Modeling

I purchased this book along with Volume 2 a couple of years ago. The company I work for purchased the Volume 1 CD and it has been worth every penny. It has saved us countless man-hours and since our IS organization is now doing iterative development, there is no way we could ever hope to develop integrated databases without using these Universal Data Models. The book and CD is worth every cent and can benefit to any organization.

To make it clear, this is not a how-to data modeling book. It is a book of universal data models. If you need to learn how to model, purchase another book; however I would certainly recommend this book in addition to your how-to book.

Where people or organizations generally run into trouble with universal data models is when egos, not invented here syndrome, or outright pride are allowed to play a major part.

I see these universal data models analogous to the use of prehung doors and pre-assembled windows. No builder in their right mind would allow their carpenters to use their valuable time building door and window assemblies. Why would an IS manager allow his data administrators, database administrators, or developers spend their valuable time reinventing the wheel with many of these relational structures? Universal Data Models are a tremendous time saver and will allow an IS organization to develop databases faster, better, and cheaper.

I attended a conference in April 2003 and saw a presentation by a consultant, who used these Universal Data Models to create a database for Authentication and Authorization. This is another example of the powerful benefit of these models.

We have used these models on several projects with great success and will continue to use them on our upcoming projects.

The Data Model Resource Book is as important to a data modeler or application developer as a dictionary is to a writer: you're not at your best without it. Where I've worked, this material has helped me create the architecture for an enterprise data model of our company. Aided by the Resource Book, we build a framework of major tables containing subject areas and the result is a business model to which we can map all of our application databases and data warehouses.

This book is basically rather simple to use; you find the data or subject of interest and then check to see if there are any attributes or relationships in the book that are relevant to your specific application database. This type of a check helps add quality and completeness to your logical and physical model.

But using the book just scratches the surface of its value; it's the author who's responsible for its quality and completeness. I've personally worked with Mr. Silverston who participated in consulting engagements at our firm and I've also seen him perform in the classroom setting. He seems to have an uncanny ability to analyze a given business situation-no matter how seemingly bizarre-and to create a model structure that will accommodate any situation.

I highly recommend the Resource Book to business analysts, application developers, programmers, and data warehouse designers.

Ted Kowalski Data Architect, Equilon Enterprises, Houston and author of "Opening Doors--A Facilitator's Handbook."

My copy of both volume 1 and volume 2 have been referenced so many times that they are tattered and worn, but such a valuable resource on all my projects. Whenever I contemplate a design, I first look at this book and, more often than not, I get ideas and best practices on ways to model the construct. I have successfully re-used designs from both volume 1 and 2 and have applied models from both of these books towards the modeling of many industries including distribution, manufacturing, telecommunications, health care, financial services and professional services.

I have found that the models provided are very relevant, re-usable, and of very high quality. They also provide all the details necessary to create physical database designs. They include entities, keys (primary and foreign), relationships (named), attributes, and the appendices include a complete listing and cross referencing of the entities and attributes, which entities are used in which diagrams (in volume 2), and domains that specify the data type and suggested lengths for each attribute. The book provides clear explanations as to why the models are modeled a certain way as well as includes data examples showing the specific instances of data that could be stored in these models.

The data models offered are at what I would consider a mid level of abstraction. Therefore, they offer a good level of flexibility without being overly abstract. The author will use very useful abstractions such as a "party", "product", "agreement" and "work effort" (with many specific subtypes of these entities as they apply to the various industries) but he does not go overboard by including overly generic concepts like "item" "activity", or "thing" entities. What I really like is that the author will often show multiple ways of modeling the same construct and show the pros and cons of the different ways to model a construct. Sometimes specific data modeling constructs are shown and sometimes more abstract entity models are shown.

Both the volume 1 common models and volume 2 industry models have not only saved me time by being able to re-use the constructs, but they have offered some perspectives that did not occur to me and have literally been a life saver to me on many a project. I could not ask for a better reference on data modeling templates and re-usable data modeling examples!

