Software Books

This book has quite good coverage of topics and simple to follow.
References and follow-up/conclusion were useful.

Every month, hundreds of security vulnerabilities and warnings are announced. Although they cover a wide set of products and programs, the underlying reason for them is generally the same: insecurely written software. When software is written in insecure code (which includes most software programs written today), serious security flaws are inevitable.

The Software Vulnerability Guide was written to help software developers acquire the methods necessary to write secure code and find existing problems in current software. After making a persuasive case for secure code in part one, the book progresses into the areas that are crucial to writing secure software.

Part two of the book covers system-level attacks and details important topics such as passwords, scripts and macros, and dynamic linking and loading (DLL). Part three plunges into attacks on the software, exploring heady concepts such as buffer overflows, format-string vulnerabilities, and integer overflow vulnerabilities. Most of these attacks have been known for decades but are only receiving wide-scale attention now.

Further chapters delve into securing data and Web servers. For each of the vulnerabilities mentioned, the authors describe how they occur and how to prevent them.

An enclosed CD-ROM contains software examples described in the text, plus various open-source security software testing tools, including Ethereal, Nessus, and Nmap. Any business serious about writing secure software should ensure that all of its code writers receive a copy of this book

Herbert H. Thompson and Scott G. Chase's Software Vulnerability Guide comes from a security director and a security architect, drawing upon their combined expertise to consider techniques developers need to use to produce secure code in modern software. Developers and testers receive both tools and assessments of tools designed to help recognize and prevent common vulnerabilties in source code. Commentary and code examples pack a guide which includes a CD-ROM with source code and many tools described within.

I've maybe three or four books on the subject of software security and this is the best so far. Very concise and well organized and covers just about every facet of software vulnerabilities that I've ever heard of. Very helpful too because at the end of each chapter it gives detailed advice on how to avoid the vulnerability that they dicussed. Also, the CD comes with some nice tools and source code. I definately learned a lot from this book and highly recommend it to both web application and desktop application developers.

If you consider yourself a solid developer but know you probably don't give the security of your software/databases as much attention as you should, then you need to get your hands on The Software Vulnerability Guide.

Unlike a lot of other security books, this one isn't full of a bunch of vagure generalities. It gives you solid details on some of the most common (and perhaps some less common) holes that exist in the software you just released. The information contained in each useful chapter is easily digestable by beginners.

Buy the book and spare yourself the embarrassment from some twenty something who stole some script off the web and deleted all the data in your intranet application.
[...]

SRES:

It is a book what do not can buy in any librery.

It have four examples very good explain.

I am wraiting with the autores looking for have this book in spanish and meabe i can be co-autor.

Tranquilino Acosta

This is a great step-by-step book for the SolidWorks user who is a beginner. I've been using SolidWorks for approximately three months. The book provides a solid foundation and a straight forward logical procedure to follow. The enclosed CD-ROM is priceless. The CD provides a solid foundation to learn the fundamentals of SolidWorks. Read, watch, learn, and do. Great book.

Im new to Solidworks, and after going through the book, I feel pretty comfortable using the software. In the exercises the book covers, you build various parts and sub-assemblies. At the end of the book, you put it all together and end up with the assembly shown on the cover of the book. So basically, you'll be able to do that when you're done with the tutorial. Nice book, I only wish it covered Importing from AutoCAD. It completely ignores the subject. Other than that, I was happy with it.

I`m a Mechanical Design Engineer by profession. I have over 20 years in the CAD industry primarily with AutoCAD, SDRC, and Pro/E, and the last three years using SolidWorks. SolidWorks, by far is the most intuitive 3D CAD package out there today!

A few years ago, I decided to leave industry, and I now teach at a mid size college in Texas. I teach four freshmen sections of SolidWorks, along with evening and weekend SolidWorks classes.

I, like many instructors who are teaching a software class review numerous books, for potential classroom text and lecture notes. Last year, my local VAR recommended the SolidWorks Tutorial book by Planchard & Planchard. The book provides an excellent foundation in a timely step-by-step procedure with numerous illustrations to clearly enforce the chapter desire outcomes and objectives.

The book is suited well for a classroom / learning environment. It is also great as a self learning tool either for a student or an adult. The material is clearly presented, in a very logical manner. It starts with the SolidWorks Interface, moves to 2D sketches, and then progresses to 3D features: Extruded Boss/Base, Extruded Cut, Extruded Revolved, Loft, Swept, etc. The features are then applied to build parts, assemblies, and drawings.

