CMMI(R): Guidelines for Process Integration and Product Improvement Review

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CMMI(R): Guidelines for Process Integration and Product Improvement ReviewLast year my company was rated a CMM level 2 organization, and we decided to begin the transition to CMMi Level 3. Even though we are working with a consultant, the amount of new material was daunting... 'What is the difference between CMM and CMMi?', 'What is the staged vs. continuous representation?', 'what are all of the se SW/SE and iPPD pieces of the CMMi? Are they Optional?'. There are a TON of questions, and answers can be hard to find, especially when the 'official' docs are about as exciting to read as the little pamphlets that come with perscription medicines.
This book answers those questions and more, explaining in pretty practical language what the CMMi is, what the structure of the whole model is about, and finally tunneling down into the details of each process area. I wish I had that knowledge when we were making some of our initial decisions.
I'm not exactly a fan of the CMM/CMMi methodologies, but I have experienced first hand the result of the improvement efforts we have introduced. Ultimately though, I don't think it matters much WHAT methodology you are following; a group of people interested in improving themselves will do well with any methodology, CMMi, RUP, Agile, or otherwise. If you are committed to the CMMi approach, this book needs to be in your toolchest. If you are evaluating different process improvement efforts, this book will help you understand the CMMi approach. It doesn't provide any comparison or contrast to other methodologies; for that you would need other reference material.CMMI(R): Guidelines for Process Integration and Product Improvement OverviewThe Capability Maturity Model (CMM) is a framework widely used to assess an organization's processes in carrying out specific activities, to guide the implemention of improvements, and to measure progress. There currently are CMM frameworks for software (documented in our CMM book), systems, acquisition, and human resources. The new Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) is an attempt by the Department of Defense and a consortium of companies to integrate the CMMs, which often differ in significant ways, into a single coherent model. The CMMI includes two representations -- a staged representation (where organizations can rise from one level to another) and a continuous representation (where there are steady improvements). The market will decide which representation is preferable; this book covers them both with practical examples that allow readers to assess their level of maturity, and most importantly, improve it!

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Professional C++ (Programmer to Programmer) Review

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Professional C++ (Programmer to Programmer) ReviewThis is a very readable and helpful guide to C++ OOP. It is meant to be a programming guide rather than merely covering syntax (as C++ Primer does for example). As it says on the back cover, "You'll learn simple, powerful techniques used by C++ professionals, little-known features that will make your life easier, and reusable coding patterns that will bring your basic C++ skills to the professional level."
Coming into this with extensive C and other programming experience, including some C++ many years ago, this book was ideal for me. I especially appreciated the authors' ability to give a very good foundation for developing well-designed, robust C++ code. I went from a very solid C programmer to developing using a new C++ mentality in a couple of weeks.
The authors are obviously quite experienced and knowledgeable in C++ and OOP, and write in an enjoyable, easy-to-follow manner. They don't just present C++, they discuss every aspect of how to develop great code using C++. They take a very reasonable and competent approach to coding, pointing out pitfalls and providing much guidance together with good explanations of their reasoning. This book doesn't just tell you how you can do something in C++, it explains how to do it well.
Professional C++ is for an intermediate to advanced programmer with either some C++ experience or a good deal of other programming experience. It is not meant to be an exhaustive exposition of C++ (although it does cover all the basics of the language), but it is certainly sufficient to get a developer not only up and coding, but doing so with better style and more competence than many seasoned C++ professionals.
Some of the many topics I found interesting and useful include: code reuse, software engineering methods (including a several page synopsis of extreme programming), exceptions, STL, frameworks, and design patterns. On some important topics that could be books in themselves, enough material is presented here to give the reader a basic understanding of the subject and an awareness of the issues so that the reader can decide whether to pursue the subject further.
Although this book was all I really needed to get up and going, I found a couple other books also quite helpful, in particular "Object Oriented Design Heuristics" by Arthur J. Riel and the new third edition of "Effective C++" by Scott Meyers.
Professional C++ (Programmer to Programmer) Overview
Geared to experienced C++ developers who may not be familiar with the more advanced features of the language, and therefore are not using it to its full capabilities
Teaches programmers how to think in C++-that is, how to design effective solutions that maximize the power of the language
The authors drill down into this notoriously complex language, explaining poorly understood elements of the C++ feature set as well as common pitfalls to avoid
Contains several in-depth case studies with working code that's been tested on Windows, Linux, and Solaris platforms


