Computing Internet Books

The Quickbooks 2007 for Dummies purchased was an excellent value. It covers everything I needed to know and it applies to all versions of Quickbooks 2007. Every time I purchase a software program there is never an instruction book included (unlike a few years ago) so I always go straight to Amazon and purchase that software name "for Dummies" (even though I am no "dummy" when it comes to computers).
The book was in excellent condition, arrived timely and shipping is always reasonable for books from Amazon!

This was purchased as a gift for my brother. He said it was helpful in being able to use QuickBooks more effectively.

Bought it for other people. It was very helpful to the people I gave them to.

If you are just getting started with QuickBooks, then you really should get this book! QuickBooks is easy to use, provided it is set up properly. This book will help you understand QuickBooks so you can get started on the right foot. If you're already familiar with QuickBooks, there is plenty of information so you're sure to learn something new! It is a great resource to have on hand!

Michelle L. Long, CPA, MBA
Author of: Successful QuickBooks Consulting: The Comprehensive Guide to Starting and Growing a QuickBooks Consulting Business
Advanced Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor
Member of Intuit Certified Trainer Network

I was hoping that this book would be for an experienced Quickbooks user but it is not. It is designed for the novice user who doesn't know much about accounting.

I found this book nice and clear in information besides of that alot of exercise in it.

This is a good book, but I bought it because of the Audio with it. Still waiting. I have called and emailed Syngress and have yet to get any response from them. The web url listed on the book does not work, and the site has no reference to this book. So much for the extra questions, and audio the book promises. I will definately not recommend Syngress after all the bad luck with this book and false advertisement!

Grabbed this book in a pinch to see what I might need to know for 70-648 besides what I knew from hands-on implementation. I agree that it covers exam objectives, at least I passed with a decent margin. There were a couple "out of left field" questions on the exam that weren't in the book but that's not too bad considering this isn't from Microsoft Publishing.

Sometimes the book drags on covering knowledge that a MCSA 2003 cert holder should already know, but at the same time, the refresher can be helpful. My biggest disappointment is in Syngress' web team failing to deliver the online companion site in time for the book's publishing (and my scheduled exam, natch). As of this review, [...] yields 404. This URL is published on the cover and should have hosted the free practice exams and other supplemental material like MP3 audio covering the "Fast Tracks" (which are in the Study Guide too...handy items). I can't even find the book after poking around Syngress.com.

Still, I found this item helpful.

A lot of the information in this book is self-explanatory, and the tougher aspects(OWL,RDF) not nearly enough information was put in. The expanded sections on logic with time as a parameter was interesting, as well as the transaction protocols, but after a while it was like beating a dead horse and it seemed there was distinct lack of meat to the book. I would have prefer he expanded on the abstract theory and transactional logic in a more rigorous sense and would have spent much less time on the more common sense factors in Service Oriented Computing. That being said, this is the programming model of web programming, and any CS or IS person would be well suited to learn it.

The authors cover a myriad of standards that support web services. The text and associated website provide useful examples. The bibliography is extensive and shows the amount of research that went into developing this extremely helpful text. I would recommend the book for technologists as well as instructors.

I really think the book achieve's the purpose that the authors intended. I am actually taking a graduate course centered on service oriented computing taught by one of the authors Dr. Singh. While I have not read the entire text in length(And who of us end up reading a full tech book anyway) I think I can safeley say that for the first edition of the text the authors have done a super job. Personally I think the text attempts and does a pretty good job of providing at least more than a basic level of understanding and comfort with service oriented computing. The authors note that an effective understanding of SOC (or anything in my opinion) can not come from studying the underlining standards alone. Justification points to the ever increasing abtraction of technology. This unique approach to learning a technical subject is quite different and unique from what I have been used to. I think the text really offers a different viewpoint of the subject. I gave the book 5 stars because of that reason. This might not be the only book I would recommend for learning web services but in technology, diversity can go a long way.

This book is an extensive and scholarly work covering the full scope of service oriented architectures and computing. It begins with a thorough review of the technology involved and then works through the challenges and application of this emerging paradigm.

