Recenzje -no more visible


Tytuł: Java Web Services: Up and Running
Autor: Martin Kalin
Wydawnictwo: O’Reilly

Ocena:
Zawartość merytoryczna / związek z tematem: 5/5
Styl / łatwość czytania: 4/5
Przydatność: 4.5/5
Ocena ogólna: 4.5/5

Recenzent: Mateusz Put

Opinia:
Recently I have finished reading this book, and I would like to share my thoughts with you.

First of all: This is not an easy book. Like it or not, jws topic is not an easy one, but a person with computer science background, will understand it easily.

There are some technologies that you should be familiar with, to fully understand “JWS UaR”: perl basics, java intermediate, annotation and xml basics (you should know how it looks like, no biggie). “JWS UaR” does not cover those topics and that’s good since there are a lot of books about them already.

Now to the point. The book is well written and you can read it pretty fast.

I can’t decide if putting all class code as an example is a good idea or not… You can see all classes and analyze them, but on the other hand it artificially lengthen the book.
It is nice that you can use some examples with existing JWS applications such as Amazon and eBay. You can learn how to send SOAP (or REST) messages to Amazon E-commerce application. It shows that this technology is really in use  ;)
It is a good idea to use different languages when writing client and server applications, it shows that JWS can be implemented in more than one language.
And the last thing. I liked that examples are simplified to present selected problem, and that the author quickly, tells how  they should be implemented in production application.

The chapter about WSDL was boring to me, too many details about that language.
But when you go through it gets better.  :)
I got an impression that this book is mainly concentrated on REST style and RESTful web services, but SOAP is also nicely presented.
Dedication of a whole chapter to security issues was a very good idea, and it was a very interesting read.

I didn’t like the idea of sub chapters being not numbered, but you can disagree. I think that apart from chapter numbering there should also be numbers for sub chapters.

Summary:
When you want to discover the JWS world, reading “JWS UaR” is a good start. It can work as a good tutorial for people who know nothing about the JWS.
You will learn what SOAP and REST is, and how to use it in your own web applications.
It’s also important that when you finish reading, you’ll know what you should learn next to improve your JWS knowledge, and which framework you should be looking for.


Tytuł: The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook: Building Applications with the iPhone SDK
Autor: Erica Sadun
Wydawnictwo: informIT

Ocena:
Zawartość merytoryczna / związek z tematem: 4/5
Styl / łatwość czytania: 4/5
Przydatność: 4/5
Ocena ogólna: 4/5

Recenzent: Tomasz Trela

Opinia:
The book by Erica Sadurn may serve as great support for programmers starting their adventure with the iPhone platform, as well as for experienced developers searching for common problems solution reference guide.
The recipes contained in the book cover very popular issues. The book starts with short overview of the iPhone SDK platform; the introduction leaves out the Objective C language, assuming that the reader is already familiar with it. It would be useful that the readers be somehow experienced with Xcode and preferably with frameworks like Cocoa – lacking this knowledge, one may find it difficult to pursue the code. Neither language idioms nor syntax have been explained, nevertheless the code is easy to read and even beginners, not acquainted with iPhone SDK, should not find them difficult to understand.
I would recommend the book for iPhone programmers due to the fact that it explains the functions of iPhone SDK and presents its important components one might like to use. Recipes describe how to use these components, showing the iPhone SDK’s features. The recipes are grouped in chapters coupled as loosely that you can simply jump among them – just as an example, it is easy to find code sample showing how to use the accelerometer, play or record sound or implement user interaction with touch screen. Views and GUI components are very well presented, so as you can learn how to create fancy application with custom buttons, tables etc. very quickly.
The title might be a little misleading and make impression that the book contains solutions for beforehand defined problems. In fact, you get an overview of the platform with description of its components and their usage. For a fledgling iPhone developer like me it was advantageous, although I missed big picture recipes aiming at solving more complex problems and involving interaction between different pieces of API.
I would rate this book with four stars. Its content is valuable and helps saving time while programming.


Tytuł: Flex 3 Cookbook
Autor: Joshua Noble, Todd Anderson
Wydawnictwo: O’Reilly

Ocena:
Zawartość merytoryczna / związek z tematem: 4/5
Styl / łatwość czytania: 4/5
Przydatność: 4/5
Ocena ogólna: 4/5

Recenzent:: Andrzej Grzesik

Opinia:
“Flex 3 Cookbook” provides recipes to over 300 most common dishes. It wasn’t authors’ intention to lead an introductory course to Flex and ActionScript and so, the book does not contain information on language constructs, syntax and principles.