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Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide Review

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Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide ReviewThere were lots of great comments on this book on how wonderful it was. Based on those comments, I purchased the book at a local bookstore.
Using Dreamweaver as my design tool, I thought there might be a book where I can learn more about CSS. I already own a couple of good books, but they are light on CSS, and nothing is indexed. I was hoping this book was a 'reference' on every CSS property for CSS1 & CSS2 with a variety of examples. That is exactly what Eric Meyer's book fails to deliver.
For new authors, this book will get you started into the wondeful world of using style sheets - Eric delivers his examples with clear dictation in an editorial style. It's an excellent starting point with good examples and solid explainations on how CSS works.
If you are like me however, an experienced webguy, pass on this book. It does not have a complete list of EVERY CSS property, nor are the examples given robust. The book is written in editorial format, flowing from one topic to the next without really getting into the meat of CSS. It's as if Eric wanted to say something on everything, but in doing so, he limited is ability to offer in-depth explainations of each property and it's power/flexibility.
To sum up, yes, this book is a good tutorial, but NOT a definitive guide. Maybe Eric should of called it the CSS: Definitive Starting Guide To Get You Going. Next time, I'll actually take time to skim through the book at my local computer book store.
N.B. Are all these praises for this book from the author, publisher, or friends of the author to help sell the book? I have my suspicions because a lot of the comments sound 'canned'. Hopefully my review gets published to prove this is not the case.
EVR.Cascading Style Sheets: The Definitive Guide Overview

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Java Swing, Second Edition Review

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Java Swing, Second Edition Review
Pavel Vorobiev and I are currently finishing up an 'advanced' Swing book consisting mainly of examples ("Swing", Manning publications). We have referenced the Swing source code nonstop. Apart from this, we feel that Java Swing is the best Swing reference money can buy. This book is not an API docs dump. It is a high quality reference book for GUI developers who are prepared to do their job professionaly, not blindly. If you are looking for a hand-holding tutorial this book is not for you (for this I would suggest Up to Speed With Swing).
Java Swing is very well organized and full of original explanation. I encourage potential readers to disregard other comments claiming that this book is API repetitive or doesn't explain enough. No book can cover every possible situation that can arise in the creation of a GUI, and no book will fully explain all of the inner workings of each Swing component and UI delegate. Swing is a very complex and extensive library with some very interesting and powerful mechanisms working behind the scenes. Without a doubt, Java Swing is the most informative and rich reference available. I recommend it highly.
Matthew Robinson
"Swing", Manning publications
Swing "Tips and Tricks", The Swing ConnectionJava Swing, Second Edition Overview
Swing is a fully-featured user interface development kit for Java applications.Building on the foundations of the Abstract Window Toolkit (AWT), Swing enables cross-platform applications to use any of several pluggable look-and-feels.Swing developers can take advantageof its rich, flexible features and modular components, building elegant user interfaces with very little code.

This second edition of Java Swing thoroughly covers all the features available in Java 2 SDK 1.3 and 1.4. More than simply a reference, this new edition takes a practical approach. It is a book by developers for developers, with hundreds of useful examples, from beginning level to advanced, covering every component available in Swing.

All these features mean that there's a lot to learn. Even setting aside its platform flexibility, Swing compares favorably with any widely available user interface toolkit--it has great depth.Swing makes it easy to do simple things but is powerful enough to create complex, intricate interfaces.

Java Swing, 2nd edition includes :

A new chapter on Drag and Drop
Accessibility features for creating a user interface meeting the needs of all users
Coverage of the improved key binding infrastructure introduced in SDK1.3
A new chapter on JFormattedTextField and input validation
Mac OS X coverage and examples
Coverage of the improved focus system introduced in SDK 1.4
Pluggable Look-and-Feel coverage
Coverage of the new layout manager, SpringLayout, from SDK 1.4
Properties tables that summarize important features of each component
Coverage of the 1.4 Spinner component
Details about using HTML in components
A new appendix listing bound actions for each component
A supporting web site with utilities, examples, and supplemental materials
Whether you're a seasoned Java developer or just trying to find out what Java can do, you'll find Java Swing, 2nd edition an indispensable guide.