This book is a must for anyone with interest in business modeling and simulation. It is the culmination of Forrester's seminal book on System Dynamics + the 40 odd years maturation that has occured in this discipline since 1961.

Though this book with 900 odd pages is large, it could have been useful if it had at least one serious case study which flowed through all the chapters and linked all the concepts. This would have helped potential practioners. In its current form the book contains many examples to explain the concepts, but none detailed enough. Many a times the author mentions that the actual models were complex, and a simplified version is being shown in the book. This however does not help the reader to understand and appreciate the complexities involved. It is probably because the concerned organizations were not willing to reveal "too much" lest they loose their IP.

John Sterman has written a superb book that masks the underlying calculus and reveals the capability of causal loop based situation analysis. The examples in the book are absolutely mind-boggling in scale and brilliance with which they are written. The wide applicability of system dynamics is revealed though the large problem spectrum covered in all the chapters of the book.

Without needing to run through the software enclosed in the book, one can easily perceive the dependant causation of a specific problem by following the simple rules expained early on in the book for drawing reinforcing and balancing conditions that drive the causes leading to a specific problem being addressed.

By focusing on the software (which is enclosed on the CD ROM) to develop a problem solving approach, one has to work hard to create a balanced problem and this is not easily done by merely reading the book. I am considering further training in this aspect to master the topic by taking some more ExecEd courses that John Sterman teaches at MIT Sloan along with Jay Forrester and Peter Senge or even taking the eight week remote learning course offered toward credit at the System Dynamics program at Sloan.

I deal with complex IT architectures in my work on a daily basis involving financial, technical and business driven dependencies for Fortune 1000 firms. I use causal looping as taught by John and others at MIT Sloan to understand the path to cut through the complexity and reach an action plan that I can recommend to my clients.

The book has helped me tremendously in my work in the last few months that I have been reading it on airplane trips between my office and customer offices. For a busy consultant, this is a tremendously useful way to spend flight time.

I would give it 5 stars for the content except that the book is not available in e-Book format, forcing me to carry it with me in my laptop bag on flights(its a heavy tome at 900 + pages) and the software on the CD-ROM is not updated to the most current version one can download from the Vensim website nor can it be used for commercial purposes.

This book is the ultimate resource for any serious learner of System Dynamics. Sterman covers all aspects of SD modeling in a witty and easy-to-understand- manner. He deals extensively with the foundations of SD modeling, treats extensively causal loop diagramming, the logic of stocks and flows, gives numerous examples of practical SD projects, makes an in-depth investigation into all kind of building blocks of SD models etc. All the models of the book are avaliable on the added CD in the Vensim, Stella and Powersim data formats. Although published just in spring 2000, it is IMHO already a classic. A last word: Business Dynamics is not cheap, but it is worth every cent or penny you spend for it. There may be other good or even excellent SD-textbooks, but "Business Dynamics" is simply outstanding and a category in its own.

This is good book for introductory data modeling. The concepts are pretty strait forward, and should not pose any great intellectual challenge. If you already do database design work, then forget this book. I've used it more as a logical design primer for training entry level DBAs.

The book seems to have been conceived as a textbook, and some of the pages devoted to general IT discussion seems a little redundant to me (especially considering that the book is quite short).

Despite this, I consider it a very useful book on the subject, and the advice on how to structure data is very well presented and convincing.

What surprised me is to find some very good hints and rules of thumb on practical aspect of Data Modeling, which usually you don't find in this kind of books.

I've not yet been able to try out the data design methodology detailed in the book, but I'm more than willing to give it a try next time I have to participate in specifying an application DB.

All in all, a good buy. It short enough that reading it cover to cover is not a daunting project, and after having read it once you will probably want to use at least part of what you found in it. I'd really like to see a similar treatment for other IT ideas and problems, like OO design, for example.