Content is divided into clearly themed chapters, each of which contains related recipes. Each recipe is made up of 3 parts: Problem, Solution and Discussion. The first part serves as an introduction and description of the problem, Solution gives a concise walk-through and Discussion explains the decisions made in the Solution part. Each problem is well illustrated with adequate ActionScript and MXML code samples.

The book covers a broad range of topics, starting with a trivial “How do I react upon a button being clicked”, the list is full of many useful solutions. In my opinion it is a good choice especially for beginners and intermediate Flex adepts. Thanks to the wide spectrum of topics, they will benefit the most. It can also serve as a reference used when an answer to a specific problem is sought – well made chapter division makes searching straightforward.

The book is written with clear and concise language.


Tytuł: Programming Groovy
Autor: Venkat Subramaniam
Wydawnictwo: Pragmatic Bookshelf

Ocena:
Zawartość merytoryczna / związek z tematem: 5/5
Styl / łatwość czytania: 5/5
Przydatność: 4/5
Ocena ogólna: 5/5

Recenzent:: Radosław Holewa

Opinia:
Are you interested in Groovy? You don’t have time for reading big
books with many unnecessary topics?
Do you need a book, that will give you a great introduction to Groovy
without spending many days on reading?
If YES, then this book is definitely for you!

“Programming Groovy” was my first book about Groovy, it gave me a
great introduction to Groovy language.
I decided to read this book, because it has about 300 pages. So, for
me (I’m a very busy person) it was the best option
to receive knowledge about Groovy.

The book of Venkat Subramaniam is divided into 3 main parts:

* Beginning Groovy
* Using Groovy
* MOPping Groovy

If you just want to have a fast overview on Groovy, then “Beginning
Groovy” will definitely fit your needs, because it
provides general information on Groovy language including: dynamic
typing, data types, closures and working with collections.
There is also dedicated chapter called “Groovy for the Java Eyes” with
some Groovy-Java comparisons and description
of their cooperation.

“Using Groovy” is the part with the most useful topics you might need,
it covers scripts and classes creation,
working with XML, using databases and extended classes from GDK.

In case you want to be a real Groovy hacker, you have to read “MOPping
Groovy”, which will introduce you to
advanced Groovy topics like: Meta-Object Protocol, methods injection,
Groovy builders, unit testing and even creating
your own DSL in Groovy!

I’m sure you will be very satisfied after reading “Programming Groovy”.


Tytuł: Visual Communication in Digital Design
Autor: Ji Yong Park
Wydawnictwo: YoungJin

Ocena:
Zawartość merytoryczna / związek z tematem: 5/5
Styl / łatwość czytania: 4/5
Przydatność: 4/5
Ocena ogólna: 5/5

Recenzent:: Piotr Kiebasinski

Opinia:
Sometimes one image can replace thousands of words. Sometimes very simple shape in right color is the best way to say something. Sometimes we don’t know why we remember image which we saw just for a moment… If you want know why, just look into book “Visual Communication in Digital Design”.

Book “Visual Communication in Digital Design” shows list of rules and principles. If you will use it they will give you opportunity to construct image with clear content.

Twelve good written chapters contain answers for many questions about design principles, color, shapes, lines, font family, composition rules etc. There are detailed, but written clearly and with many examples and exercises. Never more bored and non-functional Graphical User Interfaces! Never more disgusting web sites in strange colors! Never bad planed and written with unreadable font texts!

Design of this book is absolutely fantastic. I’m always impressed when I’ve it in my hands. It should be a “design pattern” in art of book projecting.


Tytuł: Head First Servlets and JSP, Second Edition
Autor: Bryan Basham, Kathy Sierra, Bert Bates
Wydawnictwo: O’Reilly

Ocena:
Zawartość merytoryczna / związek z tematem: 4/5
Styl / łatwość czytania: 5/5
Przydatność: 4/5
Ocena ogólna: 4/5