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A Discipline for Software Engineering Review

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A Discipline for Software Engineering ReviewThis book's title contains two key words that are woefully missing from most development projects: "discipline" and "engineering". With this book Mr. Humphrey introduced the personal software process (PSP), which subsequently spawned the team software process (TSP). Although the material is over 6 years old and does not seem to have gained wide acceptance in commercial development and project environments, it provides a roadmap to effectively integrating the increasingly popular extreme programming (XP)approach that was developed by Kent Beck.
How does PSP align to XP? Both approaches focus heavily on project planning and estimating, and controlling quality, cost and schedule. Both approaches also use metrics as a baseline and past performance to predict future productivity and quality during the planning and estimation phases of new projects. Moreover, both approaches impose a rigorous discipline at a low level in the development process - PSP at the individual level and XP at the 2-person paired team level. An excellent book on XP that supports this premise is Planning Extreme Programming by Kent Beck and Martin Fowler.
The methods that Mr. Humphrey proposes in this book are the building blocks of an effective XP organization because much of the metrics he proposes for capture, analysis and tracking are the very ones that are key to XP. These methods add the "discipline" into the development process, and "engineering" into the quality approach to any development effort, regardless of whether the methods are aligned to XP or any other methodology. Further, the disciplined engineering approach will provide organizations striving for capability maturity model (CMM) level 4 (managed) or 5 (optimizing) with some valuable tools and techniques with which to achieve these higher levels of maturity. Of course, this is also useful to organizations that are implementing SPICE (Software Process Improvement Capability dEtermination), organizing software process engineering groups, or implementing mature project management methods for development projects.
I agree with a previous reviewer that development is also a social and cognitive discipline, but it is not solely those. The social and cognitive approach will only get you so far. The same is true of the disciplined engineering approach. You need both, and this book is a valuable work for the latter.
In my opinion this book is probably more valuable today then when it was first published because the approach required too much rigor for most organizations to adopt. However, with the growing movement towards XP I believe that this book will add details and techniques that are only superficially addressed in the XP body of knowledge and literature. If you are a proponent of XP this book provides some proven, concrete techniques. If you are striving for higher levels of capability maturity this book (and the companion, Introducing the Team Software Process by Mr. Humphrey) will give you the tools to get to managed, and from there to optimizing. I believe this book is a 5-star classic that was ahead of its time.A Discipline for Software Engineering OverviewThis book from Watts Humphrey broadens his disciplined approach to software engineering. In his earlier book, Managing the Software Process, Humphrey developed concrete methods for managing software development and maintenance. These methods, now commonly practiced, provide programmers and managers specific steps for evaluating and improving their software capabilities. In this book, he scales down those methods to a personal level, helping software practitioners develop the skills and habits they need to plan, track, and analyze large and complex projects more carefully and successfully.

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Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA): Concepts, Technology, and Design Review

