Microsoft Books

While this book is about using Microsofts Project 2003 Software it contains a wealth of information about leadership and business and street smarts of managing yourself. Many times in life we get so involved we "can't see the forest because of the trees". Boged down in details we lose sight of the big picture. Ron provides clarity that can help anyone move forward with laser like effeciency, if they want. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to live larger, and be more successful. Lee Holden

I recommend this book to anyone getting started in PM

I have just started using this application and this book has turned me in to a confident user. All of my departments projects will now go on to Project 2000. Ron not only explains how to use Project, he also describes the principles behind them and the common problems that can occur while trying to run a project. He also explains the importance of "iced mochas and pistachios" and other necessities.
the book is well written, applicable and easy to read. Ron's Mum should be proud :)

I was just hoping to find a book on how to use MS Project 2000, but instead I found an excellent reference on project management that also teaches MS Project. That is the value of this book - it teaches good project management skills, and how MS Project can help you reach your goals. I especially recommend this to project management rookies.

Everything is explained so that is easy to understand, even amusing sometimes. I think a book like this would be perfect for a beginning course on project management.

If you are doing any developing on an Access 2.0 platform and want to create better then the average application, this is the book to own. I own three other Access books and the one I keep returning to is the "Handbook". Affectionately refered to as as the "Bible", my friends and I point out page numbers to the solutions we need when brain storming. It covers even undocumented features that are available with winning detail and the disk included allows you to pop the code in right where you need it. Even novice programmers can pick up this book and get on the road to building killer applications. This book helped me build an imaging system for a client and made me look like God's gift to consulting. Now they buy me lunch every time I see them. It is a must for the application developer. I can't wait for the Access 97 version

If you are looking for an introductory book on Access 2.0, this is not that book. Use the MS manual and the F1 key. A lot. But once you have a basic understanding, and want to build a 'good' app, don't start without this book. If you believe that code can be beautiful and elegant you'll appreciate the book even more. The samples and examples on the accompanying disk will save you much more than the price of the book. And you'll learn a ton in the process.

The best book I have found on MS Access 2.0. I originally bought it because it contains information about how to dynamically resize forms. It it a great reference manual and you can check out some of the code at Sybex website.

I bought the Access 95 version of this book, and later was forced to buy the book to study a particular Access 2 feature. I was struck by how much value the book adds. To me, this is more of an in-depth introduction to Access development than any book outside the "Building Applications" manual. It far surpasses that manual in terms of explanation and samples.

A ~1400 page book chock full of good information and Access 2.0 application development and Access Basic coding. I've used at least 2 full Post-It tape flag boxes in marking the important sections of my book with colored tabs. This book covers everything from SQL syntax to interface development and writing run-time applications. This is truly a must have book for the Access developer

I am a .NET developer (MCP).

I bought this book because our company launches a new dev project for providing alerts to customers on their financial data (wires, etc.), and I've read that SQL NS is way better than any custom app.

First of all, now that I've read most of the book (and worked through all the samples), I totally support that info.

Secondly (yet very important), I swear I have never had a technical book that was as easy to read and comprehend as this one!
Microsoft is inclined to use some sort of "bureaucratic English" on MSDN, which is a pain in the neck to understand for someone like me (apparently, English is not my native language).
However, even though the author is a Development Lead for SQL NS at Microsoft, his book is as easy to read as my favourite science fiction books (and far easier to read than most of fantasy books like those by Tolkien).

The examples in this book lead you from the most basic concepts of NS to the most advanced features such as developing a custom delivery protocol or a custom standalone event provider.
All you need to start with it is basic knowledge of T-SQL (or, just any flavor of SQL) and XML (REALLY basic!).

And, yes, it's true, you can build a fully functional prototype in less than 2 weeks. I did.

It's a pity that the maximum number of stars is 5.

This book is truly a masterpiece.
A must-have for everybody working with data-driven applications.

It's 600 pages of "SQLNS as a way of life", from beginning to end. It explores setup (without any gratuitous screen shots of setup, THANK YOU), configuration, programming instances and applications, writing the processing configuration files, the subscription management application. There are chapters about custom event providers, formatters, and delivery protocol; there is an example of each. But of course, where this book shines most (is shine most the correct construct? hmmm...) is in the description of internals, tuning, and troubleshooting. That's where it's invaluable. I still remember going over "quantum theory" and all its permutations when I read that chapter.