Part, assembly, and drawing fundamentals and foundations are addressed. This is a great book for the beginner in SolidWorks.

I like the book, but I wish not all of the versions of this book are the same because this same book written in 2005-2008 have the same exact projects with only small changes for the version. I do think it is a good book to get students prepared for larger scaled projects.

Tom Bunzel has been an indispensable presentation coach to me for years. In person and in his books he has an uncanny way to bring out the best in people. This book puts in one place Tom's knack for making technical stuff easy while keeping readers focused on the subtle arts of using PowerPoint to make effective presentations. This is the perfect book for new or seasoned presenters to take their communications to a whole new place.

This is a great book. It showed me new tips to do in Power Point that enhances your look of your presentation. I learned a lot of valuable information I will use in the future. The book was easy to follow and the CD has all of the templates discussed in the book that you can use or copy. I would highly recommend this book to someone who wants to improve their PowerPoint skills.

This book is a comprehensive resource for professionals who plan and deliver presentations. It begins with the basics and progresses to the use of more advanced presentation tools. This book also offers practical advice and step-by-step instructions (with numerous graphics and screen shots), which makes it easy for readers to immediately implement the techniques outlined. I especially liked having additional resources listed at the end of each chapter.

I do just enough presentations to know that I need to concentrate on improving my delivery and contents. I was excited to get a copy of Solving the PowerPoint Predicament: Using Digital Media for Effective Communication by Tom Bunzel. This is more than the typical "here's how PowerPoint works" book...

Contents: Planning an Effective Presentation; Implementing Professional Design Principles; Creating Dynamic Visuals; Secrets of Animation and Navigation; Using Video and Audio Effectively; Powerful Presentation Tools; The Latest Technologies - Beyond PowerPoint to the Future; Delivering a Killer Presentation; Index

Most books that talk about PowerPoint are tutorials on how to create one for your presentation. But realistically, nearly anyone can create a PowerPoint presentation with little effort. Whether it's effective or not is a vastly different story. Bunzel approaches the subject from the point of view of the presentation itself... what keeps an audience interested, what types of displays work to reinforce the message, etc. Once you understand what makes for a good presentation, it's much easier to decide what you should and shouldn't do in PowerPoint. Bunzel draws upon the experience of professional presenters, many who make their living using tools like PowerPoint to communicate to others. There are also a number of additional resources and recommendations for software you can add on to your presentation to make it stand out from others (photos, videos, software add-ons, etc).

For me, I was surprised to see how much animation can add to a presentation. I've always avoided the cheesy fade-ins and animations that come with PowerPoint, as I was under the impression that they were more distracting than helpful. But after reading this book, I realize that I've been limiting the possibilities. This is one of those books that could make the difference between boring your audience or firing them up, between being a one-time speaker to being a repeat invitee...

Everyone in the business world (and probably in government, education, and all the others as well) uses powerpoint. But that is not to say that it is used effectively. PowerPoint presentations can be just about as boring, trivial, and useless as presentations made in any other way.

This book is about how to make effective and hard hitting presentations. It is not a book on the mechanics of using PowerPoint, it is a book on using PowerPoint to communicate effectively. It teaches you to go beyond the normal bullets to tell a story that breaks through the barriers to reach the audience at all levels.

To be sure, the book does include a lot of information on doing more sophisticated things than normal with PowerPoint including using third-party add ons to extend its capabilities.

Recommended to anyone who makes presentations.

This book is written in a very understandable way for new WordPerfect users, yet has enough depth to provide quite a bit of "meat" for those having substantial experience with the program. Enough detail is provided so that users can learn how to turn out handsome and professional yet complex documents for desktop publishing, business, or personal use.

I particularly like the tear-out guide in the front, which includes great project-oriented information for those conducting a job search: using the provided templates, keeping contact information, and looking for a job on the Internet. (However, I suspect that anyone who learns to use WordPerfect as expertly as possible from using this book will not be out of a job-hunting for long!)

Once again, Laura & Read have pulled off a very easy-to-read yet comprehensive guide covering all of the program's basic features and quite a bit of advanced functionality too!

I recommended this book as a good reference to keep handy at your desk.

I don't normally buy computer books these days because many are lame. When a client asked me to use WordPerfect for a project, however, I thought a book would help me get reacquainted with the software.

But this book has done much more than that. The authors have provided an extremely well-written volume, filled with valuable insights. Instead of taking the standard "let's run down the menus" approach, they have given us a book filled with practical examples, excellent tips, and just plain good writing. I quickly picked up a handful of tricks that made my work easier and impressed my client!