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Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA): Concepts, Technology, and Design ReviewThis book is superb. I have read every SOA book available (up until Apr/06) because it's part of my job as a technology research analyst and all-around techno-geek. From those that I have read and studied, this is the only one I feel compelled to write a review about. AND - because I did have to go through it in such detail I'm going to raid my research notes and share with you a detailed review of not just the book, but each of its chapters.
Chapter 1 - Introduction
Nothing special here, this is just a chapter that introduces the rest of the book. Call it a glorified table of contents if you will. At first I felt like skipping it altogether, but then I did what I'm supposed to do for my job and that is read each and every part. In the end, I'm glad I took the time for two reasons: By reading a summary of each of the chapters I got a good feel for what this book was going to cover and what it wasn't going to cover. Secondly, I liked the author's intro stuff about ideal and not so ideal (real) SOA. Kind of insightful and stinging at the same time. Still, though, this is still just a description of other chapters. It's also a chapter you can get for free at the book's web site.
Chapter 2 - Case Studies
Here the author provides background information for the two companies he uses as case studies. If you're into case studies, then you'll definitely want to read through this. But - I found the subsequent samples pretty easy to follow and I think you could get away with skipping this chapter if you really wanted to.
Chapter 3 - Introducing SOA
Here's where I started getting into the meat of the book. If you think you don't understand what soa is or what the industry's made of it or turned it into then you need to read this chapter. It breaks it all down and builds it all up again in a very systematic manner. Make sure you leave this chapter with an understanding of how primitive and contemporary variations of soa are different because the author uses these terms later.
Chapter4 - The Evolution of SOA
Finally someone who makes a distinction between specification and standard and gets it right. This chapter talks about the soa industry and how vendors are responsible for soa but are also causing problems at the same time. How standards organizations are working for soa but also competing at the same time. Pretty interesting stuff and even though this was the least technical chapter, not once was I bored. It ends by comparing Ssoa with older architectures. I especially like how the author differentiates between soa and "traditional" distributed architecture that uses web services. (hint: rpc has a lot to do with it)
Chapter 5 - Web services and primitive soa
I read the author's first soa book last year and this chapter seemed to repeat a few sections from that. But if I remember correctly it goes into more detail and provides case study examples that the first book didn't have. If you're a web services veteran you can probably skip this one.
Chapter 6 -Web Services and Contemporary SOA (Part I: Activity Management and Composition)
Here he goes up a gear and dives right into that scary thing we've been calling ws-* Everything from transactions to context mgmt to orchestration and so on is covered. I really felt the author did a brilliant job building this chapter up by starting with simple meps and building up to activity management and bpel and so on. He really showed how each adds a layer over the other and how all add layers to soa.
Chapter 7 - Web Services and Contemporary SOA (Part II: Advanced Messaging, Metadata, and Security)
Yup, the rollercoast ride continues here as he gets into addressing, reliable messaging, security and other ws-* specs. All of these are specs I had already heard about and I think this type of coverage is appropriate forwhere soa is going. I forgot to mention that in this chapter and 6 he introduces 'in plain english' sections that are hilarious. They are humorous analogies that compare these complex technologies to analogies he writes about a car wash. Good, fresh writing in the usual dull and dry techno world.
Chapter 8 - Principles of Service-Orientation
Essentially a whole bunch of theory about designing services and then eight specific 'principles' (dos and don'ts) about how to design services the right way for soa. I had to go back and reread this chapter after I finished the book. I sort of glanced thru it at first but then found out that later chapters really use these principles. When I went through it again I actually thought this was pretty important stuff. This really is the next oo. You can get this chapter for free at the book web site too.
Chapter 9 - Service Layers
STudy this if you're a application architect or enterprise architect. It shows what you canh do with services built with service-orientation. The diagrams showing different types of layers combined together are pretty cool.
Chapter 10 - SOA Delivery Strategies
If you're a PM you'll love this chapter. It gets into the different phases in a soa project and how you can reorganize them using 'delivery strategies' depending on your budgets and priorities. I'd pay extra close attention to the pros and cons parts where, after documenting these strategies in abstract, the author points out their true colors.
Chapter 11 + 12 - Service-Oriented Analysis I + II
Don't know where to start when it comes to figuring out your services? Well, the author lays it all out here. He provides a process for systemtically breaking down your business logic and divying it up into services. Chapter 12 is like an instruction manual about service model. Being froma web services background this was all new to me.
Chapter 13 - 16 - Service-Oriented Design I, II, III, IV
Roll up your sleeves man, because here is where you get into the real muck of building web services for an soa. There are a bunch of processes that hash out the nitty gritty of wsdl, xsd, and bpel and show you how to build services for the types of layers set up in ch.9. Tons of code and case study samples and tips for design. This is probably the most valuable part of the book for developers and architects.
Chapter 17- Fundamental WS-* Extensions
I forgot tomention that in chapters 6 and 7 no code samples are given. He only covered ws-* specs conceptually. All of the corresponding code is placed in this chapter. A bit inconvenient if you're a developer who wants to see the code while learning about the spec, but not tragic. The neat thing is he ties the code samples into the case studies. This was my first experience with ws-* in real world tyhpe scenarios.
Chapte r18 - SOA Platforms
The author documents j2ee and .net frameworks here first in total abstract and then about how they support the different parts of soa. This was very interesting because it related a lot of the concepts stuff to actual technology and the let you compare different technologies in how they support soa.
I recommend this book to colleagures and clients and I'm recommending it here. If you have questions about SOA then this book probably has the answers you're looking for. I say that because by the time I finished reading it I ran out of questions myself.
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA): Concepts, Technology, and Design OverviewThis is a comprehensive tutorial that teaches fundamental and advanced SOAdesign principles, supplemented with detailed case studies and technologiesused to implement SOAs in the real world.***We'll have cover endorsements from Tom Glover, who leads IBM's WebServices Standards initiatives; Dave Keogh, Program Manager for Visual StudioEnterprise Tools at Microsoft, and Sameer Tyagi, Senior Staff Engineer, SunMicrosystems. All major software manufacturers and vendors are promotingsupport for SOA. As a result, every major development platform now officiallysupports the creation of service-oriented solutions.Parts I, II, and III cover basic and advanced SOA concepts and theory thatprepare you for Parts IV and V, which provide a series of step-by-step "howto" instructions for building an SOA. Part V further contains coverage of WS-*technologies and SOA platform support provided by J2EE and .NET.

