Book Description
This introduction to programming text provides students taking a programming logic or computer concepts course with the fundamentals of key programming concepts, an introduction and discussion of programming code, and the opportunity to apply knowledge learned using Visual Basic .NET. ... Read more

Book Description

Linear Programming: Foundations and Extensions is an introduction to the field of optimization. The book emphasizes constrained optimization, beginning with a substantial treatment of linear programming, and proceeding to convex analysis, network flows, integer programming, quadratic programming, and convex optimization.

Customer Reviews (3)

Professor Robert Freund's review
This is a much more detailed one as compared to the other two and was penned by MIT ORC Professor Robert Freund.

Summary. This book presents a thoroughly modern treatment of linear programming that achieves a healthy balance between theory, implementation, computation, and between the simplex method and interior-point methods. It's most novel feature is that it is written in a delightful and refreshing conversational style, that bespeaks the author's teaching style and relaxed wit. It is a pleasure to read: students will find the book to be friendly and engaging, while professors will find in the book a wealth of teaching material, nicely organized and packaged for classroom use. The book is also meant to be used in conjunction with a public-available website that contains software for various algorithms, additional exercises, and demos of algorithms.
The need for new linear programming textbooks. The world of linear programming has changed dramatically in the last ten years. For one thing, the incredible changes in computer technology have made it easy to solve truly huge LPs, and routine LP problems solve in fractions of a second even on a personal computer. As a result, the study of linear programming algorithms is of less interest to the casual student. (In a similar vein, we usually do not teach students how to efficiently compute square roots; we simply presume they can press the right buttons on their calculator.) On the other hand, because we can now solve truly gigantic linear programs, issues of computer implementation, numerical stability, and software architecture, etc., are as important for the serious optimizer as is, say, duality theory. Furthermore, the development and recognition of the importance of interior point methods has changed the landscape of linear programming significantly, so that linear programming is no longer synonymous with the simplex method, and a modern treatment of LP must also present an in-depth treatment of the most important interior point methods.

Vanderbei's book is thoroughly modern. Vanderbei's book is completely up-to-date. Aside from a nice treatment of the simplex method, it also contains a very up-to-date treatment of interior point methods, including the homogeneous self-dual formulation and algorithm (which might soon become the dominant algorithm in practice and theory). It contains extensive material on issues of implementation of both the simplex algorithm and interior point algorithms. A politician might call it a book for the 21st century.

Vanderbei's book has many novel features. This book is quite different from most other textbooks on LP in a number of important ways. For starters, the standard form of a linear program in the book is the symmetric form of the problem (max c^T x | Ax <= b, x >= 0), as opposed to the usual form (min c^T x | Ax=b, x >= 0). This difference allows for an easier treatment of duality, and allows one to see the geometry of linear programming more easily as well. The symmetric form also makes it easier to set up the homogeneous self-dual interior point algorithm. However, this form has the drawback that discussions of bases, basic feasible solutions, and some of the mechanics of the simplex method are all a bit more awkward. (The book uses the language of dictionaries to describe the essential information in a simplex method iteration.) The book has more of a focus on engineering applications than does the more typcial LP textbook (which tend to rely on business problems). For example, there is a nice chapter on optimization of engineering structures such as trusses. The book gives a very broad treatment of interior point methods, including several topics that are not usually found in textbooks such as the homogeneous self-dual formulation and algorithm, quadratic programming via interior point methods, and general convex optimization via interior point methods.

These novel features are good in that the author has clearly tried to be innovative and to build an LP text from the ground up, without regard for past texts.

Some Nice Features. There are some particularly nice features in the book. The book contains a much-simplified variant of the Klee-Minty polytope that allows for a more straightforward proof that the simplex method can visit exponentially many extreme points. In addition to proving strong duality, the book also presents Tucker's strict complementarity theorem, which has become important in the new view of sensitivity analysis, optimal partitions, and interior point methods. The book also contains a nice treatment of the steepest edge pivot rule, which has recently emerged as an important component in speeding up the performance of the simplex algorithm. In the treatment of interior point methods, the author spends very little time on polynomial time bounds and guarantees (as a theorist, I like to see this material), instead adding value by discussing important computational and implemention issues, including ordering heuristics, strategies for solving the KKT system by Newton's method, etc. The book sometimes has an engineer's feel for the proofs, which is good for students but is a bit frustrating to hard-core math types such as myself. There are many instances where the proof is just a proof via an example. This is consistent with the conversational and informal style of the text, and this informality spills over into the mathematics on occasion.

This book has style. As mentioned earlier, the book has a wonderfully appealing conversational style. While the author does not purposely go out of his way to be cute and corny, he succeeds in leaving the reader grinning with his humor. There are some passages that are downright funny, but the style succeeds mostly by default. One section on the issue of modeling the anchoring of truss design problems is called Anchors Away, the subsection on updating factorizations to reduce fill-in is aptly called Shrinking the Bump. And there is the hint of a racy discussion of an application of Konig's Theorem involving boys and girls that the curious reader might enjoy.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed reviewing this book, and I highly recommend the book as a textbook for an advanced undergraduate or master's level course in linear programming, particularly for courses in an engineering environment. In addition, the book also is a good reference book for interior point methods as well as for implementation and computational aspects of linear programming. This is an excellent new book.