The authors deserve praise for this excellent work, and computer book publishers everywhere should take notice. Hey guys, it IS possible to publish good stuff!!!

Two features make this book worth its sticker price: (1) it contains answers to your questions, and (2) it teaches you questions that you should have been asking. For example, I was having trouble using the WordPerfect CD to get Clip Art into my document. By reading parts of Chapter 12, "Adding Graphics to Documents", I quickly figured out what I needed to know. In the process, I also learned the details of how I could acquire additional Clip Art from the Corel Web site. Thus, Using Corel WordPerfect 9 taught me information about Clip Art that I hadn't thought to ask. Speaking of graphics and other glitzy things you can put in your documents, you also might want to check out the section on Organizational Charts ("org charts"). In case you didn't know (as was the case for me) WordPerfect can draw a variety of useful charts and boxes, connected in just about any manner you wish. How? Check out Chapter 16, "Inserting Charts". You'll find step-by-step instructions that quickly teach you how you can construct what you need.

Frankly, I've never used a book before to help me with a software package. I always figured that the Help Screens and/or the manual were more than enough. This book might convince me to change my mind.

This one's a keeper. The authors are WordPerfect trainers with long experience, and it's obvious.

If you've never used a computer before, this is not the book for you. However, if you've used another word processor or an older version of WordPerfect, this is the right book. Enough introductory material for folks new to WordPerfect to get started, but far more information for those wishing to improve their skill level from intermediate to advanced word processor operators.

As someone who's long considered himself a WordPerfect expert, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself repeatedly learning new techniques for using the world's most powerful word processor, WordPerfect. Over and over again, the authors offer procedures that accomplish the same result, but involve fewer steps to realize them than those I developed myself.

The book consistently offers step-by-step procedures with screen shots, so there is no mistaking what needs to be done to accomplish a desired result. Each chapter also ends with a troubleshooting guide, addressing the most common troublespots for the subject matter of the chapter.

The index and table of contents are thorough and well organized, making the book a valuable desktop tool for learning as you go, quickly checking to get detailed procedures, or to see if the authors have a more efficient way of using the program. The authors also provide links to the best of the many WordPerfect resources on the Web.

The book does not cover use of the suite's other major components such as the QuattroPro spreadsheet and Presentations, nor of add-on packages in the profession-specific WordPerfect editions, but does cover use of the CorelCentral personal information manager. The book also does not cover macro writing using Visual Basic for Applications, which is new to WordPerfect and still not adequately implemented as of Service Pack 2. It does, however, cover macro writing with PerfectScript, the traditional WordPerfect scripting language.

If you just want to learn to install WordPerfect and write a few letters, you might look elsewhere for a tutorial. But if your goals include becoming an expert in WordPerfect 9, the anchor component of the integrated WordPerfect Office 2000 suite, this book will help you achieve that goal.

You probably will not read this book in bed; it's best kept beside your computer where you can try out the techniques.

Paul E. Merrell, Links Administrator, WordPerfect Universe,

I love the book. I have worked in "office" services for 15 years and I have to say that my coworkers and associates are in for a treat. I love the projects and tips. I think the thing that most impresses me is I really do hear a recognizable voice. Someone who knows their stuff well enough to see some fun in doing it.

This book is one that I would take to the office (or maybe not - then people would think that I was the genius) and recommend to others.

I enjoyed the book and found it very informative.

BTW - what is that (flyleaf?). The color pages at the begining of the book and can you make more featuring other office functions i.e. Order, Invoicing, and Accts Rec and tie it all together as you did with the Job Search? I loved that!

This is a great book cover to cover. For the admin who has never participated in an Active Directory roll out this book is a must have. The chapters quickly familiarize you the most powerful aspects of Active Directory without much repetitiveness. This is an excellent book for those wanting an overview or for a beginner with Active Directory. Well worth the purchase price.

Hudson and Fullerton definately come through in their presentation of Active Directory! Their clear and concise approach, drawing from their experience in training and consulting shines through! I am in the process of upgrading the network where I now work from Windows NT and this book is an invaluable resource!

The authors have done a very good jobs of explaining several complex matters. More importantly, the authors have clearly shown that they have trenmendous amount of real-world experiece. It's good to know that we still have some authors like that instead of too many professional writers, who have no real world experience and who just paraphase what M$ says about their product on the online help.

Thanks.