Recenzent:: Tomasz Kaczmarek

Opinia:
Looking for some good material to revise/learn JSP technology?
Having an impression that each book is similar to the previous one?
Want to pass SCWCD exam?
When you answered ‘yes’ at least twice, I think that you shall definitely read Head First SCWCD by Bryan Basham, Bert Bates and Kathie Sierra.
The most important difference between this book and all the rest is the way how authors describe technical issues. Don’t consider them easy – they are really tricky sometimes.
It is a very funny book although the topic is not so easy. It’s marvelous that authors describe the problems not too detailed. After the introduction they redirect to specification. In comparison to other books I must say that reading something about existence of specification is rare in practice. Here the redirection is very brief – includes chapter numbers and document name.
Cons? I know that JSF is not on the list of SCWCD but I missed it. EL & JSTL is quite hard to understand relying on this book only.
Anyway, this is a very good position to start working on JSP.
I think that the purpose of writing this book is that the reader will be trying to pass SCWD exam. Even you don’t want to pass a certification, I do strongly recommend it to you.
It’s also worth emphasizing that javaranch.com is a great addition to this book. People discuss many things also that ones included in this book. When there is a lot of confusion, you can rely on Bryan or Bert’s answers and clarification.


Tytuł: Java Concurrency in Practice
Autor: Brian Goetz
Wydawnictwo: Addison-Wesley

Ocena:
Zawartość merytoryczna / związek z tematem: 5/5
Styl / łatwość czytania: 5/5
Przydatność: 5/5
Ocena ogólna: 5/5

Recenzent:: Andrzej Grzesik

Opinia:
Concurrency is omnipresent yet complex. Java Concurrency in Practice, written by authors of java.util.concurrent explains the complexities of multithreading, synchronization and the related overhead in a clear and intelligible way.

The book covers a broad range of topics allowing the reader to fully comprehend mechanics governing Java threads and not commit many mistakes which remain hidden only until the most unexpectable moment.

It starts with synchronization and locks, through common concurrent building block (with answers to both “how”s as well as “why”s) and introduction to certain java.util.concurrent, facilities, ending at advanced topics such as testing for performance and correctness or Java Memory Model influence on threads.

Above all: it’s fun to read and contains huge number of great examples – I can only recommend it as definitely worth reading!


Tytuł: Head First SQL
Autor: Lynn Beighley
Wydawnictwo: O’Reilly

Ocena:
Zawartość merytoryczna / związek z tematem: 4/5
Styl / łatwość czytania: 5/5
Przydatność: 4/5
Ocena ogólna: 4/5

Recenzent:: Grzegorz Duda

Opinia:
If you are developer and need to refresh your SQL knowledge or if you want to learn SQL very fast and with some fun – it is book for you. This is not a book for Database Administrators. Second disclaimer – they use examples for MySQL, so if you are using different DB, you need to translate some of them.

I believe I do not need to convince you how good are “Head First” series, so let’s focus on the content.

It starts from explanation what DB is and some easy SELECT queries, so you can read this book without any knowledge in DB world.

Next chapters cover UPDATE, INSERT, DELETE, primary/foreign keys, ALTER, ORDER BY with most common aggregation functions (like MAX, AVG), inner/outer joins and more. There is also place for some theory and DB patterns.

As always, couple of the last chapters contains a bit more complex information like roles and privileges, constraints, unions, intersections and subqueries.

In summary, it is very good book that gives you short introduction to DB world (with some advanced knowledge). I do not know anything that is required in my day to day job that is not in this book.


Tytuł: Refaktoryzacja do wzorców projektowych
Autor: Joshua Kerievsky
Wydawnictwo: Helion

Ocena:
Zawartość merytoryczna / związek z tematem: 4/5
Styl / łatwość czytania: 4/5
Przydatność: 5/5
Ocena ogólna: 4/5

Recenzent:: Paweł Antoniewski

Opinia:
Książka zawiera opis podstawowych wzorców projektowych. Jest w niej dużo odwołan do książki Martina Fowlera “Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture”. Można powiedzieć, że jest to krótsza i prostsza wersja książki Martina Fowlera.

Każdy wzorzec projektowy jest opisany bardzo szczegółowo, czasami jest to wręcz zbyt rozwlekłe. Opis zawiera diagram, krótkie omówienie wzorca i sytuacji w których powinien być wykorzystany (a także tych sytuacji, w których nie powinien być stosowany). Jest także przykład “z życia wzięty” – kod, który teoretycznie możnaby znaleźć u siebie. Następnie jest wytłumaczenie dlaczego należy zmienić ten kod (refaktoryzacja), oraz jak go zmienić, aby był bardziej przejrzysty (do wzorców projektowych).

Jeżeli ktoś zna wzorce projektowe, to ta książka tylko utrwali posiadaną juz wiedzę. Jeśli ktoś nie zna wzorców projektowych, to może się z niej bardzo dużo nauczyć.