If you use SQLNS as a notification application framework, it's very easy to get a first instance working, but when your app gets popular and you need 10 more just like it immediately, working with SQLNS quickly becomes all-consuming, that's what I meant by "SQLNS as a way of life". If you're looking to "check out" SQLNS or see if its "right" for your application that's fine too, the preface even gets you quickly up to speed on the SQLNS lingo. I also remember Shyam writing to me a few times about the "its not a custom delivery channel, its a custom delivery protocol". In any case, there's *no way* you can be dissapointed with this book.

This book has been very well written and covers all the aspects of Notification Services a developer must know about. Not only are the various concepts explained very well, the numerous examples and code samples given make this an easy read as well.

One of the key sections of the book is how to troubleshoot your NS application which is the USP of this book, seeing that such treatment to that particular area has not been given anywhere else.

I would strongly recommend this book to anyone who is interested in developing NS applications.

This is a book well worth reading from beginning to end, from preface to appendix. I have done so twice, with the result that I have learned SQL-NS well enough to explain its concepts and architecture to my teammates and higher-ups and to embark upon design and development of notification apps of my own. Mr. Pather puts mastery of this platform within your reach. His pedagogical approach is exemplary, for its organization, pacing, clarity, style and tone. And he covers absolutely everything you need to know about SQL-NS. I wish every computer book out there were written this way.

I would highly recommend this book for anybody developing Sql Server 2000 Notifications Services applications. This book fills the gaps in the Books Online, which, for a large scale application are very important.

The book is structured to provide quick, step-by-step implementation instructions as well as detailed explanations of the hows and whys of Notification Services.

I was particularly grateful for Part III of the book that details optimization, deployment and administration requirements.

Another invaluable part of the book is the chapter on setting up your development environment. I had to do my first application before the publication of this book and I will tell you that had I had this book then, the time I would have saved would have paid for the price of the book many times over.

I purchased this book, among others, to learn more about the compact framework. This has ended up being the one that is always on my desk and constantly referred to. There is information in here that is not on any google search, and the code used by the author to demonstrate complicated operations (such as creating opacity in CF forms), is easier and clearer than I have seen anywhere else. A very good book, and well worth purchasing.

Definitely a good book: I found it very complete and easy to read. Useful and interesting, straightaway.

Got 2 copies for my moble development team. The book is simply invaluable. Either you read cover to cover, or select any chapter of special interest the result is in depth information and guidance. Very often our two copies are not enough for everyone in the team.

It is like my bitacora or bible when i am offline. I guess it has a little of everything you need to know in very compact book (i thought a 600 book will be wider but the size is great)

This book is for new and existing mobile application developers who already have some experience developing applications using the .NET Framework, either desktop or compact version. If you are new to .NET, first read "Microsoft Visual C# 2005 Step By Step" by John Sharp or "Microsoft Visual Basic 2005 Step By Step" by Michael Halvorson. Those books can teach you the programming basics, and you will then be prepared to use this book to learn mobile application development. This book can help you develop mobile applications using .NET Compact Framework 2.0 and will introduce you to some of the new features that are in .NET Compact Framework version 3.5, which will be released with the next release of Visual Studio, currently code-named "Orcas."

Along the way, the book highlights features that are new to .NET Compact Framework 2.0 so that the developer who has experience building applications using the version 1.0 product can identify new features that are helpful. However, the main purpose of this book is to give you the essential information you need to design and build applications that work on a constrained device such as a Pocket PC or Smartphone, or on embedded hardware. It instructs you as to how to build and debug applications, how to design GUIs that work on small devices, and how to deploy applications. It also delves into problems that are unique to mobile device applications, such as how to design and build applications that work well with unreliable, slow network connections, which is the usual state of affairs with phone-enabled mobile devices. This book is a handbook for the mobile developer that explains how to tackle the common problems that mobile application developers encounter. The book is divided into three parts:

Part 1, Mobile Application Development Essentials, contains six chapters that everyone should read because they take you through topics that all mobile application developers must understand.

