economics-software

Though biztalk 2004 is alreay there but this book is really helpful for the Developers and Administrators who want to start the Biz Talk as a EAI learning product.
Wish you all the best
Regards
Manish Gaur
Deloitte Australia

I have used 3 different BizTalk Server 2002 books (one of which covered 2000 mostly, but there are not major differences between the 2 versions). This book is by far the best, it was good for learning and also good for day-to-day reference.

The things I like the most about this book were:
* Good coverage of orchestration (XLANG Schedules) including advanced scenarios such as correlation between 2 or the same schedule.
* How to setup and configure BizTalk for better scalability and availability, i.e. using SQL Server clusters and BizTalk groups.
* How to access BizTalk API from .NET code, although not using the BizTalk toolkit for .NET (probably not available when published), it explains how to create your AIC component in C#, for instance.
* How to setup MOM to monitor BizTalk Server.

The topics I wished were better covered are:
* More advanced maps examples and better explanation of how the BizTalk mapper compiler works.
* More extensive coverage of the BizTalk API.

Xin's writing style is excellent - very easy to follow storyline for a terribly technical topic. However, I found it stressful to try to follow along and repeat the steps he was explaining in the book. For example, he goes through each step in great detail until chapter 5, then the details drop off completely and you just need to start figuring out what he's talking about. Also, in steps that he does take you through, a couple of the pages of the wizards on not in his explanations or the descriptions of the pages are different that what is displayed in the book. Nothing that would keep you from completing the examples, but it sure leaves you wondering about whether or not you're in the right place or skipping something important. Overall, the content is great and again, it's very easy to read. I'd still recommend it despite it's few minor flaws.

This book would have been better if it had been written by people who had the ability to be a bit more objective about these technologies. (The authors work for Sun, of course.) There is a large portion of the book devoted to repeated explanations about why the J2EE platform is the best available. There are a number of plugs for client-side Java programs (applets, etc.), which is a marginal technology in practical terms, despite its theoretical advantages. I just wanted more objective information and less marketing hype. That being said, the book does have some useful information. A better and more dispassionate look at the J2EE platform spec is "Java for the Web with Servlets, JSP, and EJB" published by New Riders.

The book is a high level overview of the application design with the Java 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition. It may be helpful for someone who wants to know how different architectural choices and technologies fit together in an enterprise application.

It starts with an introduction to different enterprise application scenarios (Stand-Alone, Web-Centric, EJB-Centric, B2B, etc.), and then goes on discussing each of the architectural tiers in detail. In addition, in separate chapters it covers important issues like security, transaction management, internationalization, and localization.

As a rule, each chapter gives an overview of the involved technologies, considers most important issues, and provides some tips on design and proper usage. Available tools are also discussed. Each chapter is followed by a list of references and resources. Many resources have URLs.

The last chapter presents an architecture of the sample application. Unfortunately, quite a bit of space in this chapter is wasted reiterating general pros and cons of distributed and local architectures. My impression is that the author of this particular chapter (each chapter in the book is written by a different author or group of authors) assumes that the reader does not have any prior knowledge about the subject and have not read preceding chapters.

A few code samples in the entire book illustrate some points in the discussion; the code snippets are neither complete nor complex, and obviously are not written for reuse.

A must read for seasoned professionals and those new to the subject. Invaluable insights and guidelines are detailed at every tier of architecting a J2EE enterprise application. I found myself frequently relating to the examples and wishing I had read this book to help with earlier projects. This would have saved hours of re-factoring because the authors have already detailed solutions to common design problems.

If you are looking for code examples, don't look here. Code examples throughout the book are minimal; however this book is not about code examples, the purpose is to provide proven principles for architecting and developing J2EE applications. Instead, one chapter describes the design of the sample Java Pet Store application in regards to the books principles.

I now have a better understanding of the J2EE platform and how to apply its technologies. I will be referring back to this book often!

Taking the advice from the other's who reviewed this book, I bought it. Although I'd just finished Step by Step for Project 2000, I was looking for more concepts and principles behind PM for executives. This book was nothing more than a refresher for me. Its poorly written and the average user picking up a MS Project book for the first time would be lost. Stick with step by step books....

Order this book for my team of extremely busy managers. They love it! Truely user friendly for non-technical people. Easy large print for those whom need it. Great practical examples, charts and graphs. Well written and topics are logically in order.