Tam T. Nguyen, MCSE

Special Edition Using Microsoft Active Directory provides the network administrator with complete, authoritative, "user friendly", in-depth coverage of the newest directory service from Microsoft. Sean Fullerton and James Hudson use their extensive previous training and administration experiences to expertly explain how to design, implement, and troubleshoot using the new directory service "Active Directory". Special Edition Using Microsoft Active Directory is very highly recommended for users ranging from Beginner to Advanced levels of experience. 554pp.

This book is very helpful if you are planning a Windows 2000 Active Directory design or already have one and need to get the most out of your AD. The authors have organized the book very well making it easy to find the information you need. The book is very useful as a quick reference. Additionally, material is presented in a logical order making it easily readable cover-to-cover if you need a comprehesive understanding of AD.

The authors stress the importance of a solid DNS design and drive home the point just how critical DNS is for good AD operation. There is a good description of forests, trees, and domains as well as much helpful information on planning sites and site replication. The book also goes into detail on printers and scripting.

I found the book very useful for setting up and administering different features of Windows 2000 such as group policy. There are good chapters on Group Policy Architecture and Managing Group Policy.

As an MCSE+Internet certified analyst assigned to the AD design team for a Fortune 500 company, I highly recommend this book. It makes a good operational reference for your bookshelf. Although not geared specifically for Windows 2000 certification tests, it is worth reading if you are preparing for the exams.

Rarely I write review, however, in this case I will make an exception.

By far this is the best book about Spring you will every read.

VERY easy to read. It is well structured as questions and answers, I am really amazed how detailed it is.

Of course the author(s) did not cover 100% of the Sprint Framework, but by far they have covered it better than anybody else.

For example, AOP, JDBC Templates, Hibernate Templates, JMS Templates, Quartz, Spring WebFlow, Testing, configuring web applications with JPA and Hibernate, Transactions, ...etc have been covered way beyond the basics. So this book along with its code which you can download should get you up and running very quickly.

One thing I wish if it was covered: RUN AS Manager in Spring's Security, and by far that presentation about Security is much more complete than any I have read before.


I give it 5 starts, good job. In the future, I wish the next version will elaborate furthur on Spring Security, and more complex examples on one to many relationships with JBA and Hibernate.

Abu al-Sous

Chicago, IL

well-written-concise book that covers all spring (even lookup, though other reviewer didn't notice).

Its examples are not stupid, they feel real though simple ones.

I like this book much more than the manning one.

This is one of the better Spring 2.0 book in the market. I have been using Spring for few years now but this book still managed to surprise me with few recipes. The only caveat I have is that, that lookup-method technique is not covered (unless I missed it, in which case I apologize). All in all a very decent book.

Congratulations to Gary. He has done what lots of authors tried and failed. This is at the moment the best spring 2.x book available. Well-structured, concise and complete. It builds up excellently and takes you from start to finish. What I enjoy the most about this book is that it shows the necessary steps for integrating spring with other high profile open source frameworks and concepts. It is not dry as a reference manual while doesn't try to be funny which is the trick used by some authors as filler.

I used this book as a quick reference to Spring 2.5 for use on a recent JSF project, and was thrilled at how easy it was to find exactly the information that I was looking for.

With JSF and the application context being my focus, I only read about a third of the book (chapters 1 through 4, 10 and 11).

These chapters detailed exactly what I needed to do to get Spring 2.x up and running with JSF, including how to use it instead of the JSF managed bean creation facility, and how to unlock the request/session scopes.

The chapter on the advanced features of the Spring container is particularly interesting as it clearly portrays the number of ways Spring can instantiate a bean (viz., using a constructor, a static factory method, an instance factory method, from a static field, from an object property, or a factory bean.) Also noteworthy are the Java equivalents that are provided for each of these instantiation methods, making understanding the differences a no-brainer.

There's also a wealth of information on multiple approaches to achieving the same goal (e.g., injecting references using the ref element, using ref attribute of a property element, or using the p schema), with clear indications as to why one might be preferable over the others.

Really stretching for a con here - the recipe approach felt a bit contrived and unnecessary. However, the quality of the writing is beyond reproach, and more than made up for any discomfort I had with the topic structure.

This book uses Smalltalk to teach the basics of object oriented programming on Mac or PC. Before getting my hands on this book I have to say I was having trouble grasping the basics.

I personally bought the book as I want to learn Smalltalk. For some reason the "with Robots" in the title had me skip over this book for almost a year. Most, if not all the other Smalltalk books I got, although great, usually assume differing levels of pre-existing programming knowledge and experience and approach the teaching of Smalltalk skimming over the stuff that is a required foundation to *understand* it. Stephane Ducasse does an excellent job of explaining that missing foundational stuff. And he does it without getting too deep into Smalltalk or Squeak itself.