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Agile Project Management with Scrum (Microsoft Professional) Review

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Agile Project Management with Scrum (Microsoft Professional) ReviewOur organization recently implemented Scrum, and although the
Beedle/Schwaber book was great to get us off the ground on Scrum
theory, we immediately had many questions once we actually tried to implement it in real life projects. I agree with the notion that Scrum is conceptually easy to understand, but actually quite complex to implement correctly. The scrum forum has been helpful, but we really needed a cohesive reference of situational problems. The APMWS book really hit the nail on the head and delivered what we needed the most: a practical guide to Scrum with anecdotes and "what happens if..." situations from real world Scrum implementations. This came just in time for us, and we are feeling more confident for our upcoming certification class.
The appendices in the back are also very helpful. The "Rules"
appendix is perfect as a quick introduction to Scrum for new Team
members and Product Owners. It's actually quite detailed for being such a short appendix.
Also, for newbies the three main Roles are very nicely explained. We had some misconceptions that were immediately addressed by this book.
Anyway, from a Scrum newbie that is faced with implementation issues, thanks to Ken for putting together a real world implementation guide.Agile Project Management with Scrum (Microsoft Professional) Overview
The rules and practices for Scrum—a simple process for managing complex projects—are few, straightforward, and easy to learn. But Scrum's simplicity itself—its lack of prescription—can be disarming, and new practitioners often find themselves reverting to old project management habits and tools and yielding lesser results. In this illuminating series of case studies, Scrum co-creator and evangelist Ken Schwaber identifies the real-world lessons—the successes and failures—culled from his years of experience coaching companies in agile project management. Through them, you'll understand how to use Scrum to solve complex problems and drive better results—delivering more valuable software faster.

Gain the foundation in Scrum theory—and practice—you need to:

Rein in even the most complex, unwieldy projects
Effectively manage unknown or changing product requirements
Simplify the chain of command with self-managing development teams
Receive clearer specifications—and feedback—from customers
Greatly reduce project planning time and required tools
Build—and release—products in 30-day cycles so clients get deliverables earlier
Avoid missteps by regularly inspecting, reporting on, and fine-tuning projects
Support multiple teams working on a large-scale project from many geographic locations
Maximize return on investment!


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Definitive XML Schema Review

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Definitive XML Schema ReviewThere are quite a few books about XML Schema in the market. There are quite a few freebie tutorials on the web too. These may serve your purpose well enough if you are merely trying to acquire an overview of the subject. But if you are like me, learning XML schema on the job and having trouble finding specific answers as you design a new schema or worse extend an exisiting schema, this book is certainly for you.
Namespaces are a fairly complex topic and they are handled very well in this textbook. Much of my confusion about how to mix and match the SimpleContent, SimpleType, ComplexContent and ComplexType tags vanished after I read the relevant chapters. The last chapter on reuse and extension is a gem and shows that Walmsley is not one of the rapidly proliferating clan of writers whose chapters are mere rephrasings of the manuals. She brings impressive credentials from the W3C and it shows in each page.
I was in the middle of extending a schema when I ran out and bought this book. I ran into some truly murky waters with deterministic and non deterministic schemas when my Microsoft XML parser threw up its hands and refused to validate my XML against my XSD because it was non deterministic. I could find few satisfactory solutions elsewhere. This book gave me all the answers I needed.
If you are a serious schema developer, buy this book, its well worth the money.Definitive XML Schema OverviewThe authoritative XML Schema reference and tutorial!Leverage the full power of XML Schema! In-depth coverage of the approved W3C Recommendation Schema design–practical and thorough Transition help for experienced DTD developers Authoritative! By Priscilla Walmsley–a member of the W3C XML Schema Working GroupTo leverage the full power of XML, companies need shared vocabularies to base their documents and scripts upon. XML Schema makes it possible to create those shared vocabularies-and Definitive XML Schema is the authoritative guide to the standard! Written by Priscilla Walmsley, a member of the W3C working group that created XML Schema, this book explains the W3C Recommendation with unprecedented insight and clarity–and introduces practical techniques for writing schemas to support any B2B, Web service, or content processing application. Coverage includes: How XML Schema provides a rigorous, complete standard for modeling XML document structure, content, and datatypes Working with schemas: Schema composition, instance validation, documentation, namespaces, and more XML Schema building blocks: elements, attributes, and types Advanced techniques: type derivation, model groups, substitution groups, identity constraints, redefinition, and much more An in-depth primer on effective schema design, including naming, document structure, and extensibility considerations Transition guidance for experienced DTD developersDefinitive XML Schema brings together expert guidance for schema design, superior approaches to schema development, and the most systematic XML Schema reference on the market. Whether you're a developer, architect, or content specialist, it's the only XML Schema resource you need!"XML Schema is an incredibly powerful-and complex-document schema language, with such new capabilities as strong typing, modularity, inheritance, and identity constraints. This book guides you through the complexity so you can confidently use that power for your own projects."–Charles F. Goldfarb--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