I've always found project management and project management software to be intimidating. This book, however, makes it all very clear and much less ominous. Not only is the Microsoft Project 2000 software thoroughly discussed but essentials of project management as well. I highly recommend this book to anyone new to managing projects or to the person who has so far found project software the equivalent of the Monster hiding in the closet.

Disclosure: I am the lead editor for this book as well as a contributor.

I re-read the Roundtable on Project Management just the other day. There was a project problem at my J - O - B, and something was nagging me . . . there's a solution to this, I know there is. Didn't somebody explain this to me once . . . Oh yeah, it's in the project book!

We wanted to create something to have on your desk to get a pointer or a nudge toward solving the problem of the moment. Having lived with the material for almost two years (not counting the forum time) it worked that way for me. Plus I got sucked right in and read the thing cover to cover, extracting three other little nuggets along the way. Pretty cool. Seems to work.

This book works as a wide-ranging, informal discussion of projects; pith-ful and pretty entertaining. It's not a project management manual - there are lots of those. But as a source of jiggles and complementary views it works. These days I give people aspiring to understand projects three books: Dwayne Phillips' _The Software Project Manager's Handbook . . ._ (which wasn't out when we had these discussions), _Software Engineering Project Management_ part of the outstanding series of tutorials from the IEEE, most edited by Richard Thayer, and _Roundtable on Project Management_. Between them, they form a balanced view, and an entry point into more developed information on any of the several approaches to projects.

Editing this book I learned that each project is a story that people live. And every project is made of the woven stories that individuals live. So the book models projects as well as describing them: it's a story made of woven voices. This book feels the way projects really feel. That's valuable, I think.

Editing _Roundtable_ finally started coming together when I re-read _Spoon River Anthology_ - also a bunch of independent stories, each part of a bigger tapestry. I'm no poet, and certainly not the master that Masters was. I did manage to recognize the model I was trying to emulate - I stole from the best. Successful projects are also made of woven voices, that form a whole. So the book models what project success looks like, too, I think.

If you're looking for "Tools and Techniques for Risk Management" or "MS-Project on steriods", or even "Collected Wisdom - A Project Manager's Guide" well, this is the wrong book. If you are looking for a source of nuggets for that nagging problem, and for a compelling story, one like the story you're living, well, this is very probably a good book for you.

And if I contributed to the quality of this book, it's mostly just what good project managers do: let the stories happen. I'll be a good project manager one more time and say that the four stars I gave this book belong to the voices in it - to the contributors. The one star missing is mine. I could only manage to get out of the way four stars worth.

SHAPE is an acronym for Software as a Human Activity Performed Effectively and is also the name of a web based discussion community devoted to issues in project management. The participants in the discussion are some of the leading figures in the area of the management of software projects and this book was constructed by selecting some of the more profound points made in the online debate.
What is most interesting about the discussion is that it deals with management situations rather than being restricted to software projects. The point I found the most useful is the description of serious failures that have occurred. Generally, when the problem begins, the decision makers are receiving accurate data that clearly indicates that a failure is imminent. However, it continues to progress and become critical because those receiving the data find it difficult or impossible to believe the data until it is too late. This is a very common occurrence in the software development world, as often everyone from the senior managers on down choose to ignore the warning signs that the project is moving towards failure. Even worse, anyone who breaks ranks to raise the issue is censured or even terminated. Finding a solution to this category of problem is probably the most difficult of all managerial problems to solve. Such a complex problem is not easily resolved, but the advice here will certainly help.
One other discussion that was of great interest is the one about the sinking of the Titanic. In fact, I learned some aspects of that most catastrophic of failures from the SHAPE discussion that I was not aware of, although some of the discussion is a bit unusual. It turns out that the limited lifeboat capacity was due to a redefinition of their purpose. Since the ship was unsinkable, the only possible use for the boats was to ferry passengers off in the event the engines were to quit. The most unusual point in the entire book was a dialog thread where the debate point was whether the attempt to avoid the iceberg was a mistake. It is argued that it would have been better to have rammed the iceberg, which would have severely damaged the ship, but not enough for it to sink. At first hearing it may appear absurd, but the point is a sound one. When catastrophe strikes, sometimes the best long term solution is to accept severe initial damage and survive rather than to attempt to avoid it with a more serious result. This is directly applicable to many software development projects, which always seem to be rudderless in a sea of potential disasters.
The dialog in this book sometimes seems disjointed as a consequence of having been gleaned from many pages of online discussion, where the feedback is all dialog based. However, that is not a serious problem, it just requires a little more concentration on the points, which is beneficial. The main points show you that it is possible to obtain software development strategies from unusual circumstances, even those that cost hundreds or thousands of lives.

