Modeling

This has the merit of being the first book to consider analysis from an OO pespective, but it does so in a distinctly data oriented way(as the title suggests). It is hard to see how behavioural modelling fits. The companion volume "Object Lifecycles" is essential reading if you want to apply this technique successfully in anything like an OO style.

This might make a good bridge for someone with an IM background moving into OO analysis/design. Other texts address this area much better now and apart from historical interest I can't really recommend it to a newcomer to the field.

This Book to learn Object-Oriented Analysis and Recursive Development (OOA/RD) is a mature, rigorous object-oriented system development method. As, It has been successfully deployed on hundreds of large, strategically important projects insectors such as telecommunications, automotive,aerospace and defence, so this book is a must read that goes step by step in telling how the modelling is done.

I ran across this book about 1990. I had designed a lot of software for a wide assortment of systems of various scale from the mid 1970's on. It really solidified a lot of analysis viewpoints I had developed by that time. The reviewer below is right in stating it doesn't seamlessly bridge the gap from analysis to application. Nevertheless, an experienced designer will bridge that gap with little effort. The most challenging part of design is analysis and modeling of the system separately from any consideration of the implementation, which is a must for an efficient design. This book does exactly that!

I am a huge fan of Terry Halpin, and have tried to use ORM on every one of my projects since I read one his previous books. But I have to say I was disappointed in this book.

This book provides an overview of what ORM is, and how to use Microsoft's database modeling tool to design ORM models.. But it lacks depth. I learned a few small tidbits, which I could have probably gleaned from the newsgroups had I bothered.

This book will probably make it into my box of tax donations pretty quickly.

This book allows you to make the most of the database modeling aspect of Visio for Enterprise Architects (VEA).
For me finding my way around a new design environment is always time consuming, but following along with the first few chapters made it relatively painless this time. The step-by-step sequences contain not only the usual click this / type that instructions, but often also the reason WHY things are done that way. Sometimes the instructions even anticipate where a newcomer might go wrong. Here is an example from the section that introduces the user interface: "If you unxpectedly get a screen that looks like Figure 3-12 (a screendump with the the menu, toolbar and not much else) you have accidentally hidden the database task pane and should click on View > Task Pane to return to the database menu ...".

The book is carefully organised, and you are guided from a general introduction via installation to the various modeling and reverse-engineering activities, with a nice balance of general duscussion and detailed examples. For complex models there are suggestions on using layers to help with documentation and presentations, and on how to make the most of the built-in reports.
The book shows you how to use the default settings in order to make VEA do as much work for you as possible; it then shows you where and how you can best override the defaults to fine-tune your design. Sometimes a seemingly simple change can have consequences further down the line and the book points out where you have to be careful and why. If you want to go for round-trip maintenance this book helps you to organise your models to make the process as straightforward as possible.

If you are new to Object Role Modeling (ORM) then you will find enough here to show you how powerful it is, and to start using it straight away. If you do not wish to use ORM you can stay with ER models and still be well catered for.

I found the explanation of how conflicts are resolved when you synchronise the model and the physical schema after making changes in one (or both!) of them especially helpful. Being aware of the three-way synchronisation process goes a long way to understand the information presented by the wizards.

There are many useful hints all through the book, like this one: "The physical validation page of the Generate Wizard is the most likely place for errors to occur during DDL generation. Platform specific rules, such as object name lenghth, reserved words, characters, etc, are not enforced during the modeling phase prior to DDL generation. It is thus possible for a model with no conceptual or logical errors to fail physical validation".

The index has been constructed with care, the diagrams are clean and helpful and screen shots are used where appropriate. There is also a handy section with the various ORM, Logical Model and IDEFIX diagram elements.
Best of all, the book opens flat so I can use it while I am working without the need for paperweights, bulldog clips or elbows!

I'm still waiting for someone to write a book on 3-D modeling that is not cryptic, does not attempt to assume you know the direction the author takes in their instruction and just starts out with the simplest of routines. Guess I'll have to wait a little longer.

I have used this book for 4 semesters to introduce Pro/ENGINEER part models, assemblies, and drawings. Students take the course with wide variety of backgrounds, some are previous users of Pro/ENGINEER, and some have no experience with any CAD program, and most have had some CAD experience. The tutorials are easy to follow, but not overly detailed. The problems presented at the end of each chapter allow the students to get enough practice and apply what the tutorials introduced. The best thing about the book is that the students seem to like it and are able to learn from it.

I found many of the agencies listed were out of date. This book does not differentiate between the legitimate agencies and the bogus agencies & schools that are simply out to rip you off! There is no rating system on the agencies listed. Looking for an alternative.

This Book is great for anyone who is looking to break into a Modeling or Acting Career. It's Like a Yellow Pages and a who's who all rolled into one. I like it because it has everything a new Model or Actor needs.

The ideas described in this book should be described in a much shorter and more coherent form. Neither computer graphics people nor physicists nor engineers are used to reading books of this type and therefore I fear that most book bought will never really be read.