Be warned - this is not "Semantic Web for Dummies". This is a serious book for people who need to go beyond the basics. As a researcher in software agent technologies, this book has helped me to better understand the issues involved in creating service based solutions. This book is useful as both a reference and as study in these exciting and emerging technologies that will be essential for anyone involved in creating the next phase of internet computing.

The book certainly has ambitious scope. It is essentially trying to devise what Tim Berners-Lee has famously called the Semantic Web. The means is by the implementation of service oriented computing. Not surprisingly, the book spends a lot of necessary space on explaining the various Web Services standards that underpin Service Oriented Architecture. Like ebXML and Business Process (Execution) Language. The book does this with commendable rigour.

That is the easy part. Far harder is where the authors delve into the fuzzier subjects of modelling and ontology. Thus we go into the Resource Description Framework and OWL. While we are shown the potential power of these, the text also points out that OWL has limitations, as in how it does not allow for constraint reasoning.

But more generally, there will be different ontologies used by different groups on the Internet. With expected inconsistencies. Which gives problems to such goals as more intelligent searching by the various search engines. All these are very difficult issues that touch on the heart of artificial intelligence. It is unclear whether SOC will see us through this morass.

good book needs to be updated to include vista
book good delivery from amazon very slow

I just purchased the book, so the technology was outdated, but the basic theory was valid, and I was looking for general knowledge of the process. It served that purpose quite well.

If you hate reading on the internet its an OK book....for basics....

Its outdated and all the information in the book is available on the internet if you are good with google.

Setting up a small home or business network.......buy a used copy to use as a reference for the most basic information....

I gave it three stars.....its got older info and not much detail....but it is good basic information....and if you buy a good used copy like I did ......its worth having on the bookshelf as a reference.

Sloppy editing.
Started reading this book today. Now at page 117 which is about 1/3 of the book and already found six (6) very obvious errors. Pretty pathetic for a book in its 8th edition.

As an example, on page 117, subnet mask is 255.255.240.0 yet the diagram shows it as all (1s)
--> 11111111 11111111 11111111 11111111 when it should be
--> 11111111 11111111 11110000 00000000

Good and sometimes humorous explanations of tips of must do's and don't in networking. To be a full fledged administrator you need a more detailed book and manuals of specific systems, but this will get you started.

In my opinion, this book is really feeding the buzzwords frenzy of Identity management domain . It certainly "talks the talk", but can it "walk the talk"? - Full of google-able content and no meat. I can think of numerous glaring examples where the book falls short. To name a few: SAML (huh? where is SAML 2.0), XACML, Liberty, WS-Federation
I think the book does a below average job of providing practical information. Even the content does not flow very smoothly and coherently.
I wasted mu money, now this book going to be on my shelf collecting dust.

Identity Management is my day to day job as our company heavily focuses on various IAM initiatives.I was always looking for a book that can give enough material on how to go about design, deploy IAM solutions. This book is the one for it. This book really deserves 5 stars.
Thanks,
Ramnath Krishnamurthi,
C.E.0
Like Minds Consulting Inc,
New York, U.S.A

A great book, cover to cover - and exceptionally well organized. The subject matter is covered in a methodical, clear manner, and is applicable to both the expert and the neophyte to IdM. I was very impressed by the practical nature of the book; the recommendations are actionable and easy to follow. This book may well be the definitive text on digital identity management. I highly recommended it!

This book gives a hello world introduction about digital identity concepts and nothing beyond. The book absolutely fails and falls short on explaning the identity management standards and technologies related to single sign-on, federation, provisioning and assurance. From a real-world IDMS deployment perspective the book is truly misleading !

This book is designed to familiarize CIOs, IT managers, and other IT professionals with the language, concepts, and technology of digital identity. Managing digital identity is one of the most fundamental activities in IT and a good identity management strategy is the key to not only protecting the enterprise from attack, but, more important, providing flexible access for partners, customers, and employees to needed information and systems.