Chapter 1, ".NET Compact Framework--a Platform on the Move," is an introduction to the .NET Compact Framework and explains the tools you need to build applications for smart devices.

Chapter 2, "Building a Microsoft Windows Forms GUI," explains how to build effective Windows Forms applications on personal digital assistants (PDAs) and Smartphones.

Chapter 3, "Using SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition and Other Data Stores," looks at data persistence on devices in SQL Server 2005 Compact Edition databases and how you can build a graphical user interface that binds to data.

Chapter 4, "Catching Errors, Testing, and Debugging," shows you how to test and debug your applications on real devices and emulators, and how to trap and handle errors at run time.

Chapter 5, "Understanding and Optimizing .NET Compact Framework Performance," is about creating applications that perform well, something that requires a little more care to achieve on a smart device with limited RAM and storage than it does in a desktop application.

Chapter 6, "Completing the Application: Packaging and Deployment," looks at packaging and deployment and how Visual Studio 2005 makes it easy to build installation packages so that you can install your application on your target devices.

Part 2, Solutions for Challenges in Mobile Application Development, contains 10 chapters that examine areas that present particular challenges to applications running on a smart device.

Chapter 10, "Security Programming for Mobile Applications," is about security programming, an essential topic for any software developer, but of particular interest to mobile application developers who are responsible for keeping valuable data secure on a mobile device that can be lost or stolen, and must send data over public communications networks such as the Internet.

Chapter 11, "Threading," looks at how to do multithreaded programming in the .NET Compact Framework.

Chapter 12, "Graphics Programming" shows how to present UI that looks more polished and professional than one that is built using only the standard Microsoft Windows Forms controls from the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Toolbox.

Chapter 13, "Direct3D Mobile", discusses how 3-D graphics can be implemented on a Windows Mobile 5.0-powered device using Direct3D. It starts simply with 2D graphics and then gradually moves into 3D graphics.

Chapter 14, "Interoperating with the Platform," explains how to call native APIs that are available in the underlying Windows CE operating system to perform tasks that are not possible using the .NET Compact Framework APIs alone.

Chapter 15, "Building Custom Controls", looks at developing custom Windows Forms controls that you can use in .NET Compact Framework applications.

Chapter 16, "Internationalization", explains how to create applications that are easily localizable to different cultures and languages.

Chapter 17, "Developing with Windows Mobile", looks at the Windows Mobile 5.0 managed APIs, a set of APIs that are unique to mobile devices and that expose system information and allow programmatic access to data stores such as Microsoft Office Outlook Mobile contacts, calendars, and tasks lists.

Part 3, New Developments, consists of a single chapter that provides an early look at the next version of Visual Studio and the next version of the .NET Compact Framework, version 3.5. The latest version adds new features for querying data collections, messaging, testing, and many other innovations and enhancements.

I am an ancient programmer switching from C to .NET. I have read a lotta books in my time and this is the best presentation and layout of a book I have ever seen. Its easy to read. Content is great. I wish I had found it first in my conversion to .NET. I am so impressed that I am checking out the other Murach titles for something to buy.

I needed to learn ADO.NET for my job and this book was the best on the topic I read the entire book in about 3 weeks. Everything is explained wonderfully. I love how the examples are laid out on the right with explanations on the left. I also really found the program files extremely helpful. I opened each chapters program and followed right along with the book. All the examples are already created so that you can see how they work and even modify them.

I liked this book so much that I also bought the ASP.NET, SQL, and Visual Basic 2005...all topics I need to brush up on. As far as I can tell these other books follow the same great format.

From someone who thousands of dollars worth of technical and programming books...these are great even for beginners. However if you are not familiar with vb2005 get murach's visual basic 2005 to read first.

As with the other Murach Press books I have reviewed, this book is extremely readable. It shows step-by-step how to develop database applications with VB. NET 2005 and ADO.NET. This book is best suited to someone new to database development with Visual Studio 2005 but that has a passing familiarity with VB syntax. If you are unfamiliar with flow control statements and VB syntax, you might want to look at Murach's "Visual Basic 2005" book first. I highly recommend this book for entry to mid level developers.