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Programming PHP Review

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Programming PHP ReviewThe creator of PHP himself, Rasmus Lerdorf, put together a thorough and enlightening guide to PHP. In this book you will find everything you need to know about PHP from variables to a long list of all the PHP functions and how to use them. I found many features of PHP that I had no idea existed (such as creating PDF files). I use this book as a reference for a PHP course I teach, and its examples have been more than helpful to me in designing lesson plans.
The one caveat of this book is that it is not geared toward brand new web programmers. PHP as a language derives from C, C++ and Perl, and if you are not at least somewhat familiar with these langauges, you can get lost in this book. The authors really want to draw a parallel between PHP and its predecessor languages so that programmers can pick up PHP more easily. I really like the fact they try to do that, and it has helped me enjoy this book more. But on the flip side, it will be more difficult for new programmers to read this book. I really hope O'Reilly comes up with a "Learning PHP" book that will be more for beginning programmers, because PHP is a great language to learn, and it would be nice to have books to appeal to all levels.
In any case, for a book about PHP, you can ask for no better book than one written by the author itself. This book does keep up the tradition of professional, useful O'Reilly programming books, and is worth the time for web programmers to read. Thus I think it earns 5 stars.Programming PHP Overview
Programming PHP, 2nd Edition, is the authoritative guide to PHP 5 and is filled with the unique knowledge of the creator of PHP (Rasmus Lerdorf) and other PHP experts. When it comes to creating websites, the PHP scripting language is truly a red-hot property. In fact, PHP is currently used on more than 19 million websites, surpassing Microsoft's ASP .NET technology in popularity. Programmers love its flexibility and speed; designers love its accessibility and convenience.

As the industry standard book on PHP, all of the essentials are covered in a clear and concise manner. Language syntax and programming techniques are coupled with numerous examples that illustrate both correct usage and common idioms. With style tips and practical programming advice, this book will help you become not just a PHP programmer, but a good PHP programmer. Programming PHP, Second Edition covers everything you need to know to create effective web applications with PHP. Contents include:

Detailed information on the basics of the PHP language, including data types, variables, operators, and flow control statements
Chapters outlining the basics of functions, strings, arrays, and objects
Coverage of common PHP web application techniques, such as form processing and validation, session tracking, and cookies
Material on interacting with relational databases, such as MySQL and Oracle, using the database-independent PEAR DB library and the new PDO Library
Chapters that show you how to generate dynamic images, create PDF files, and parse XML files with PHP
Advanced topics, such as creating secure scripts, error handling, performance tuning, and writing your own C language extensions to PHP
A handy quick reference to all the core functions in PHP and all the standard extensions that ship with PHP

Praise for the first edition:

"If you are just getting into the dynamic Web development world or you are considering migrating from another dynamic web product to PHP, Programming PHP is the book of choice to get you up, running, and productive in a short time."

--Peter MacIntrye, eWeek

"I think this is a great book for programmers who want to start developing dynamic websites with PHP. It gives a detailed overview of PHP, lots of valuable tips, and a good sense of PHP's strengths."