As others have pointed out this book is not really focussed on teaching Smalltalk - Smalltalk is the tool used to teach basic O-O programming. However, he's done an excellent job of doing both!!!

Having finished this book I'm writing basic programs - and finally understanding better the programs of others.

I whole-heartedly recommend this book for introducing the novice to the nature of computing. I am giving a copy to my 14 year old grandson to introduce him to the fascinating world of programming. He lives 500 km away from me, so he will largely be on his own. I do not expect this to be a problem because the book is perfect for self study.

I want my grandson to learn the essence of computing without spending time on things that he will have to unlearn later or that prove to be blind alleys on his road to computer proficiency . This book is ideal for this purpose. It will let him experience the basic notions of computing in carefully graded steps. Each step tells him how to do fun experiments in the provided environment where he directs a robot/turtle to draw interesting patterns on the screen. The 22 steps take him from a simple sequence of commands to the creation of elaborate simulations; ending at the point where my grandson should start creating his own classes and subclasses.

The experiments are all done in Squeak, a dialect of Smalltalk. It could be argued that my grandson had better learn Java or some other mainstream language. I believe Smalltalk is a better choice because it is simpler, cleaner, and more immediate. The basic concepts are universal and my grandson can easily switch to some other language after he has mastered the fundamentals.

The book is written in a fluent, idiomatic English. It is written in the first person; the writer speaks directly to the reader. This writing style combined with the examples being concrete makes for the smooth communication of what are really abstract ideas.

Anybody wanting to understand more than e-mail and text processing could not do better than to install the free robotic environment on their computer and work through the book’s text and examples.

I've used this book and the BotsInc environment to show my 12-yr old daughter how much fun writing software can be and it's been a wild success!

In fact, it all fits together so well that I'm planning to use it as the basis of an introductory series of classes on software writing as craftwork, to be offered through a local craft organization.

Help train the next generation of software writers! Buy this book!

The use of an Integrated Development Environment [IDE] for a user to learn a language in, and to then program within, is well known. Microsoft has made powerful IDEs for its languages. And the open source Eclipse can be used for Java. Along these lines, Ducasse offers his book. It teaches Smalltalk using the Squeak IDE.

The twist is that Squeak uses the visual metaphors of robots and robot factory, to convey the crucial concepts of objects/classes. As Ducasse explains, Squeak can be directed at an audience that is perhaps of high school age or even younger. So a clear visual feedback between example code and what the student sees then happen is vital, given her limited background and possibly limited attention span.

Squeak uses Smalltalk in part because that is a very minimalist language. If you come from C++, Java or C#, you may be struck by its simplicity, compared to the oodles of classes and notational intricacies of those languages. Which of course also makes it easier for a young student to learn Smalltalk or Squeak itself.

I wonder a little about the book itself, though. A motivated high school student could easily use it. But for some younger students? In that situation, it may well be that the book could be best directed at a teacher, who can then instruct from it.

This book actually teaching computer programming, rather than teaching a computer programming language. It has to use something, and Smalltalk (Squeak) is gentle enough that it doesn't get in the way of the topic.

Stéphane Ducasse, a prolific writer about object-oriented programming, says in his preface: "The material for this book was originally developed by my wife, who is a physics and mathematics teacher in a French school where the students are between eleven and fifteen years old". Indeed, the pains taken to make object-oriented programming understandable to someone with no background are quite apparent, and they certainly pay off. The author has more than met his goal "to teach you object-oriented programming, because this paradigm provides an excellent metaphor for teaching programming".

Instead of teaching Smalltalk, the computer language he uses, he's actually teaching programming. Smalltalk, originally designed as a teaching language, has minimal syntatic issues and it very simple once the student knows a few basic rules. The reader of this book doesn't have to know much to start workign though, since the author distributes a working Squeak environment that's ready to use. He's already provided a "Bot factory" and a working (virtual) robot to which the reader can send commands, much like the LOGO language and its turtle. Without getting caught in the details of object or class design, the readers start out simply by interacting with objects and sending them messages to control their behavior.

As the reader learns more about what the robot knows how to do, the author devises trickier problems for the reader to solve. These usually involve causing the robot to move in such a way as to draw out a pattern. In doing so, the reader is actually writing programs that control the robots behavior to accomplish the goal. Although the language is really SmallTalk, the author effectively hides most of that through the use of the robot's little language.