ADO.NET is a huge and sometimes daunting topic to attempt to cover, but in traditional Murach fashion, this book has the capacity to make its reader an expert if read cover to cover. All of the important topics are coverered, including use of the base objects, data binding, typed vs. untyped data sets, and most importantly (in my opinion): use of object data sources.

The best part of Murach books (including this one), aside from the paired page layout, is that they make no assumption about the reader's skill level, and cover enough background on each topic to ensure that you will come away with a thorough understanding of not just what and how, but also why.

Both beginner and expert programmers alike will find this book extremely useful, and it's a great addition to the Murach family of programming reference and tutorial books.

I am a C# developer but when I started browsing this book I couldn't help it but to continue reading it. It is not only about the VB language itself, but instead, how to use it so solve software problems. It teaches how to better write software, best practices and approaches.
This book doesn't cover all the theory in the world about a topic. Also, not all topics. But it tells you how to use them and what to watch for.
I am glad to have read it.

I have partially read so many bad romance novels recently (e.g., boy meets girl & saves the day). The plot of this book was unique and kept me reading straight through. The characters were very likable (the hero was not the overbearing Alpha male so often written into a romance novel). I did not read the other books yet in the trilogy - this was my first Holling book. Not having read the other two was not a problem for me. I hope her other books are as entertaining.

I truly enjoyed this series. There is so much depth and emotion in all three books. My Shadow Warrior concludes the story of the three sisters; Isobel, Gillian and Rose. Rose is a strong heroine, intent on saving her dying father at any cost. She seeks out the Wizard of the North, William in hopes that he will be able to save her father using his powers. After a rocky start he agrees to travel home with Rose to heal her father. The story is romantic and dark with lots of sexual chemistry. Deidra, William's daughter who is the heroine of My Immortal Protector (my favorite Holling book) is introduced in this book.

The fascination with the paranormal implies a big dose of imagination; Jen Holling is creating three heroines of different mystical powers: Isobel, Gillian and Rose MacDonell; in My Shadow Warrior, they merge the powers toward solving the mystery of the illness of Allan MacDonell, their father, and the fate of Lilian MacDonell, their mother.
Must read the entire trilogy

I am a die hard fan of romantic novels. I have all three of the series and I absolutely love them they are all really good.

This is the third installment of The Brides of the Bloodstone trilogy. It's the story of Rose, youngest of the three MacDonell sisters. While they were little girls, their mother, a powerful witch, was burned at the stake. In fear for their lives, their father hid them separately. Now many years later, and on his deathbed from a mysterious illness, the MacDonell has summoned his daughters home.

Their lives are still in danger so he has arranged each of them to be married to men he can entrust with their safety. Rose, the youngest and blessed with the healing touch, is betrothed to Jamie MacPherson, a childhood friend she hasn't seen in years. Her wedding, however, has been postponed so she can devote herself to discovering the source of her father's illness.

Despite her many efforts, her father continues to deteriorate. To Rose's mind, her only hope is William MacKay, a gifted healer also known as the Wizard of the North. Since her many letters to him have gone unanswered, Rose decides to travel to his fortress to see him in person.

William is determined to shun the girl who has traveled many miles to see him, but curiosity forces him to disguise himself and seek her out. What he finds is a beautiful woman who is dedicated to helping others, even at risk to herself.

His fascination with her finally forces him to see her and eventually agree to travel to MacDonell castle to see her father. But in truth there is a sinister plot behind the MacDonell's illness and his wife's death and this mysterious enemy will stop at nothing to get what he wants.

This was such a great ending to a wonderful trilogy. The plot of the MacDonnell's illness and the mother's death at the stake is woven throughout all three books. It is finally resolved in this last tale but what an ending. Jen Holling has done a masterful job weaving several storylines together to create an enchanting tale of love, treachery, and greed.

I am an intermediate programmer, who in the past, has done some Visual Basic 6 and Win32 API integration programming. After learning VB.NET and C#, I found that the .NET Framework was missing some functionality of the Win32 API, which surprised me a little since Microsoft is really pushing .NET as the "API" of choice for developers.