--David Dooling, Slashdot.org


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Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity Review

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Joel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity ReviewThere is a fair bit of hard-won wisdom here. It covers every aspect of the programming world, from praise of hardware, through product management and economics, back to testing and coding style, and on and on. There are a few real gems among these 45 essays (plus intro and appendix), untrammeled by the need for consistency. He's certainly unabashed about bucking current fashions, including all the silliness seen under the revival tent of the eXtremists.
At several points, Joel rails against the false economies of making code smaller and sniggers at the people to whom it matters so much, then (ch 39) he rails against the size of a Microsoft runtime support package. He also points out that antialiased fonts, other than things like headlines, are a bad idea. That was already common knowledge around DEC by about 1980, since the visibly blurred margins of characters led to eyestrain as the focussing muscles fruitlessly tried to find the edge. Modern display technology with far smaller pixel sizes seems to have reversed that decision, however, except possibly at the smallest character sizes - a blow-up of a screen capture will often show antialiasing on body text that looks quite good. If he came on a bit less strong to start with, these annoyances would be a lot less annying.
Joel's incredibly high opinion of Joel wore on me after a while. Despite all the good in this book, I had to drag myself through the last half of his pontifications, repetition, and tendency towards the absolute. If you're already a fan of his other writing, that might not bother you. For me, Joel, in his role as high priest in the cult of Joel, became tiresome. I'm sure he's a skilled developer and savvy business man, but I really don't think I'd enjoy meeting him.
//wiredweirdJoel on Software: And on Diverse and Occasionally Related Matters That Will Prove of Interest to Software Developers, Designers, and Managers, and to Those Who, Whether by Good Fortune or Ill Luck, Work with Them in Some Capacity OverviewThis is a selection of essays from the author's Web site, http://www.joelonsoftware.com. Joel Spolsky started the web log in March 2000 in order to offer his insights, based on years of experience, on how to improve the world of programming. His extraordinary writing skills, technical knowledge, and caustic wit have made him a programming guru. This log has become infamous among the programming world, and is linked to more than 600 other websites and translated into 30+ languages!This book covers every imaginable aspect of software programming, from the best way to write code to the best way to design an office in which to write code. The book will relate to all software programmers (Microsoft and Open Source), anyone interested in furthering their knowledge of programming, or anyone trying to manage a programmer. Spolsky will be writing an introduction for the book.

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Joe Celko's Trees and Hierarchies in SQL for Smarties, (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems) Review

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Joe Celko's Trees and Hierarchies in SQL for Smarties, (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems) ReviewI love and savor each of Celko?s books for their thoroughness, depth and surprises. However, with this book I am little disappointed because it showed his favorite solutions and omitted many common solutions that are better in various real-world situations. Most algorithms provided in the book are for overnight processing, not real-time update.

Omitted is the most common way hierarchies are represented in Data Warehouses using a "hierarchy bridge table". See Kimball?s book "Data Warehouse Toolkit" for more detail (yet not enough detail to give a Celko-like exploration of the topic). The bridge table solution trades away storage space for greater speed by creating a record for every path enumeration.

The book?s primary focus is on strict hierarchies. Not enough attention is given to convergent graphs and other arbitrary directed acyclic graphs, like bill of materials that reuse assemblies, where the nested sets model fails (p.164).

Also missing is maintenance of historical versions of the hierarchy, often required by financial applications.

Section 9.3 on the extremely powerful DB2 ?WITH? operator is too slim, especially since it is a SQL-99 standard and is now available with Microsoft SQL Server. If you work with hierarchies or acyclic graphs in DB2 or SQL Server take the time to learn how to use ?common subquery expressions?.

By all means if you work with hierarchies you must buy this book. No doubt the Second revison of this book will blow us away.
Joe Celko's Trees and Hierarchies in SQL for Smarties, (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Data Management Systems) Overview

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Essential Business Process Modeling Review