This book is not a book with code examples and recipes for building digital identity management systems. Even so, it is a technical book that explains the technology of digital identity in some detail. More importantly, the book puts the technology in context and shows how it can all be put to the task of managing digital identities inside your organization.

The book is divided into three sections. The first section is about the core concepts in digital identity, including privacy and trust. The second section discusses the technology of digital identity. The third section portrays in some detail a process, called an identity management architecture (IMA), that you can use to build a digital identity infrastructure in your organization, regardless of its size or organization. The information in the last section is prescriptive in nature. Because of his experiences, the author has a clear philosophy on how to build an IMA. He therefore presents a rather detailed series of steps that show how to create an IMA and how to use it. I found the book quite accessible, and this isn't even an area of my expertise. I would recommend it for anyone trying to get started in the field, especially if you're a manager. The following is the table of contents:

Chapter 1. Introduction
Section 1.1. Business Opportunity
Section 1.2. Digital Identity Matters
Section 1.3. Using Digital Identity
Section 1.4. The Business Context of Identity
Section 1.5. Foundational Technologies for Digital Identity
Section 1.6. Identity Management Architectures

Chapter 2. Defining Digital Identity
Section 2.1. The Language of Digital Identity
Section 2.2. Identity Scenarios in the Physical World
Section 2.3. Identity, Security, and Privacy
Section 2.4. Digital Identity Perspectives
Section 2.5. Identity Powershifts
Section 2.6. Conclusion

Chapter 3. Trust
Section 3.1. What Is Trust?
Section 3.2. Trust and Evidence
Section 3.3. Trust and Risk
Section 3.4. Reputation and Trust Communities
Section 3.5. Conclusion

Chapter 4. Privacy and Identity
Section 4.1. Who's Afraid of RFID?
Section 4.2. Privacy Pragmatism
Section 4.3. Privacy Drivers
Section 4.4. Privacy Audits
Section 4.5. Privacy Policy Capitalism
Section 4.6. Anonymity and Pseudonymity
Section 4.7. Privacy Principles
Section 4.8. Prerequisites
Section 4.9. Conclusion

Chapter 5. The Digital Identity Lifecycle
Section 5.1. Provisioning
Section 5.2. Propagating
Section 5.3. Using
Section 5.4. Maintaining
Section 5.5. Deprovisioning
Section 5.6. Conclusion

Chapter 6. Integrity, Non-Repudiation, and Confidentiality
Section 6.1. Integrity
Section 6.2. Non-Repudiation
Section 6.3. Confidentiality
Section 6.4. Conclusion

Chapter 7. Authentication
Section 7.1. Authentication and Trust
Section 7.2. Authentication Systems
Section 7.3. Authentication System Properties
Section 7.4. Conclusion

Chapter 8. Access Control
Section 8.1. Policy First
Section 8.2. Authorization Patterns
Section 8.3. Abstract Authorization Architectures
Section 8.4. Digital Certificates and Access Control
Section 8.5. Conclusion

Chapter 9. Names and Directories
Section 9.1. Utah.gov: Naming and Directories
Section 9.2. Naming
Section 9.3. Directories
Section 9.4. Aggregating Directory Information
Section 9.5. Conclusion

Chapter 10. Digital Rights Management
Section 10.1. Digital Leakage
Section 10.2. The DRM Battle
Section 10.3. Apple iTunes: A Case Study in DRM
Section 10.4. Features of DRM
Section 10.5. DRM Reference Architecture
Section 10.6. Trusted Computing Platforms
Section 10.7. Specifying Rights
Section 10.8. Conclusion

Chapter 11. Interoperability Standards
Section 11.1. Standards and the Digital Identity Lifecycle
Section 11.2. Integrity and Non-Repudiation: XML Signature
Section 11.3. Confidentiality: XML Encryption
Section 11.4. Authentication and Authorization Assertions
Section 11.5. Example SAML Use Cases
Section 11.6. Identity Provisioning
Section 11.7. Representing and Managing Authorization Policies
Section 11.8. Conclusion