The Squeak environment the author distributes is easy to use for anyone with a basic idea of computers (i.e. mouse and keyboard, click here, and so on). It's easy to install because you only need to download it and click on the file. From there, you see the Squeak environment and a ready-to-use robot. Move the mouse near the robot and a speech bubble with a blinking cursor appears. Type a command and the robot responds. Easy peasy.

If you are already a computer programmer, or have some experience with computer programming and want to learn Smalltalk, this book is probably too basic for you. However, if you go to the authors web page (Amazon tends to edit links from reviews, so google the author's name) you'll find links to many free Smalltalk books that you can download as PDFs.

then get this one. I learned enough about the reasons for using it and also how to configure it to authenticate against an LDAP server.

Well worth getting and keeping on your shelf.

Squid: The Definitive Guide by Duane Wessels is a great book for someone with aspirations of setting up and getting the most out of Squid. It is lengthy at just over 400 pages, but that is to be expected and desired in O'Reilly's "The Definitive Guide" series. One point worth mentioning is that Duane Wessels (the author, for those with short synaptic cycles) is the one who started Squid and still works on it today. Each chapter builds nicely on subsequent chapters, so there isn't any skipping around. If you're just looking to set it and forget it, this book is probably not for you. Otherwise, read on.

The first three chapters are pretty basic: history of Squid, downloading then installing. For those with no concern of going through downloading and installing, there is a nice section describing each configure switch and, while weighing in at a healthy 48 options, it may be helpful to have this as a reference.

Chapter Four, Configuration Guide For the Eager, is an often desired, but often left out chapter in technical books. By just reading chapters one through four, it is possible to have a fully functional setup of Squid, albeit not very secure or ready for the pounding of the masses. You will, however, begin to understand how Squid operates. This chapter discusses the most often used settings, such as: minimum/maximum size of cached objects, log files and ACLs to restrict addresses, etc.

Chapter Five, Running Squid, covers what you expect. It includes such topics as, boot scripts, chrooting and rotating log files. Again, basic stuff, but necessary for the sake of completeness.

Chapter Six, All About Access Controls, covers one of Squid's major powers and attractions, access controls. ACLs give the administrator extremely fine-grained tuning. Some of the choice highlights for limiting access to addresses/domains include, but not limited to: filter by subnet, MAC, IP address or administrator assigned group. Furthermore, regular expressions can be used to filter URLs or URIs. A most likely seldom used, but very cool, feature is the ability to filter by BGP AS (Border Gateway Protocol Autonomous System) numbers. HTTP request methods such as POST, PUT, DELETE, etc. can also be filtered. Filtering by time or restricting access by user name is also supported. Each topic is assiduously explained and leaves little to be desired.

Chapters Seven and Eight cover disk caching with chapter Seven being basic material and then Eight covering more advanced topics. Discussions on object pruning, size limits, cache replacement policies and many other cache optimizations are covered in these chapters and are necessary to thoroughly understand if you are situated in a relatively large environment or just want to squeeze every bit of performance from your Squid.

Chapter Nine, Interception Caching, covers transparent proxying. This chapter discusses the benefits (no need to configure clients) and drawbacks (cannot do user authentication) of implementing such a system. It then goes on to discuss how to configure Alteon/Nortel, Foundry, Extreme Networks, Arrowpoint, iptables, pf and ipfw to perform the routing to the Squid box.

Chapter ten, Talking to other Squids

Scalability is another favorable attribute of Squid. Running in parallel with previous chapters, this chapter details the advantages (load balancing and increasing your cache hits) and the disadvantages (security problems with having to trust neighboring Squids) of a caching hierarchy. In addition, it explains how to configure connect timeouts and other tweaks to keep Squids aware of when their siblings are down.

Chapter eleven, Redirectors, covers another great attribute of Squid. Redirectors can be used, among other possibilities, to remove advertisements in web pages or rewrite client requests based on their given URL or URI. This chapter details how they work, from a protocol level, and provides example configuration settings such as sending only specific users through the redirector or conversely, letting specific users bypass the redirector altogether.

Squid can be configured to use various user authentication methods to allow or deny access. Chapter Twelve, Authentication Helpers, covers these options. Squid can talk HTTP Basic, HTTP Digest and NTLM. Each type is well explained in how it works and detailed in how to setup.

Chapter Thirteen and Fourteen fully explain logging and monitoring. The logging chapter explains the type of information each log file catches, a full description of each error or information type (which is a great reference that I made full use of) and configuration directives that change what is logged or how it is logged. Monitoring Squid covers the Squid Cache Manger (A web front-end to many great statistics), a brief mention of using Squid-RRD and using SNMP. Such monitoring statistics include, file descriptor allocation, byte hit ratios, cache hits and cache misses and a wealth of other useful information.