This is an excellent introductory text book on data modeling, but I bet even experts will find it useful. It is amazing how much information this short volumn contains. It has an exceptional treatment on E-R to relational tables mapping. It also provides a catalog of E-R diagrams that is extremely useful for learning

Don't let one person's negative review sway you; I've modeled for art classes since 1984; this book can make a fun job even better. I suppose the one negative remark so far was by a: 1) jealous wannabe; 2) a religious fundamentalist aghast at such a job; or, 3) the author of a competing book (I'm aware of none.) By the way... I notice he/she chooses toi remain anonymous! Get this book and get to work, especially you guys! The art world needs you!!!

I have been an artist model for three years. Recently somebody trashed me out for doing my job. Reading Theresa Danna's book boosted up my morale and made me hold my head up high. Now I have the verbal weapons to defend myself against such ignorant people.

As a 56 year old life model, I can't thank Ms. Danna enough for putting in words what we all face as we try to provide value for artists, art instructors and, most importantly, art students. During one session this past week, I was confronted with a "Model Code of Behavior" that mirrored many of Ms. Danna's thoughts presented in her book. I highly recommend Ms. Danna's book to both aspiring models and life drawing and painting art instructors. Bravo, Theresa!

Cover all aspects of storm water modeling, very good for practicing engineers in water resources, in order to be well informed how to model and design the storm water systems, I use it as a reference book and a design tool for every day topic or task. It is easy to follow and to apply in practice.

This text is well written with especially good graphics and design information and instruction. Especially helpful were the design example problems. Text is a good reference book, useful to the junior design engineer through senior management. Text readily compliments local design criteria as a logical and balanced reference resource. I recommend this book to fellow civil engineers.

This book covers a wide varity of hydrology and hydraulics subjects that would normally need numerous different books. It's a great go to source for the practicing engineer who needs a quick answer to a tough problem.

A good tutorial starts out with something basic and gradually builds on it. This book starts out with three chapters of pure reference material. Granted some of this is a half-assed description of setting up Apache and compiling in mod_perl. I found the docs that come with the Apache and mod_perl source code to be far more useful (and accurate). Then you get this long list of Perl API classes, request object functions, Perl handlers, etc. All of which is wonderfully useful information ... presented at the wrong time ... we have yet to begin writing a useful module.

When we do begin the writing of a module, it isn't a basic, stand-alone module, but a module to add footers to other content. So, the text digresses into a long and technical discussion of the various ways to configure Apache and associate MIME types so that this module will work with documents that we might or might not have on hand (It's just assumed that you have these laying around handy). During this discussion, we get bounced off of other Apache::xyz modules that apparently popped into the author's head in a moment of "As long as we're at it, why don't we throw this in too" inspiration. Wonderful information ... presented at the wrong time.

To give an example: A logical place to start learning Oracle SQL (or any other SQL) would be with the SELECT statement. However, the authors of this book would begin with a detailed discussion of PL/SQL exception handling, a listing of most of the built-in PL/SQL exceptions, and a listing of a number of the built-in Oracle packages. (Recall we were just starting with SQL. But what the heck! PL/SQL is cool, so why not talk about it now? We're going to use it eventually anyway.) Then for your first select statement, you would write something that used a complex join, a correlated subquery, and a few built-in functions. Well, obviously, we can't just throw this extra stuff in there and not talk about it. So we go whirling off into a discussion of complex joins, correlated subqueries and any other tangents that happen to pop into our head. And when it is all said and done, we still don't know how to display the entire contents of the EMP table.

This is a classic of case of making it difficult to see the forrest because of all the trees. The authors of this book have made no attempt to devise a progressive model for building knowledge. Instead, information is dumped on the reader apparently in the order it came to mind. Maybe this is a problem with having multiple authors. Perhaps the parts were written independently, then slung together. That's what it looks like.

I suppose this book will get you to where you are going ... eventually. But I suspect you will spend considerable time flipping back and forth between chapters re-reading and re-re-reading sections in order to re-assemble the information in a somewhat logical pattern; hence the comparison to a 5,000 piece puzzle.

