read to date. These concepts really jelled for me after reading and utilizing the examples presented in the book.

With my limited experience in object oriented programming, this book presented the topics in the right order to overcome my lack of OO experience.

I did have a few instances of failing to find specific terms in the index.

This book will continue to be a valuable resource as I continue to refine my Perl skills in creating perl modules and utilizing Perl in the .Net environment.

Love Perl but wish it had the ability to work with the .NET framework? Well, this is the book for you! Let me tell you, if you program with Perl, then this book will earn its purchase price again and again. I've always loved the ease of programming in Perl, especially how well it works with sockets and network programming, but these days, you've got to be able to program Graphical User Interfaces. I've never been able to master programming GUI's using Tcl/Tk, but the C# like format of programming Visual Perl made creating Windows Forms a snap. The book gives so many examples of working with the .NET classes in any practical situation. Its got a great format including a discussion of programming with the .NET framework, a strong overview of programming in Perl, and of course the definitive guidelines to programming in PerlNET. It covers creating your own classes, components, forms, database interaction, and working with ASP.NET. It also gives an overview of working with the CPAN modules which is invaluable. The authors are intelligent, well-spoken, and are clearly experts in this particular area. You have GOT to buy this book!

Can you mix Perl and Dot.NET ??
I didn't think so till now.

I found the mix of Perl and Dot.NET quite strange - that's why I was surprise to see a book on that matter.

I felt very curious to see how can it work together.

Perl has lots of advantages that make it such an enormous success - very easy to write fast and efficient code.
Ask any unix admin / programmer.

The way Perl works with the rich options of Microsoft's new engine is good. I like the combination. It works well, the examples are quite good.

The first part of the book looks similar to every Dot.NET one can find, but the second part is the value for this book - and that's why I liked it.

Good techinal explainations and examples.
It was a good investment for me.

The psychiatry 2002, is an excellent quick review of psych. In the clinics it will give you easy to read summaries of all topics in psych and treatments. An ideal book for any med student or resident.

Great reference for the psych clerkship. Written by same 3 authors at UCI who write the psycho-pharmacology book for CCS.

This was great to review quickly right before the shelf exam, and it was a big help. I read through it and then it isn't worth reading again, so it seems overpriced.

This is like the washington manual for Psychiatry. It's about a centimeter thick and small so it;s easy easy to carry around. But don;t be fooled by its size. It has all the info you need to do well in psychiatry rotation.

A good light handbook for quick reference on the run. Point-form and well laid out. Ideal for helping with differential diagnosis. I like the practicality & succintness of the information in it, as I can go to bigger texts if I want details. Bonus is that, if you own the handbook, you can download free a PC version, as well as a Palm, or EPOC (Psion Revo/Mako) versions. Mine is on a Revo and goes around with me when I'm on call.