Excellent book
Very clearly written. Unlike most math books, the notation is easy to understand for engineers and programmers. I found the free online version first, and then decided to buy the hard copy.

Profesor
That book is excelent from class and practice.Very important in undergraduate and postgraduate.Thanks you. ... Read more

Book Description
This book is designed for a first course in nonlinear optimization. It starts with classical optimization notions from calculus and proceeds smoothly to a study of convex functions. This is followed by material on basic numerical methods, least squares, Karush-Kuhn-Tucker theory, penalty functions, and Lagrange multipliers. The book has been tested in the classroom; the approach is rigorous at all times and geometric intuition is developed. The numerical methods are up-to-date. The presentation emphasizes the mathematical ideas behind computer codes. The book is aimed at the student who has a working knowledge of linear algebra and partial differentiation but has had no previous exposure to optimization. Mathematics instructors will be comfortable with the mathematical approach which deemphasizes recipes and emphasizes understanding underlying concepts. There are many exercises chosen to highlight the fundamental ideas. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Peressini and Sullivan are not enough to make you Uhl
This book takes an unusual path to the usual results in optimization. Though refreshing in some ways, the standard results--Kuhn-Tucker conditions for non-convex programs--are not achieved until the last chapter. Little of the preceeding six chapters can be skipped without ruining this development! D.M. Greig, by comparison, develops this result in her first chapter, in a book at a comparable level. With Peressini et al, you sink weeks into learning restricted convex programs; an interesting niche, but one best studied once the main results are in hand.

Excellent first book on nonlinear programming.
I am a graduate student, working on a PhD in Optimization (nonlinear programming).This book provides an excellent first exposure to the field of nonlinear programming.It is full of "easily visualizable" 2or 3 dimensional examples, which greatly aid in the development of strongintuition.Although the intended level of this book is the advancedundergraduate level, it serves as a very thorough and useful companion toany graduate text.This book almost single-handedly helped me pass myqualifying exam in optimization, mostly because it "made all of thepieces fit together."

I heartily recommend it to _anyone_interested in learning about nonlinear programming. ... Read more

Book Description

If you're ready to start using Java 2 instead of simply watching on the sidelines as way-cool Web applets dance across your browser window, grab yourself a copy of the third edition of the popular Java Programming For Dummies and get set to rock your world.

Find out how to add oomph and interactivity to your Web sites with nifty Java applets, provide a friendly user interface to your corporate database, or develop games as you plumb the pages of Java Programming For Dummies, 3rd Edition:

Customer Reviews (39)

really good intro book for programming in java
If you're a newbie programmer and want to learn Java and object-oriented programming concepts, this book will get you started!Solid but fun.

not a good book at all
it does not help a beginner
it does not help a mediocre programmer
it does not help an advanced programmer
so, there, I said my peace

Surprisingly bad, terrible format
I like the "Dummies" series since it has helped me pass the GRE and learn HTML.However, I was incredibly frustrated with this book.I am so surprised that they published a book with so many errors.For example, the "Hello World" program had quite a few errors and for some reason appeared 3 times on the same page!

The worst part was the flow and format.I had to start on chapter 8 and begin reading backwards to understand the concepts introduced, but even then things were not explained clearly.

Its very rare when I give a bad review, but this one deserves 1 star just because of the numerous errors.To tell you the truth, I returned it the following day after buying it and haven't done Java since.

JAVA Programming for Dummies
It's too bad you're forced to give this book at least one star. It's misleading. The one good thing I can say about the book though, is that the coding errors embedded in the examples do serve to strengthen the readers debugging skills.

This book makes great fire wood!
When I sat down at my computer to learn Java through this book, i was left confused ,bewildered, and frustrated. This book has a lack of direction and little or no examples.This book is hard to understand and even harder to use.This book is a book you do not want to add to your cart. This book is definetly for experts and not dummies, which really kind of defeats the purpose. ... Read more

Book Description
A hands-on reference for developers and database administrators, this book covers the basics of developing customized database applications with Microsoft SQL Server 2005. Includes code samples and real-world, expert insight. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Full of Filler and Code is Incorrect
The whole first part of this book is just filler. It is a long walkthrough of the features found in SSMSE.

The very first code examples don't work specifically the smo backup code... and the code examples aren't teaching proper coding techniques. The writers of this book need to take a course on Microsoft's Design Guidelines.

This book is teaching bad programming habits, the code is incorrect, and the book is stuffed with filler.