I have to say that I learned a great deal from the SHAPE forum, the discussion group from which these gems were selected.

As a volunteer contributor to this work, I received no compensation for my efforts, which is why I feel justified in offering a review here.

You can read how industry experts have handled difficult situations in project work:

- Getting Started - How Big is It? - Estimating - What will it Cost? - Planning for Success - Management Focus - Knowing a Project is in Trouble: Project Indicators - Knowing a Project is in Trouble: People Indicators - People and Project Change - Being a Cassandra - Dealing with Impending Disaster - Doing Something Different - Dignified Project Death - Project Lessons - Personal Lessons

My contributions, Sometimes It's Timing and Be Careful with Unsolicted Advice, tell my short stories that I wish I'd read about before they happened. Each contribution can be a learning (and laughing...and crying) experience for the reader.

Jerry, Marie, and James have done a great job of boiling down the stories and insights that were shared with the SHAPE group over several years.

This is a short work, but includes a great deal of free advice that's already been paid for.

This biography of Bill Gates had a lot of interesting facts about his entire life. It explained how he got started and how his company evolved. It also told about his family and his college years at Harvard. Many of his friends and associates are mentioned too. The book gave a little bit too much information at times but for the most part it was well-written. The author made Gates' work easy to understand even for someone who doesn't know much about computers. I believe this book would be great for a younger crowd to read but not for someone over 14 or 15. It is just on too low of a reading level. Since the book was written in 1997, it is somewhat outdated also. Other than that I liked the book a lot.

I enjoyed this book, but would most likely not reccomend it to anyone over the age of ten or eleven. It was interesting but was published in 1997, therefore it is not 100% up to date.

[...] but the book was great. It had a lot of interesting info.

I'm missing something here: the apparent feasibility of the author's stock-picking techniques with my little PC?

I found the floppy disk accompanying the book unreadable. My local computor builder/dealer/consultant couldn't read it either. My computer kept calling for another disk, which did not come with the book I ordered or with its replacement. The disk seems to herald back to the days of DOS; whatever, I'm lost.

More on the downside, the valueline online survey is unmanageable for me (I got a masters in English and I've been studying and investing stocks for 25 plus years). Determining the average for numerous search fields (market cap., P/E ratio, Price/Book ratio, etc.) that O'Shaughnessy calls for cannot be done with the basic online service. A simple piece of data such as "dividend" or "yield" can be tough to pin down with 7-8 different kinds listed (estimated, quarterly, current, etc.).

The book, in spite of my moronic protests, is praiseworthy. The methods make sense. There is something beautiful about their simplicity - the step by step processes of narrowing down fields in order to determine the best bargains (value) or the best upside potential (growth).

A guiding principle of O'Shaughnessy's argument - the answer to the nagging question of why so many portfolio managers fail - is very simple: they either have no useable plan or they do, but they don't stick to it.

I'm convinced this book has the answer. It's just so damn grueling to apply the principles; a dozen calls and emails to valueline still leave me clueless.

His theory is that by analyzing the holdings of top mutual funds, and then determining how they differ most from the index, you can then emulate the mutual fund's performance.

You can even improve on the performance of mutual funds because you can follow their strategy in a more consistent fashion and because you can reduce their strategy to its essential elements. Often even good fund managers are not entirely consistent.

An example of a strategy is: from the stocks with

12 month EPS gain >20% and
26 week % price change>20% and
Last Qtr EPS % chg > 20% and
Valueline Timeliness Rank <=5

Pick the ten stocks with highest estimated EPS growth for next year .

He explains how to do all this in detail and derives some good looking strategies. Risk is taken into account and proves to be a very useful measure of the reliability of a strategy.

You can use the same techniques to evaluate your broker's recommendations, and the advice from books and newletters. Do they follow a strategy or is it just random tips and hunches?

He also showed how various fund managers changed strategy quite radically without announcing it eg Magellan in the early 1990s.