For those who might be wondering: This book assumes you already know the Perl language. If you don't, the "Learning Perl" book is a good starting point (you do NOT want "Programming Perl" at this point). You will probably also want to get some knowledge of HTML and building web documents. And you will probably want to get at least a basic knowledge of custom configuring an Apache installation.

Not much there for C, although it's not too difficult to make use of the Perl topics and covert them to C, it's more geared towards Perl (much more). That's too bad. Still, it's a good book and is very useful for referencing as well as for people looking to learn more about this topic.

_Writing Apache Modules_ (WAM) is a high quality work, even amongst other O'Reilly books. Few/no typos and articulate writing, very usable index and good content organization, accurate and complete information, top notch Perl code. Yes, only about 5% of the code are in C, but the C API reference is there. I write Perl and C modules and I can use this book for both (though for specific C techniques, you'll probably be better off by reading the Apache developers and apache-modules mailing lists).

I haven't actually read the other mod_perl and developer-oriented Apache books out there but in my opinion this book is still indispensable if you plan to write Apache modules, either in Perl, C, or other languages. Especially if you write for mod_perl, this book is a great complement to the mod_perl guide. Stas' guide focuses on deployment and tuning issues (memory usage, speed, etc) while WAM focuses on the Apache API and how Apache can help you do the job by writing modules.

Personally, _Writing Apache Modules_ is still the most useful reference book to date. It's one that spends the largest amount of time on my desk.

And, oh yes, Amazon gives a good deal on this one ... .

Can't wait for the Apache 2 counterpart.

I found this book to be; Badly organized but not catastrophically, Total lack of in depth knowledge and know-how, almost totally worthless as a compendium, several hundred pages wasted on empty chatter and irrelevant fact on history and the world situation (some people might find these pages interesting, but I don't) and not at all measuring up to my hopes. Almost everything i know, i got from "playing" with Exchange in a sealed environment, and this book have been totally worthless to me.

This book offers clear, pratical coverage of MS Exchange 5.5. The comprehensive instruction help me setup MS Exchange 5.5 in record time. Each chapter focuses on a practical, real-world skill, so you can read the book straight through, skip subjects you already know, or read chapters in the order that interest you.

I am very thankful to the Authors and SAMS

Monal Shah (B.E. Computer Science, MCSE)

I found the coverage in this book of Exchange and in particular coverage of using Internet Mail Service (IMS) to connect your site to internet mail to be very clear and complete. This is my second book on exchange 5.5, and it clarified many aspects of this HUGE software package and made a difficult subject approachable and pleasant to read. I successfully set up an exchange system for our (small) company with dial up internet connectivity in a short time - consequently THUMBS UP for the Authors !!

This book is awesome. I've been writing tcp/ip sockets code for years and I've used all the standard reference books (Esp. the Stevens books) and they're great. Let me tell you, though, that I wish I had this book when I got started with TCP/IP programming. It's clear, it goes into sufficient detail to get you to understand what's going on, but not so much that you get lost.

I read in two pages of this book something that none of the other books showed, the 'pre-forking' server model which things like Apache use. None of my other books explain how this works, this does, clearly and concisely. Even though I own all the standards (TCP/IP Illustrated volumes 1, 2 and 3, and both editions of Unix Network Programming by Stevens) when I got a chance to thumb through this book (and it's sister book "TCP/IP sockets in java") I knew immediately I would be buying them.

Excellent. Just Excellent.

The Pocket Guide to TCP/IP Sockets is a wonderful, hands-on introduction to socket programming. It's small, light, and inexpensive. Perfect!!! I wish that all computer science books were as well-presented and affordable as this one. Definitely a keeper. I know people who refuse even to loan their copy to friends :)

This book was recommended to me for one of my courses and I was very skeptical seeing the size. But after reading the book, I was extremely impressed.