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Essential Business Process Modeling ReviewGregor Hohpe should have read past the first 100 pages. This book is good on theory, poor on practice (does that remind you of any other SOA book?).
The examples Havey provides of "non-trivial" systems in the back are, in fact, quite trivial. What's worse is that when he ventures into the territory of "advanced" features, he gets lost. For example, on p.270, he provides an eventHandlers section, but comments it out saying that it doesn't work. I was able to get it to work as written with just a minor tweak, but he slags off the vendor instead (p.284) and proposes an awkward hack for a workaround (p.277). Then, on p.308, he presents us with a piece of parallelism that depends for its success on the use of a correlationSet. This is supposed to be clever, but is, in fact, just poor programming practice. Not only that, but it doesn't work! It can't possibly, not the way it's written. He just sent it off to the publisher without testing. We're not talking about simple syntax errors here... this is a fundamental conceptual flaw in what he's proposing. Pretty basic stuff for him to be stubbing his toe on.Essential Business Process Modeling Overview
Ten years ago, groupware bundled with email and calendar applications helped track the flow of work from person to person within an organization. Workflow in today's enterprise means more monitoring and orchestrating massive systems. A new technology called Business Process Management, or BPM, helps software architects and developers design, code, run, administer, and monitor complex network-based business processes
BPM replaces those sketchy flowchart diagrams that business analysts draw on whiteboards with a precise model that uses standard graphical and XML representations, and an architecture that allows it converse with other services, systems, and users.
Sound complicated? It is. But it's downright frustrating when you have to search the Web for every little piece of information vital to the process. Essential Business Process Modeling gathers all the concepts, design, architecture, and standard specifications of BPM into one concise book, and offers hands-on examples that illustrate BPM's approach to process notation, execution, administration and monitoring.

Author Mike Havey demonstrates standard ways to code rigorous processes that are centerpieces of a service-oriented architecture (SOA), which defines how networks interact so that one can perform a service for the other. His book also shows how BPM complements enterprise application integration (EAI), a method for moving from older applications to new ones, and Enterprise Service BUS for integrating different web services, messaging, and XML technologies into a single network. BPM, he says, is to this collection of services what a conductor is to musicians in an orchestra: it coordinates their actions in the performance of a larger composition.

Essential Business Process Modeling teaches you how to develop examples of process-oriented applications using free tools that can be run on an average PC or laptop. You'll also learn about BPM design patterns and best practices, as well as some underlying theory. The best way to monitor processes within an enterprise is with BPM, and the best way to navigate BPM is with this valuable book.


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Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction Review

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Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction ReviewIt was a pleasure to find out that this book had been updated when I reads news of it. CC2 is a great one-stop 'place' to go to when you want a great excuse to apply Stephen Covey's 'Sharpen The Saw' principle. This updated version has some solid, fantastic, expert instruction on designing from scratch, whether it's OO, writing better routines, psuedocode, nested loops, or at the higher level: agile methods, etc..
McConnell's approach of talking to you, the programmer, is ideal: not too much humor, and an easy to read, but professional approach in the way he donates the contents of his brain: i.e. McConnell's lengthy experience in the field.
I read just a couple of paragraphs in a chapter before work one morning, and the advice I picked up saved so much time that same day. And it wasn't even specific to coding instruction. It was a piece of advice on a philosophy on how he personally determines how much upfront design he should settle on before coding.

Reading Software Construction material of this caliber, as compared to some, yet another, new book on a specific language that might look impressive to know, is what makes for a solid programmer.
Refreshing your overall S/W construction knowledge gives you so much more of your life back, because you will have way less bugs and a lot more fun maintaining the high-quality code you are now writing because of CC2.
I mentioned already that he covers OO, but I wanted to emphasize the excellent material he offers in this area. I am now seeing the benefit of measuring the quality of your classes by this guideline: are they true Abstract Data Types. ( rather than just trying to use the syntax that the language provides to its potential).
Great job on a rather thorough re-write of a S/W development staple.

Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction Overview
Widely considered one of the best practical guides to programming, Steve McConnell's original CODE COMPLETE has been helping developers write better software for more than a decade. Now this classic book has been fully updated and revised with leading-edge practices—and hundreds of new code samples—illustrating the art and science of software construction. Capturing the body of knowledge available from research, academia, and everyday commercial practice, McConnell synthesizes the most effective techniques and must-know principles into clear, pragmatic guidance. No matter what your experience level, development environment, or project size, this book will inform and stimulate your thinking—and help you build the highest quality code.

Discover the timeless techniques and strategies that help you:

Design for minimum complexity and maximum creativity
Reap the benefits of collaborative development
Apply defensive programming techniques to reduce and flush out errors
Exploit opportunities to refactor—or evolve—code, and do it safely
Use construction practices that are right-weight for your project
Debug problems quickly and effectively
Resolve critical construction issues early and correctly
Build quality into the beginning, middle, and end of your project


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