There are some good tips on how to avoid common traps when using quantitive strategies eg using single variable strategies.

He also explores combining various strategies and shows how to build your own.

He did not really prove his theory which is that noone really makes money by individual stock picks, it is all strategy.

As a final caveat, if you don't like numbers you will not like this book. But it seems you cannot succeed in investment without being very friendly with numbers.

It's been 6 years since this book was published, and I believe that many of the fundamental items identified by the author still apply. Most investors are looking for rules for identifying good stocks, and using these techniques offers someone a way to actually test the results they could expect - at least if you're willing to use a service like ValueLine. The only downside of the book was in the lack of exploring additional ideas - things like shorter holding periods, stop-loss strategies, diversification across industries, etc. For the price, buy it!

Robinson does a great job at laying out all the various factors to be considered in serving this segnment of the retirement market. This book belongs in every serious planner's library.

As noted in the book's preface, nearly 40 million people are already in the age range of 55-70, a time when one's options for retirement planning become somewhat limited. And more than 2 million baby boomers will join them each year. Clearly, this is an excellent market for planners.

Author Robinson shows how to serve this large and growing market with what he calls a new specialty: retirement financial management practice. And he does an excellent job pulling together various considerations that need to be taken into account: financial projections, determining and maximizing social security, determining and maximizing retirement plan benefits, successful investment strategy for this age group, reducing investment risk, tax rules, and what to do if there isn't enough cash flow.

The author does an excellent job of explaining the various areas clearly. And the included forms are invaluable!

A great resource which fills a void in retirement planning coverage. This book is exactly what I needed to complete my retirement planning library.

As an attorney with clients at or near retirement age, I searched long and hard for a resource that would help me better serve those clients for whom it it was too late to do any real planning FOR retirement. With Robinson's well-written and researched book, I can confidently and efficiently serve this client base, from calculating whether they have enough to live on, to maximizing retirement benefits, to developing and implementing strategies for maximizing and protecting their nest egg and increase their cash flow as necessary.

And as a busy practitioner, I really appreciate the many forms and checklists included on the accompanying CD.

I wish this resource had been available many years ago when I first opened my practice.

I wouldn't say there are any secrets in this book. I'm an experienced product and marketing manager in the high tech industry. There was some interesting information that pertained to licensing terms and some breakouts of budgets, that was it.

Definitely not worth $32. Maybe half the price.

There is a review already on here claiming that the book is poor because he was an industry veteran and the book didn't teach him anything new. I find that rather like picking up a 2nd grade "learn to read" book and claiming that it is not valuable because you already know how to read. Obviously this book is not targeted to industry veterans.

However, the book IS targeted at people who are new to the game development industry and want to know it works from a business, legal and production standpoint. In that role, it performs admirably. The writers are all established voices in the industry and share their insight well. As the president of a small development studio, I have 7 or 8 little flags poking out of the top of my copy for topics that I want to reread or reference once in a while.

I believe that the book will be of help to anyone thinking of starting a new studio right up through their first year of business. As long as you believe that your time is worth money, the price of this book it is worth spending so as to save yourself the time and headache of trying to figure it out on your own.

Reviewing a collection of essays isn't easy, because they are by definition a hodgepodge of widely-varying subjects, similar to a restaurant reviewer who's charged with reviewing a buffet. A buffet that is mostly excellent could get an overall mediocre rating if there's a really frightening tub of vegetable mush that wrecks the whole experience, and a review of a mostly mediocre buffet could scare people away from a truly excellent entrée hiding in there. The only buffets that are easy to review are the ones that are 100% good or 100% bad, and those are a rare thing.

Thankfully, the editor Francois Dominic Laramee has made my job easy by editing together a uniformly excellent collection of essays on the game business. The essays are all well-written, and Mr. Laramee has done a terrific job of editing them together into a whole that's greater than the sum of its parts (along with contributing four essays himself). The authors represent a good cross-section of independent developers and game company executives, all of whom appear to be quite willing to impart their own business wisdom to the reader.

One thing I liked right away was that the material is all presented in concrete terms and not some nebulous motivational-speaker gibberish. The authors, on the whole, are more than happy to provide real numbers and case-studies to back up their claims. The subjects covered are wide-ranging, going from do's and don'ts of dealing with publishers, putting together a business model and business plan, managing a project that won't get cancelled, and specific "wrap up" topics like managing customer-support in MMORPG games.