Na pewno warto ją przeczytać, choćby tylko fragmenty.


Tytuł: J2EE. Wzorce projektowe. Wydanie 2
Autor: Deepak Alur, John Crupi, Dan Malks
Wydawnictwo: Helion

Ocena:
Zawartość merytoryczna / związek z tematem: 4/5
Styl / łatwość czytania: 3/5
Przydatność: 4/5
Ocena ogólna: 3/5

Recenzent:: Paweł Antoniewski

Opinia:
Jest to książka warta przeczytania. Składa się z dwóch częsci. W pierwszej znajduje się opis technologii J2EE oraz architektury aplikacji wielowarstwowych. Opisane są problemy związane z projektowaniem i implementacją takich aplikacji, typowe błędy oraz ich rozwiązania. Jest także trochę o servletach i sporo o EJB (jesli ktoś nie lubi, lub nie zna EJB, to większość przykładów będzie musiał opuścić).

Druga część to już lista wzorcow J2EE. Każdy z nich składa się z opisu, przykładu wykorzystania, oraz wyszczególnionych wad i zalet danego wzorca. Osobiście polecałbym pierwszą część do przeczytania i drugą do przeglądnięcia i przeczytania dokładniej tylko wybranych rozdziałów, które nas interesują. Większość opisanych rozwiązan (albo nawet wszystkie) dla warstwy biznesowej używa EJB (2.1), co dla mnie jest sporym minusem tej książki.


Tytuł: Pro Oracle Spatial for Oracle Database 11g
Autor: Ravi Kothuri, Albert Godfrind, Euro Beinat
Wydawnictwo: Apress

Ocena:
Zawartość merytoryczna / związek z tematem: 5/5
Styl / łatwość czytania: 5/5
Przydatność: 5/5
Ocena ogólna: 5/5

Recenzent:: Jakub Dżon

Opinia:
I am currently working on system, the involves Oracle Spatial technology. This book was going to be me first step (almost) towards getting familliar with Spatial. I was little anxious about the level expected from the book’s reader: “Intermediate-Advanced”; I haven’t exactly felt like “advanced” in Oracle technology. It wasn’t so bad; the book is really well written and I had no problems with understanding anything.

The book consists of six parts (including appendices). All the parts cover following subjects:
– Introduction to the technology. Technologies, to be exact; architectures of both, Spatial and Locator options are described –
differences between them.
– Basic concepts – basic know-how. The part, I needed the most met my expectations in 100%. It helped me to start coding really fast.
– Network analysis – more advanced subjects covered, the mostly ARE NOT available in Locator option (one I have access to); network analysis and routing engine, geometry engine. Also indexes and operators are described in one chapter of the book.
– Map Visualisation and creation – a lot of knowlege about MapBuilder, MapViewer and it’s API – really helpful for anybody, who needs to visualize maps stored in Spatial.
– Sample applications and case studies – I always look for such chapter in every IT book I read. This is the place, where programmer might find a lot of answers to one’s questions. There is also a chapter in this part, the belongs to the category “MUST read” – “Tips, common mistakes and common errors”.

There is also sample code available for the readers – to be downloaded from the publisher’s web page. It is really helpful to have it while reading the book. There is only one “but” – was, to be exact. About two weeks after the book had been published, the code wasn’t available on the page. At least, I couldn’t find it. Now it is possible to download it from here.

The book is really good – “must have” of every Oracle Spatial user. It might be helpful for the beginner and advanced developers as well. I would recommend it to everyone, who needs to get to know Oracle Spatial well. All the 756 pages (excluding index) are filled with reliable knowledge, especially that one of the authors – Ravi Kothuri is a member of Oralce spatial development team, where he works as software architect and team leader.


Tytuł: Pro Apache Tomcat 6
Autor: Matthew Moodie
Wydawnictwo: Apress

Ocena:
Zawartość merytoryczna / związek z tematem: 4/5
Styl / łatwość czytania: 5/5
Przydatność: 4/5
Ocena ogólna: 4/5

Recenzent:: Maciej Szczytowski

Opinia:
I decided to read this book because as a Java developer I should know how servlet containers work and how to configure them. I wasn’t disappointed with the book.

Pro Apache Tomcat 6 contains a lot of practical information with examples. Now I know how to properly deploy applications, configure logging or security, register resources, etc. There is a chapter which explains all parts of web.xml files and another chapter about distributed environment using Tomcat and Apache Web Server. The last but not the least: there are some testing (using JMeter) and performance tips.