Chapter 12. Federating Identity
Section 12.1. Centralized Versus Federated Identity
Section 12.2. The Mirage of Centralized Efficiency
Section 12.3. Network Effects and Digital Identity Management
Section 12.4. Federation in the Credit Card Industry
Section 12.5. Benefits of Federated Identity
Section 12.6. Digital Identity Standards
Section 12.7. Three Federation Patterns
Section 12.8. Conclusion

Chapter 13. An Architecture for Digital Identity
Section 13.1. Identity Management Architecture
Section 13.2. The Benefits of an Identity Management Architecture
Section 13.3. Success Factors
Section 13.4. Roadblocks
Section 13.5. Identity Management Architecture Components
Section 13.6. Conclusion

Chapter 14. Governance and Business Modeling
Section 14.1. IMA Lifecycle
Section 14.2. IMA Governance Model
Section 14.3. Initial Steps
Section 14.4. Creating a Vision
Section 14.5. IMA Governing Roles
Section 14.6. Resources
Section 14.7. What to Outsource
Section 14.8. Understanding the Business Context
Section 14.9. Business Function Matrix
Section 14.10. IMA Principles
Section 14.11. Conclusion

Chapter 15. Identity Maturity Models and Process Architectures
Section 15.1. Maturity Levels
Section 15.2. The Maturity Model
Section 15.3. The Rights Steps at the Right Time
Section 15.4. Finding Identity Processes
Section 15.5. Evaluating Processes
Section 15.6. A Practical Action Plan
Section 15.7. Filling the Gaps with Best Practices
Section 15.8. Conclusion

Chapter 16. Identity Data Architectures
Section 16.1. Build a Data Architecture
Section 16.2. Processes Link Identities
Section 16.3. Data Categorization
Section 16.4. Identity Data Structure and Metadata
Section 16.5. Exchanging Identity Data
Section 16.6. Principles for Identity Data
Section 16.7. Conclusion

Chapter 17. Interoperability Frameworks for Identity
Section 17.1. Principles of a Good IF
Section 17.2. Contents of an Identity IF
Section 17.3. Example Interoperability Framework
Section 17.4. A Word of Warning
Section 17.5. Conclusion

Chapter 18. Identity Policies
Section 18.1. The Policy Stack
Section 18.2. Attributes of a Good Identity Policy
Section 18.3. Determining Policy Needs
Section 18.4. Writing Identity Policies
Section 18.5. An Identity Policy Suite
Section 18.6. Assessing Identity Policies
Section 18.7. Enforcement
Section 18.8. Procedures
Section 18.9. Conclusion

Chapter 19. Identity Management Reference Architectures
Section 19.1. Reference Architectures
Section 19.2. Benefits and Pitfalls
Section 19.3. Reference Architecture Best Practices
Section 19.4. Using a Reference Architecture
Section 19.5. Components of a Reference Architecture
Section 19.6. Technical Position Statements
Section 19.7. Consolidated Infrastructure Blueprint
Section 19.8. System Reference Architectures
Section 19.9. Conclusion

Chapter 20. Building an Identity Management Architecture
Section 20.1. Scoping the Process
Section 20.2. Which Projects Are Enterprise Projects?
Section 20.3. Sequencing the IMA Effort
Section 20.4. A Piece at a Time
Section 20.5. Conclusion: Dispelling IMA Myths

I was required to use this book (2nd edition) for a class at American Sentinel University. The book is dated but still has useful information. It covers all major areas of networking briefly. I found the book to be a bit boring but I am sure it will be a decent reference book. Unless you have to buy this book for school I would recommend skipping it. I am giving this book three stars because it has useful information and lots of hands on activities. Two plus years ago it would be 4.5 stars. I really like the Thomson Course Technology books but this one is just too dated.

This book has been a big delusion. Of course it depends on what I was looking for.