Chapter Fifteen, Server Accelerator Mode, explains Server Accelerator Mode, which is also known as Surrogate Mode. It is a neat trick where Squid stills runs as a proxy, however, the Squid server is proxying the world (or a select few) to your server. One obvious advantage includes performance (or Slashdot hardening if you will). There are several config directives explained here as well as some gotchas.

Chapter Sixteen, Debugging, is the is one of the few chapters that I did not need to reference. Although, if you need to, there is some good information provided.

Appendix A comes with a config file reference that actually provides more information then the comments in the configuration file (Holy moley!...they better trademark that idea before other authors catch on!).

Appendix B briefly covers memory caching and optimization.

Appendix C shows how to use delay pools to limit user bandwidth.

Appendix D details file system performance benchmarks to show you filesystem and operating system differences.

Appendix E discusses running Squid on Windows using Cygwin.

Appendix F covers auto configuration of Squid clients to avoid needing to physically visit the many machines you administer.

In conclusion:

Pros: This is "The Book" for Squid. No skipping from chapter to chapter, the author was also the designer and still one of the maintainers, fuller descriptions of the configuration file directives that the configuration file comments. It is a great reference.

Cons: Really the only thing that I didn't like was that he only discussed HTTP proxying. There is a brief mention of FTP and SMTP, but only a couple of sentences. To be fair, in the preface he did mention that he would would of liked to written on these topics but didn't have time.

For the new comer I recommend to buy this book if your finding an alternative for Microsoft box like ISA or MSProxy 2.0.

Squid is robost and a very stable Proxy Server, you can use it even in Entreprise consumption..trust me I use it since 2001.

If your looking for technical books or documents about Squid, this is the one your looking for...

Back in 1998 when I was running my own ISP, Squid was a lifesaver because it allowed me to provide excellent web response to customers over a very modest upstream connection.

When I moved on to consulting Squid was the answer to a wide variety of client problems from employee Internet access control (Redirectors) to company website performance (Server Accelerator Mode) to plain old web page load times (Proxy Cache).

Now that I've moved in-house in a large corporation (30,000+ employees) and I've found out what commercial vendors are charging for their solutions to each of these problems, I have gladly used my knowledge of Squid to save us money.

Of course, that knowledge was not easily won, at least not for me. Because Squid was an open source project there was a lot of information available on the Web, but, of course, because Squid was an open source project, it was hard to find a definitive answer to my particular problem without asking a lot of dumb questions on newsgroups or making a lot of trial and error attempts tweaking compile time options, system changes and configuration file settings.

I have waited for this book for a long time.

I was concerned that it might be too detailed to be readable. Thankfully, Duane Wessels, the primary architect of Squid , has laid out this book to provide simple access at the Macro level. The chapter arrangement and organization are very intuitive. And yet the book still contains enough information to satisfy almost every question.

The one caveat I would make to a reader is to maintain situational awareness while delving into a chapter because, without noticing it, you can suddenly be confronted with pages and pages of configuration file details. There's no avoiding it, when a book says `Definitive Guide' on the cover you expect to have full coverage. It's just that the book is so lucidly written that the transition from high-level discussions to detailed facts might catch you un-aware.

And, really, it's that kind of feeling that lets you know that you're reading a very valuable text. I spent the first hour after I got this book skimming each chapter, happy at each additional topic I discovered. Then I went back and asked it the two hardest questions I have faced using Squid over the past year, in each case the answer was easily found and fully explained (Mr. Wessels deserves an award for making transparent proxying understandable).

The wait for this book was well worth it. I highly recommend it to any person working with, or thinking about working with, Squid.

This guide will pay for itself many times over. If you are considering a caching server for home, office or business you need this book.

My previous experience with proxies was MS proxy server 2.0 and I was a little apprehensive of this project; not to worry. Forty six pages into the book, squid was running; total time invested including installation of the program was about 2 hrs.

Another two hours of reading and precious few changes to config files and my log files are rotating, all ports I need exposed are open and the rest are hidden. I have already been able to tune squid to accelerate delivery of content using *only* this book as a guide. I haven't even had to look at the online documentation for squid (the first time I ever recall that happening).

Not only is my internet connection now available to all users, but also every one is browsing faster than they were before on single dedicated dial ups.