I agree with the book that the .NET Framework is mostly targeted at business developers and the Internet for B2B and B2C applications, as well as internal Enterprise applications. Having said that, I have found the .NET framework lacking, and as the author points out, most likely due to how young it is in comparison to the Win32 API.

This book will get you up and running with making those Win32 API calls when you can't find that same functionality duplicated in the .NET Framework. There isn't much documentation on this subject matter on MSDN or the web (searching on Google), so this is pretty much it. The author did a great job, however, at times, the examples were a little light or topics weren't explained as thoroughly as they should have been. For example, the author will tell you what data type he used in place of a native Win32 data type, but doesn't clearly explain his reasoning for the choice. But other than that small complaint, this book is a must have for any .NET developer.

Let's face it, .NEt is really cool, but it isn't a finished product. For everything else, there's this book. He has some Great examples and explains everything amazingly well. I'm a book junkie and this is definitely one of the best books I've come across recently. I think this book would be a tremendous asset to anyone who wants to learn how to get around .NET's current limitations.

.Net Framework Solutions is a very useful resource for those .Net developers (using C# or VB.Net) who want to access the Win32 api from their .Net programs.A no of working examples (with source code available on accompanying CD) and lucid writing style makes this book a pleasure to read and can be very useful to avoid the traps in calling Win32 API. This book assures that you are not stuck with some problem because the .Net Framework does not provide support(which still lacks support for a no of Win32 APIs.)

If you are doing .NET -> Native interop., this book should pretty have almost all that you need. Note that it does not cover COM (RCW) interop in that much detail and does not talk about CCW (COM -> .NET). However, the coverage of MarshalAs() and the clever examples that show how to deal with the complex DirectX structures are alone worth the price of admission.

What I liked best was the author didn't take the cop out solution (managed C++) unless it was absolutely necessary. Most of the code examples in the book are in C# and this might be of some concern to the VB.NET programmers. The chapters are well organized and there's an appendix with 50+ good tips on PInvoke. If you are still struggling with your PInvoke interop problem after reading this book, it's time to bring out the heavy weight (Adam Nathan's bible) -- good luck!!!

Atul

This is a great book for developers seeking to understand how to translate C++ datatypes in the Win32 API functions into C# and VB.NET. It's not in-depth like Dan Appleman's VB's Guide to the Win32 API in past years, but it's the first of its' kind for .NET. My only wish is that the author not have spent so much time on DirectX and instead provided more general examples of other API calls. DirectX coverage should have been left for another book aimed specifically at that technology.

If you want to start programming network and distributed systems in Pocket PC platform this is the book for you.

Juan Carlos Olivares Rojas
http://mail.cenidet.edu.mx/~jcolivares04c/

The content is amazing covering a lot of issues on Pocket PC programming. Very detailed and easy to understand. A lot of code samples making life so much easier! A must for every Pocket PC developer.

Any developer can benefit from this useful book. Combining the best aspects of a users' guide and a reference manual, the book has any information a Pocket PC programmer would need, in a format that's easy to use and readable. The index, FAQs and code samples make it easy to find just the information you're looking for, with descriptions providing more context and background. And I particularly enjoyed the funny and appropriate quotes from movies or TV programs at the beginning of each section.

There is somewhat of a dearth of books on Pocket PC development in general, and so that there is a book of this quality devoted to Pcoket PC Networking is pretty amazing. And "Networking" really means more than just what most folks might consider Networking, like Desktop Synchronization, Infared and a chapter on Pocket PC Phone issues.

Before I picked up a copy of Steve's book, I had no idea that there was so much to network programming on the PocketPC. Now, I wouldn't want to do that programming without this book. Thanks, Steve!

I have read a few programming books and I can honestly say that no single one has had more positive impact on my level of programming skill and knowledge than this one. Let me preface this by saying that this is not a beginner book. That is, if you have never programmed with C# before, this is not the book for you. However if you have just finished a "beginner" book and are looking for the next step, then I highly recommend this book for you. Whether you are planning on getting into ASP.Net development, WinForms, SOA, or even XNA, this book will provide you with a firm grasp of the language fundamentals that will make jumping into any or all of the above much easier. The book is broken down into several chapters, each one covering different key topics of the C# language such as basic data types (what is boxing? How does the compiler handle value types vs reference types and why should you care?), Generics, Serialization, Reflection, and COM Interop, just to name a few. Mr Balena also maintains an online blog at the Code Architects site and has even been kind enough to personally answer a few of my questions that I had about the topics covered in the book. I can't recommend this book more, it really did make the difference for me between being a C# enthusiast and a professional C# developer.