The book teaches network concepts from the basis and it doesn't cover more advanced topics.
I already learnt many concepts presented in the book from internet tutorials or from other books (Tanenbaum). I think this book would have been useful to me two years ago. The only innovative chapter that tought me better how to "Design And Implement Networks" is "Lan/Wan/Lan Connection". Almost all other chapters are introductory explanations of existing protocols and technologies. I find the title misleading.

Well explained. A good book to start from but insufficient as a second read.

Great book and explains all elements of LAN and WANs fully. Good diagrams to illustrate network topography. Authors have done great work putting together such a great book. Highly recommended.

Although outdated in some areas (minimal) this book is great! We use it for our Networking Essentials class. One of the advantages of this book is that is is cross-platform. The terms apply to networks and technologies irrelevant of the vendor or operating system. The case studies and the projects provide a great opportunity for developing hands on experience in each of the chapters. I highly recommend this book since it complements very well the Cisco Academy Semesters 1-2 Book!!

If you are new to SOAP and you want to get the overall picture, and you don't care for details, this is the book you need.
If you need a reference guide, this is not the book you want.
If you're looking for a book about SOAP on a particular platform (say Java), this is not the book you need.

This book was a disappointment. I got thrown into an XML/SOAP project and had to get up to speed in short order. After struggling on my own for a while I bought this book hoping it would have lots of meat on actually using SOAP::Lite, but it had pretty thin coverage.

I did like the big-picture overview of the various technologies, but it was not very helpful in writing an actual SOAP client to talk to a third party's SOAP server. Considering that the author of SOAP::Lite also wrote this book, it seems to me that there could have been a whole chapter on SOAP::Lite from the client view.

This will stay on my shelf as a reference, but for getting up to speed rapidly on actually writing a SOAP client, it was a bust.

This book is a nice introduction to SOAP. It doesn't get caught in the Software wars and has examples of most existing systems. Another advantage: it is a thin book and not a 1000 pages bible. So you can easily read it in a weekend and then decide where you want to dig deeper (if necessary).

If your pretty new at SOAP, and if you need an overview, then this is the book you want.
If you don't care about interoperability, and you just want a book on SOAP within a particular environment (say Java), then this is not the book you want.
If you need a reference guide, then you don't need this book.

I was so keen to learn from this book, but no matter how hard I tried it had too much nonsense to be readable or usable.

i placed this order over a month ago and am yet to recieve this item, now i am being asked to review, what should have been delivered and missing somewhere. strange!

I purchased this book to get familiar with SAP in a hurry. Let's just say, "I'm familiar!" Nice book to recommend.

Although many good points are made in this easy to read book, it clearly suffers from a lack of target audience definition. As a theoretical intro to the field, one doesn't need to know how to customize a screen in SAP. As an intro user's guide, one doesn't need to know many of the more technical topics briefly discussed. Since there isn't enough coverage for any one audience, I can't recommend this book.

For those of us who have no prior experience with SAP or perhaps end user experience only, this is an excellent choice. If you're an advanced or intermediate user this is not the book for you. I liked it and recommend it highly!! :)

I am on a project team that is starting the implementation of a specialized SAP module, and I purchased Mr. Anderson's book to help me get a high-level overview of the overall SAP application. I am a relatively new SAP user, and this book was extremely valuable in helping me ascend the learning curve and get up-to-speed on this project. I can now have intelligent conversation with our technical staff, ask knowledgeable questions, and generally understand their answers.

My suggestions at this point would be to include a general glossary and an acronym glossary. I would also recommend, in addition to the "Watch out" and "By the way" boxes, another information source titled, "For further information on this topic".

Given that an overall reference for SAP could easily be the size of a set of encyclopedias, I would give this single book 5 stars out of 5.

I think most of the information is pretty straightforward for those who have modeled objects and component packages. Anyone familiar with test driven design and other extreme programming practices probably have come to most of the same conclusions that this book shows examples of.

While it is very thorough, it is not very concise.

In the end i gave it 5 stars because it's the ONLY book that i've ever seen that gives this type of information in ANY format. I applaud the author for taking such a hard topic and putting it in writing. Sometimes I have to have examples like this to show to other developers when they 'cry' about not being able to unit test.

