Modeling

This text is a very good complement to other modeling texts. However, if you want to learn how to set up your hydrogeologic conceptual model, what data is needed to develop a good model, how to choose your numerical model, verify, calibrate your model, interpret results and perform a post audit, this is not that text. For the purpose of model setup etc. I would recommend Applied Groundwater Modeling.

The chapter assessments have exhibits which aren't clear enough to answer the questions without taking a leap of faith, and some of the answers are ambiguous at best (like leaving the word "deny" out of "deny packet filter"). This is not very helpful to people who are novices with the product.

If you are hoping to use the CD to cement your knowledge, forget it. While the questions may well be valid, they are poorly presented and the questions and answers wrap off the screen on some systems. Mine even told me I was doing an Exchange exam at one stage. This is simply not what you expect from a major publisher - if you're going to include this quality of material, you shouldn't bother bundling it at all.

If you bought this book already, consider getting a transcender test to test and rebuild your knowledge, and play with an ISA server - the online help contains a wealth of information about it. Also be aware the book went to press before FP1 was released, so there is nothing about the OWA publishing wizard.

This will probably be the last Sybex book I buy. I have been unimpressed by several of their titles now - so I'll be sticking to the genuine Microsoft material in future!

As a reference, it frustrates. A good reference needs a good index, but the attractive railroad-track diagrams are not set off from other entries in the index, greatly slowing searches. And while there is a complete grammar for SQL92 in an appendix, its organization defies use as a reference.

The index is generally inadequate as well. For example, most operator char! acters are not indexed at all, and the word "operators" only indexes a peripheral subject. I have yet to determine the stance of the standard on case-sensitivity.

Comparison with SQL89 appears only occasionally in the body of the book. Most of it is in a laundry list in an appendix and not useful for reference. The discussion is sometimes less than rigorous or uncritical, for example dismissing the implementation-defined precision of INTEGER in a single sentence. As another example, only in the discussion of LIKE is treatment of trailing blanks by the related '=' operator discussed. The book is organized generally by language features and syntax, and is not as strong in moving from problem to solution.

It would have been helpful if the index was organized in such a way that one could immediately locate the railroad diagram for a given SQL statement. A separate list of railroad diagrams would also be nice. And although I consider heavy reliance on defaults to be bad programming practice, I would have appreciated it if just a quick look at a railroad diagram told me what defaults, if any, applied for the statement in question.

Any author of books or articles must have his or her target audience in mind. For example, what may be an excellent article for a trade magazine, would almost certainly be rejected by a scientific journal. Thus, when judging this book one must keep in mind the perspective of its authors. If you are looking for an academic textbook with emphasis on scientific rigor, then this book will disappoint you. It is pretty obvious that is not what this book was meant to be. If, on the other hand, you want a practically oriented book that will help you do your job in a better way, then this is a great place to start.

Having worked with databases and related technologies for 18 years, I have seen so many books where the number of pages outweigh the knowledge of their authors by a factor of 2 or more (and just in case there are any publishers out there listening; computer professionals are sick and tired of having to read through hundreds of pages of blah-blah-blah in order to find the information we are looking for). This book is different. It contains 394 pages of ordinary chapters, followed by 133 pages of appendices, and the signal-to-noise ratio in all these pages is excellent.

If you are an application programer, a database administrator, or some other kind of database practitioner, and you are serious about your work, then there are some books I would consider more or less mandatory reading. This is one of them.