Francesco Bakena is a well-known author, the book is good.
The themes and the examples are clean. The same line as Visual Basic. I recommend.
Manoel de Assis - Brazil - [...]

Programming Microsoft Visual C# 2005: The Base Class Library (Pro-Developer)

I sought and purchased this book for the purpose of moving to C# 2005 from 2003. I have an extensive library of language and class references, guides and detailed texts for .NET 1.1. Much of that information will, of course, serve me well with the newer language, so what I sought was a good, basic introduction to C# 2005 that covered the important differences in the base classes. This book seems to have been written exactly for me!

Balena has an easy style of writing, also, that just seems to allow the information to jump right into your brain. There are other authors whose technical expertise is obvious to me, and whose books I regularly look to buy, but whose writing have quirks that can distract me at times. Balena is not such an author. Clearly, he knows how to make proper use of the IBrain.InputInformation(T info) method, rather than using the older, weakly-typed IBrain.InputInformation(object info) method. OK. Bad joke. But I hope you got my point!

If you have C# skills of no less then an advanced beginner, and want to find yourself securely in the intermediate range, then you have found the right book. Read it once and you will find your skill set drastically improved. Read it twice and study it thoroughly, and you will find yourself getting turned to for help from your more senior developers. Quite the ego booster.

It's well written, has appropriate examples for the target audience, and doesn't get bogged down in beginning C# material. It has plenty of advanced material, if that is what you are looking for.

Having sweated through thousands of pages of other C# books, I found Francesco Balena's eloquence as refreshing as a perfectly chilled Corona. It immediately tightened my loose grip on particulars such as string formatting, delegates, generics, regular expressions and interoperability. And it is the best discussion of the base classe I've ever seen. Be aware that this book does NOT intend to teach programming. However, if you're someone who can code in some OOP language, knows C# syntax, and seeks professional proficiency in this language, then in my opinion, there is no better book you could own.

I happened upon this Bible at a Scholastic Book Fair that was held at my workplace and bought it on a whim. I had been disappointed in the past with other children's Bibles that I had purchased because none seemed to hold my child's interest. This one, however, is completely different. My 5 year old son LOVES this Bible. He asks every night for stories from the Bible, even over other favorites like Pokemon. I like how the book is broken up into "chapters" that flow together. It really reads like an adventure book. The stories are accurate but written at an appropriate developmental level for preschool and young school age children. The pictures are very well done as well and really keep my son's attention. Sometimes he will just sit and look at the pictures and "read" the stories that he has memorized. I HIGHLY recommend this Bible to anyone with young children. You will not be disappointed!

Most childrens' Bibles either oversimplify the stories in the Bible, or change them so they are inaccurate. We were looking for something to start teaching our three year old the stories from the Bible and a friend lent us this book. Our son didn't want to stop reading it. We liked it so much for its accuracy yet understandability for younger children that we gave it as Christmas gifts this year to several friends and all our family with young children.

We gave this book to a little girl in our church. Before we wrapped it, we started reading it and determined that adults love it too because we couldn't put it down. The colored pictures are fantastic and make you feel like you're right there with the characters. The stories are explained really well. We got our money's worth.

My 4yo son LOVES this!! He kept after us until we read it from cover to cover in about a week at bedtime! He lies in bed and looks at the pictures. Can't say enough about the illustrations - beautiful and well done. I initially found it at Walmart and picked it up. It is so simple looking on the front but on the inside it is beautiful!(hmmm) I did not realize it was going to be my BEST childrens Bible ever! I have not found one that I like better. You won't go wrong with this one! I am ordering more for my church Sunday school class to be given away.

I bought a box of these for a church mission that caters to people released from prison. Many of them have reading problems and one of my friends there found that this Bible was very effective at allowing these adults to feel comfortable about reading the Bible on their own. Kids love it too.