If your job is working with Legacy Code, then you need to pick up this book. If you follow his line of reasoning, you can pick up solid habits to systematically revitalize legacy code. The main emphasis of the book is applying unit testing to legacy code for in the authors opinion, legacy code is simply "code without unit tests." You may or may not agree with this statement, but the techniques he presents to find "seams" as he calls them in the code to allow you to break dependencies are vital to working with legacy code even if you choose not to apply unit testing to your projects. Some developers may attack the simplicity of the examples presented, saying they don't represent real-world examples, but if you "read" the text accompanying them you learn the techniques to tackle legacy code issues. Although I noted many publishing glitches - places where sentences to entire paragraphs are repeated from one page to another, the content is solid.

[...]

This is a must-read for software developers, I think. It's up there with Code Complete as a must-have, and I think does a better job than Refactoring by Fowler of explaining Refactoring. I started using some of the techniques in this book immediately and found that coding was higher quality and more enjoyable. It also helps to understand that the author's definition of "legacy code" is "code without tests".

I am an entry level software developer who has only been in the industry for a little over a year. While I was in college, I was always provided with very clean code bases to work with or analyze. I was in for a huge surprise when I entered the real world. The code I deal with every day at work is an extremely ugly mess. We have no automated tests. We are basically operating at CMMI level 0. There are no clear coding conventions of any kind. People just kind of band-aid things on top of other band-aids just to make the new changes work. We are basically in emergency mode every day because of all of the ugly side effects of global variables and functions. I was presented this book one day by my company news website. So I grabbed a copy and gave it a chance.

I was very satisfied with this book. I was expecting to start reading this and it would be like one of those GoF (Gang of Four) or Martin Fowler books that already assume that your code is already written fairly well in the first place. The reality is, like others have said here, is that most companies you will work for will just not have the prettiest code base in the world. The book's content is fabulous and I can see this being one of the key books on my desk every day. I absolutely love how pragmatic Michael Feathers is. I like how he continuously explains the concept that sometimes the code might look uglier or awkward in order to get it under test. I always thought the design pattern books were just a bit over the top. Michael is not like that. He provides examples you probably run into everyday and provides succinct steps for getting it under test.

The only gripe that I have with this book is the overwhelming amount of publishing errors throughout the book. Sometimes, a word is skipped in a sentence or the wrong word is obviously used. There was one point in the book I recall where it seemed like it was missing the ending of a sentence or something. I think if Michael ever wants another edition of this book then he ought to hire someone new that will catch all of these little glitches and correct them. They were a bit annoying at times. Also, like someone else said, it would've been nice to see some examples of really old code in COBOL or FORTRAN even.

Otherwise, it is easy to read this book and you'll get through it fairly quickly. There have been some technical books I have read where I just couldn't read it all the way through because of how utterly boring it was. Michael keeps you entertained with some rather interesting concepts and stories. I also like the way he formatted the book in general. I like how many of the chapters in the book are titled by some problem like "These API Calls Are Killing Me!" However, the last chapter called "Refactoring" was a bit vague and odd to me especially since all it discussed was his infamous "Extract Method" refactoring.

I really wish all of the developers on this team would read this book. They really need to. We need to stop this game of changing and guessing whether it worked. You just cannot do that with software unless it is very small. Any software engineer should have this book on their desk.

This book is decent but it doesn't break much new ground. The author has the Fowler-esque affectation of naming very simple things to create a shared and clear vocabulary (ie making a change and seeing what it breaks when you compile is now the LeaningOnTheCompiler pattern) which feels a little overdone in places.

There was some good material here, but generally the best parts were where he would tie an example into a well known design principal which would be explained in a sidebar (SRP, etc). Of course, that kind of stuff could be found elsewhere in a more concise format.

The book is nice in that it makes you think through the samples, I just wish there were more moments after doing that where I went "oh hey, cool" (there were a couple, don't get me wrong) instead of "yeah, thats pretty much how we do it now".