Drawback. For me this book was great, but I’m developer. In my opinion if You’re administrator who needs to know how to deploy and manage applications in real environment, this book will be insufficient. It contains a lot of information, but basic only. There isn’t any discussion about real life problems. I’ve also found a bug – the author said that Tomcat 6 supports Java Servlet 2.5 specification, which is true, but all examples contains reference to version 2.4. I suppose this book is based on previous one, about Tomcat 5.5.

Nevertheless, I recommend this book. It’s a great Tomcat reference.


Tytuł: High Performance Web Sites
Autor: Steve Souders
Wydawnictwo: O’Reilly

Ocena:
Zawartość merytoryczna / związek z tematem: 5/5
Styl / łatwość czytania: 5/5
Przydatność: 5/5
Ocena ogólna: 5/5

Recenzent:: Grzegorz Duda

Opinia:
Wow. What a great book.

I took this book, because it is very short, just 168 pages. I asked myself, what this guy can say in just 168 pages about performance? Maybe some introduction to the topic? First two chapters just confirmed my assumptions. There is nothing new, just some general information that I already knew.

How big was my surprise when I finished chapter 3 – first rule (out of 14). Author was able to explain what is the problem with too many http requests and how to make fewer requests. Even I am not a performance guru (just a developer) it was clear enough how should I build my web pages in the future. Even more, he gave me a felling that I should change my current pages.

Next couple chapters are even better, especially description how important is to put css and js imports in the correct place on web page, and how big impact they might have when they are in wrong place. The chapters about Expiry headers and ETags are also awesome. Author describes how cache in web browser works, what are conditional gets and how to make a proxy more efficient.

I finished a book with a feeling that I can easily change my pages to work much faster than they are today. And you know what – I will not spend much time for that one.

I recommend this book for everybody who writes web pages even for personal use. You will be surprised how big amount of knowledge you can get from 168 pages.

Tytuł: Java. Obsługa wyjątków, usuwanie błędów i testowanie kodu
Autor: Stephen Stelting
Wydawnictwo: Helion

Ocena:
Zawartość merytoryczna / związek z tematem: 3/5
Styl / łatwość czytania: 4/5
Przydatność: 3/5
Ocena ogólna: 3/5

Recenzent:: Damian Szczepanik

Opinia:
Decydując się przeczytać tę książkę oczekiwałem wielu przykładów dotyczących zaawansowanych zagadnień i problemów, z których nie zdawałem sobie do tej pory sprawy. Niestety, książka ta zawiera bardzo niewielką ich ilość, wiele z nich stanowi bardziej ilustrację omawianych tematów niż podstawę radzenia sobie z konkretnymi wyjątkami.

Nie jest to pozycja, którą czyta się od przysłowiowej deski do deski szczególnie, jeśli czytelnik jest doświadczonym programistą. Wynika to z charakteru książki, której autor podejmuje się przedstawić problem wyjątków i testowania biorąc pod uwagę bardzo szeroki wachlarz technologi, w których język Java ma swoje zastosowanie.

Na uwagę zasługuje pierwszy rozdział, który stanowi dobre wprowadzenie poprzez usystematyzowanie wiedzy na temat wyjątków i nawet doświadczony programista znajdzie tutaj kilka ciekawych informacji. Ciekawy jest także rozdział piąty dotyczący mechanizmów logowania dostarczonych w JDK, które są alternatywą dla bardzo popularnej biblioteki log4j. Zabrakło w nim jednak szerszego opisu asercji dostępnych od wersji 1.5.

Autor wiele miejsca poświęca zagadnieniom jasnym lub problemom, które kompilator sam rozwiązuje (rozdział drugi), a także odbiega od głównego tematu książki (rozdział dziewiąty). Chybionym jest rozdział 12 dotyczący wzorców projektowych. Trudno tutaj dopatrzeć się większego związku z testowaniem i wyjątkami co sugerowałby tytuł książki. Trudno także omówić kilkanaście wzorców na dwudziestu stronach.

Przed kupnem książki zdecydowanie polecam zapoznanie się ze spisem treści i sprawdzenie, na ile kolejne rozdziały będą przydatne czytelnikowi oraz w jakim stopniu pokrywają obszar, w którym się porusza. Programiści, którym język Java jest bardzo dobrze znany, nie znajdą tutaj wiele pomocnych informacji.

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