Another pleasant surprise (likely due to Laramee's Quebecer heritage) is that the essays are not USA-centric, as you see in most books about business. While there are certainly plenty of case-studies of US companies, there are also some essays about the game industry in Europe and how to deal with offshore contractors.

_Secrets of the Game Business_ should be required reading for anyone with plans to become an independent game developer. While it's far from a complete guide on how to get into the business, lacking things like the legal minutiae of obtaining copyrights and trademarks and making work-for-hire agreements, this book is a terrific overview of how to build a product, work with a publisher/producer, and get your product on the shelf. Happy reading!

I have used this text in multiple sections of introductory statistics for MBA students, and I have found that it is difficult for the students to follow. Other business statistics texts provide far more easy to follow instruction (e.g., see Mason and Lind's book). This book is a bit too oriented toward the use of statistics in finance (especially for the student who may not have yet had his or her first finance or economics course). I originally adopted it for its integration of Excel as an analysis tool, but its use did not make up for the poor organization and presentation of topics. From the students' perspective -- hands down, they hate it.

This is an aoutstanding book for the MBA Student. The applications are 'real' world and very informative. A 'must have' for anyone who needs to take their quantitative skills to the next level.

The book is well written and is easy to read. The chapters that talked about forecasting and statistical significance have allowed me to forecast my products accurately and have give me the opportunity to build a statistical model for my company. My colleagues and my director are very pleased with the results.

This review was written by a consultant, who can look back on 8 years of SAP-experience and almost 2 years of experience with SAP-BW.

This book targets consultants, who want to cross-check their knowledge, before they take their multiple choice test for the SAP-BW-Certificate. It does contain the orginal Multiple-Choice-Tests for SAP-BW 2.1., and it does contain information on SAP-BBW. It is useful, but you should consider the following shortcomings:

(1) This book is on SAP-BW 2.1, but the most up-to-date release is 3.1. There were many changes since then

(2)If you are just a BW-User, who wants to know, which button to push and which report to start, you should consider other books.This book has got few screenshots and it is definitely not for novices. You can use it, to test knowledge,but it is not comprehensive enough, to teach new knowledge.

(3) If you are a systems administrator or a practitioner, who wants in depths technical information, but who does NOT want a certificate, you should consider other books.
Examples: Kevin McDonalds book on BW or a german publication by Christian Mehrwald (SAP BW Relase 3.0)published by dpunkt-Verlag (Mehrwalds book was written in german and to the best of my knowledge it has not been translated yet, though it is the best book on that topic I know) .

With all due respect towards Mrs Roze, her book is rather thin (260 Pages), does use a large letter type, has got many blank spaces and devotes 20-30% on very general topics (OLTP versus OLAP, Exam preparation etc). The structure of the book is rather erratic. I got along with it, as I have got experience, but a novice might be forced to flip pages forwards and backwards a lot. Moreover, this book does not contain that type of hands-on-advice on administration, that can be found in more advanced books on BW. The scientific content of the chapters varies a lot.
Some are too simple, others discuss very esoteric topics, which you hardly need, except in your exam. Even if you are lucky and pass the test, because you memorize all questions, this is not enough to use BW in you daily work.

(4) I agree with the previous reviewer, that there are mistakes in the multiplechoice-tests, that some answers are definitely wrong, and that some tests ask for information, that one can not find in the corresponding chapter.

SUMMARY: This book is still useful, but only for experienced consultants, who want to get their SAP-BW-Certificate,and moreover it has got some serious flaws.

I have passed the exam with this book without any prior knowledge on sap r/3 or sap bw. However, there were several questions in real exam which could not be answered with the knowledges from this book. Besides, I should complain about the sample questions. There were several wrong answeres (an exctly same question apeared more than twice and they had different answeres).

If you are new to BW and looking for a brief, but yet detailed overview, this book will help you grasp the bigger picture of BW. The practice tests at the end of chapters makes sure you are really understanding the concepts and terminology. The "Note" and "SAP Restriction" symbols thru the book draws your attention to key points. If "Mastering the SAP Business Information Warehouse" drowns you in detail -- this will be a breath of fresh air! Great resource for training people new to BW and it's concepts.