If you are just into network programming, then this book teaches most of the basics needed to advance more deeply. The explanations are very good and all the code written in the book work :) If you are already familiar with the basics of TCP / IP, then you can finish this book in about a day or two.

I highly recommend this book for every network programming beginner. Please Note: This book is not a guide to C programming and you should be familiar with basic C data structures and pointers for understanding some of the code logic.

Giving this book only 2 starts only because of its title. It is not what it claims to be.

This book title should be "Understanding Relational Databases, once again" (borrowed from 1st book by Fabian).
It is not for experienced database professionals by any means.
In case you have never heard of normalization or relational algebra this book will help you to avoid many mistakes with database design.

The relational principles are practical. No argument there. But in real world there are other issues like available RDBMS features, performance, deadlines. It is not a problem that this book does not address them as its scope is different. The problem that it mentions these issues as something having less importance comparing to relational theory guidelines. Following this approach can ruin your design as surely as violating normalization principles.

In case you have already had an understanding of relational theory this book is waste of money.
Samples are oversimplified. Try to implement supertype-subtype sample with the inheritance level about 5 and see how your design will perform. Many very useful designs are simply not mentioned. For example only "explosion" design is considered for tree implementation.

This book offers clear but challenging thinking about some important issues in relational database design, rules of integrity, and normalization. Pascal emphasizes principles of relational design based on predicate logic and set mathematics in a nice blend of theory and practical hints. He argues that many of the problems in using databases are a result of poor relational design. For example, in discussing duplicates he advocates prohibiting duplicates and the use of keys. Throughout he describes the problems if the data is not normalization.

My only complaint is that he regularly complains about the design of the SQL standard. For example "Due to numerous flaws in the design and implementation of SQL, the performance of SQL DBMS ... leads users to denormalize for performance". As a user I have say over my design, but little sway over the SQL standard or my particular software package. With regard to denormalizing, I think there is also a tendency to use flat tables in web page pages, so perhaps Pascal should go over developing tools to program relational tables easier with ASP pages. I would have also appreciated his thoughts on dimensional modeling used in data warehouses.

There are hundreds of relational database books available that either address theory or design or a specific vendor application. This is the only book that I have found that addresses the gap between relational theory and its implementation in the real world. Buy it, read it, and demand that your vendor(s) develop a REAL relational database.

This is a great book from Quake 3 legend Paul Steed and its incredibly detailed with sujects that range from pencil designs to skinning plus many other helpful tips and tricks along the way. Unfortunatelly the book fell short in the illustration department and its kind of hard editing every vertex, line, face and edge on a 1500+- polygon model with confusing black and white pictures. Atleast for me, a beguinner that doesnt understand edges very well. All in all this is a very complete guide from beguinning to end but unless you have nerves of steel or completely understand how to handle edges without relying too much on the illustrations i wouldnt reccomend it for everyone.

I gave this book 5 tars because I couldn't give it 6 or more
Big kudos for Paul Steed. Every tutorial on any subject should be written like this one. This book takes you by the hand and guides you through the process of creatig a low poly character leaving no stone unturned. Each page is loaded with visuals to illustrate exactly what your result should be at each phase.
In terms of writing style, if you closed your eyes for a moment you get the sense that Paul is right their with you, guiding you thru each step as a tutor and friend. Paul blends humor and an ability to simply the complicated.
This book and its CD content is "off the rack" and is the standard bearer for any tutorial on any subject that require visual.The only thing that could have possible made this book better is if the illustrations were in color (and that a stretch to find somethiong imperfect)as in the Freak Frank texture book by DAZ, I look forward to seeing something in the future from Paul on rigging and animating characters, character studio etc. I would buy any tutorial produced by Paul Steed without hesitation providing the same style is maintained

"Modeling a Character in 3DS Max" by Paul Steed is by far the best book I've ever read on low poly modeling. I recommend this book to any newbie to low poly modeling. It is easy to follow and Paul Steed explores just about every way to model from using primitives, to using the booleen operation effectively. Go ahead and give it a try!