I can't say enough good things about the book or the program. In 14 years of networking I have seen the good, the bad and the ugly. This is one of those rare guides whose author is extremely knowlegable and the material presentation is flawless. I have a large computer science library and in my experience, it doesn't get any better than this.

Bravo Mr. Wessels!

I stumbled upon this book at a CompUSA and have found it to be one of the the best basic but thorough overviews of OS X 10.2.x. I needed a book to give my users new to OS X. I wanted something to help them get used to the new inteface and features but I didn't want them overwhelmed by too much detail. This book fit perfectly. It uses text and illustrations very well and describes things clearly. Everyone who has used this book has gotten up to speed quickly and with little help from me. That's success!

I bought my 'new', used ibook on ebay and so have no manual. The guy was nice enough to send it with Jaguar installed though, so I popped over to amazon, and bought this little guide. I am up and running, with an updated ISP, browser (safari, free at apple), and cooking along with icons making sense and configurations configured, ALL because of this little book! Now I know I have to get one of those big heavy books for the Big Stuff, but I am good to go in the meantime.

I am a recent convert from the 'PC' world to the MAC world. I was looking for a book to get me into the MAC quickly and easily. I am very computer literate on the 'PC' but needed the translation into the Apple world. A friend of mine has praised Greg Simsic's books on Photoshop, so I knew this would probably be a good book to consider. I have been very happy with it. It is concise and clear and seems to point out all the things I need to know to become comfortable with the MAC. It is slim enough I can keep it in the bag with my G4 laptop-always ready for quick reference. There is a very thorough index and table of contents to get you to what you need to know. And the information is clear and to the point. It seems to cover all of the basic information for me to get around the OSX system and its applications. I cannot believe the reasonable price on this book. I don't think I have ever bought a computer book [this price]. What a bargain this book is ...

I've been using Mac computers for more than a decade, but I have to confess my first bootup of OSX was a jarring experience. Where'd my control panels go? What's the dock? Where are my files? For the first time ever, I decided to go out and buy a guidebook to a Macintosh product.

Which brought me to this guide to OS X Jaguar conducted by friendly natives Greg Simsic and Katy Bodenmiller. The entire Simsic/Bodenmiller series is a tonic for anyone who resents the condescension of that "For Dummies" series and its ilk; rather than treating its reader like a slow third-grader, Simsic and Bodenmiller get down to business without all the superciliousness that keeps all self-respecting Mac users far away from those little black and yellow Cliff-Note's-like books. At last, a software guide I don't have to be embarrassed to read in public.

With its learned, front-porch and down-home idiom, Start! takes the reader from startup to moviemaking with savvy tips for everything in between. The layout of the book is as clean, logical, and as easy to navigate as OSX itself. Perhaps the greatest achievement of this book is that Simsic and Bodenmiller are able to address two very different audiences-the die-hard Mac devotee just making the switch from OS9, as well as the newly PC-cured-without wasting the time of either. If Jaguar makes you pine for nine, get this book. You'll never look back.

Greg Simsic and Katy Bodenmiller have written the PERFECT beginner's guide to Mac OSX. I teach OSX classes to new Macintosh users (univ. faculty) and I've gone thru lots of OSX books and materials. This is by far the best I've seen. Simple, straightforward, immediately to-the-point. It's written with a clarity and understanding of new users that is hard to find in many of the intro-level books. Greg's books have always been among my favorites, and this ranks with the best.

This book is excellent. It is very thorough and easy to understand. There is sample code in every chapter so the concepts are very clear.

I have been using subfiles in RPGIV for many years - this book taught me some new tricks I wasn't aware of!

This is THE subfile book for AS/400 RPG programmers.

Mr. Vandever approaches the subject with a sense of humor, lots of examples, and excellent technique. The examples are written in ILE RPG IV (RPG III programmers will find the book useful, as well), and do a nice job of showing off recent RPG IV enhancements by incorporating them in the examples.

I have developed lots of subfile programs, and read the other books on the subject. This is by far the best treatment of the subject that I have seen.

As a programmer new to RPG 4 and programming for the AS/400, I needed help with subfiles. This book proved easy to read (I can't say I've read it through, but enough to get what I needed) and there are lots of helpful code examples. I used the sample program for a page-at-time subfile application almost verbatim to get started on one of my programs, which saved a considerable amount of time and effort. Overall this book has been quite useful for me.

Book really explains subfiles in terms anyone can understand. The CD/ROM has sample code that you can use immediately as "models" to develop your own programs. Author does an excellent job of explaining how subfiles work. But if you are like me, you will develop several subfile "skeleton" programs for your own future use. That's where the examples can really help...