This book is a complete and rigorous description of how to build a software library for computing the 3-dimensional motion of solid objects. It uses a unified mechanism for describing objects and the constraints between them. The book is very dense and the language is formal; don't expect it to be a quick read. On the other hand, if you have the kind of interest in this subject that is appropriate for this book, you can get a lot out of it. As a software developer, I was very impressed with the cleanliness and organization of the components of the library.

If you are interested more in the concepts than in the details of an implementation, read a more general physics book with a good chapter or two on dynamics. For a detailed study, try 'Computational Dynamics' by Ahmed A Shabana.

...

This is the best book available on the implementation of data structures in functional programming languages (e.g. ML, Haskell). Unfortunately, much of the book covers esoteric data structures that will almost never be needed in practice. Hash tables are a major omission, likely because they don't fit well into a functional environment.

A correction to another review: Hash Tables are included, briefly.

The author spends a great deal of time describing his models and methods (referred to by highly forgettable acronyms) as if they were standards of practice. The writing is not easy to read and the organization of the material and poor indexing do not facilitate use as a reference. A lack of problems and exercises (as well as the use of non-standard terminology) makes the book hard to use as a classroom text.

There are much better book available that cover this material.

The book contains many modern risk analysis tools not found in other books of its kind. What I like with the book is that it presents very sound and meaningful challenges to many traditional risk methods and provides alternative techniques to correct these shortcomings. The examples are practical and easy to comprehend. I hope that the future editions shall include exercises (or problems) to serve as mechanism to further hone the understanding of the students (or any readers of the book).

Absolutely completely confusing text. Poorly written, difficult to understand and extremely wordy. Author takes a moderately complex subject and creates a monster of confusion. The absence of a good bond graph text probably holds back the proliferation of this modeling technique. Amazed the authors didn't attempt to simplify or condense their work after three text revisions.

I have been using the 2nd edition which was the best book within modelling and simulation of "mechatronic" systems before the 3rd edition came. The price is lower than for the 2nd ed. and that one was also worth it! This book is a MUST HAVE for anyone who needs to perform modeling and simulation of mechanic, hydraulic, pneumatic and electrical systems. The book covers the basic modeling procedure, leads you through the formulation of equations, and show you simulation examples. The book is both for the beginner and for advanced engineering. Recommended!

I'm a beginner and already have hit errors on page 47:
Start>Programs>MS SQL server>Configure SQL XML support in IIS

My computer yield the following:
Start>Programs>MS SQL server>
>Books online
>Client network utility
>Enterprise manager
>Import and export data
>Profiler
>Query analyzer
>Readme.txt
>Server netowrk utility
>Service manager
>Uninstall SQL server 7.0

There is no mention of Configure XML support in IIS!

I'm tired of buying books with sloppy technical editing. Oh, to read just one book on VB .net that didn't have an error in the first 50 pages.

I am really please with this book :
In this book you will find clear, efficient examples explained step by step.(you can download the examples from the WEB).
You will have to read only what is necessary to do your job.
You don't loose time and you don't have to read from the beginning of the book to understand. You can read directly only the chapter you need.

You don't have to read useless comment or sentence which bring you no practical skill. This book explain really only what you need .
And you can adapte the example of the book to your need.
This book is more clear and efficient than "VB.NET" Professional of the Wrox Team.

In conclusion, this book is made in a way that you can understand fast and well. This is good and practical book.

Emmanuel Evrard

I am still trying to work my way through this book, but may return it. In case it makes a difference to you, this book isn't as much a tutorial as it is "this is how this works". In other words, there aren't any "now try this" examples. The coverage seems to be good, but I'm a bit disappointed with how it's presented. A step-by-step approach is easier to understand and follow, in my opinion.

Another thing to beware of: the CD leaves some room for improvement, at least as far as the databases go. There's scripts for SQL Server and Oracle to create tables, etc. but not a script to import the data. The data files are in CSV format, and to import them into the database takes a bit of work. If you don't know what you're doing, it's definitely a struggle, with no documentation on how to do it...

Overall, this book may cover lots of great areas, but who can tell when it takes so much effort to get through it? Again, it looks like the coverage and topics are well covered, but the format makes it somewhat difficult reading. I'm hoping it'll pay off for me and anyone else who buys it.

If you are new to databases and know you are going to use VB, Access, Active X, and ADO, then this is a good book for you. Otherwise beware. This book sets you up for learning the how to use the Microsoft endorsed tools for db programming. For that purpose this is a good book.

Where this book falls apart is trying to teach you Oracle stored procedures and programming. You are better off getting a book specific to Oracle 8i. The SQL also is not Oracle friendly. If you want a good understanding of SQL, there are a number of books I would recommend over this one.

By no means is this a bad book, it is just tailored more towards the Microsoft way of life than the Amazon review would lead you to believe. It is definately worth the expense to any VB scribe.