Nice Intro but Little Content.
This is your typical intro book, good for a tour through the highlights.But it is not a reference book, and because it covers so many topics it can spend very little time on any one subject.You will find all the material at the MS web site.You will still need to find more thorough reference material in order to be successful.

Great Reference!!!!!!!!!!!
From the beginning, this text illustrated an overview of the SQL CLR with a sufficient amount of detail so that someone just starting to learn SQL could understand it, but also a developer familiar with this topic would benefit from this review.Debugging was covered extensively in Chapter 9.I was impressed with all of the scenerios that were brought to light for debugging SQL Server code.I especially liked Chapter 7 on Security.The chapter started off slow to make sure the reader understood the four themes of SQL Server 2005 security, and then went on to explain encryption support and protecting SQL 2005 with great examples.I would definitely recommend this book to any developer interested in learning about new features in SQL Server 2005.I found it to be extremely well-written, interesting, and helpful!

New Favorite Reference Book
I've had this book for a little over a week, looking for time to give it some proper due. Now I only wished I had delved into it right away. Or gotten it sooner. It's now moved to the front of the line as my favorite reference book.

Clearly written and organized, it took me all of 15 minutes to follow a new concept (to me). It was logical, building upon itself and fully explained what was going on, and HOW it works too. It's been my experience in the past that developer books fall into one of two categories: Tutorial and Reference. This is the first one that I have seen sucessfully split the two and combine the best of both. The author right up front explains what the book does and does not cover.

This book isn't for DBAs or people who want to know how to use SQL Server 2005. The book is for developers who want to know how to use the new features of SQLServer 2005, and how to use them in .NET 2.0.

I'm not sure how I've gone so long with out this book. Just in the last hour, it's been a life savor. I'm learning about capabilities that I'd never seen documented anywhere else.

Great book on programming new features
This book is clearly written and I feel it does a good job of covering the major new features of SQL Server 2005 well enough so you can get up to speed quickly and save enough time versus puzzling things out using just the online materials that come with SQL Server 2005 to easily justify the purchase price and reading time.A number of people with expertise in various aspects of SQL Server collaborated on this book, and the value of the information in each area reflects the depth of expertise.

The book is thick, but it's not bloat -- there is just a heck of a lot of stuff to cover in SQL Server 2005.If anything, I'd be happy to buy the book again if another edition comes out with 300 more pages full of more details and more complex examples in several areas.In the mean time, there is plenty to get one going and fill out specific details with the online doco and the 'net.

I think this book is too advanced for programmers who aren't already up to speed with .NET and relational database server programming.For those of us for which MS SQL 2005 is mostly just another iteration of good ol' Squirrel Server (albeit a big whopping upgrade architecturally and feature-wise), and who've already moved to C# + VS 2005 + .NET 2.0, this is the best book I've found so far.

I addition to covering the new features of SQL Server 2005, this book also provides deeper coverage of several advanced relational database techniques than just the enhancements specific to the 2005 edition of SQL Server.OLAP and XML operations being prime examples.I think the authors made a good choice by providing more than just an overview of the 2005 enhancements as without the broader coverage, presentation of the enhancements themselves wouldn't have made much sense to me.

I also think the book is pretty well organized so you don't have to waste time hunting down what you need. I do warn you however, that you may have to read some parts of the book first before plunging into the specific topic you need first.It's not a fault: SQL Server 2005 includes the CLR, and much of the rest of the book sensibly uses C# on the SQL Server CLR examples, so you kinda have to get up to speed programming in the SQL server CLR first, don't you? ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

A Fascinating Look at the Origins of Important Languages
Until such time as someone tries to fill the shoes of Jean Sammet and write a new overview of programming languages (a major job, that!), the HOPL conferences are the main source of insight into the development of programming languages that, Sapir-Whorf style, have shaped the way we view programming and the problems we try to solve with a computer.Even if someone does take up that task, the HOPL conferences are invaluable, since they provide information straight from the people involved.

This volume of the proceedings of HOPL II is thus invaluable for the student of programming.HOPL I covered the main early languages (Algol 60, FORTRAN, COBOL, LISP, APT, BASIC...); HOPL II covers important languages of more recent vintage (Algol 68, Pascal, C, C++. more recent dialects of LISP). C.H. Lindsey's fine paper on the turbulent development of Algol 68, the best language you probably never used and a major influence on later languages, is worth the price of admission by itself.

Outstanding Collection of Resources
I have read many many computer jounrals about the history of computing. Very few resources have put the kind of time and effort that Thomas Bergin has done in his book. Along with assistant editor, RIck Gibson, both men doa fine job collecting the best of the best resourcesand giving it rightto the public upfront. I wish Bergin can do another book or somethingInternet related because this is truly apart of computing that we do notreally have much material on. ... Read more

Book Description
One of the most significant features of Visual Basic .NET is the full support of object-oriented programming.For years, developers have been asking for it, but you may not be quite sure how it can help to create and maintain scalable .NET applications.VB.NET is a language that facilitates object-oriented programming, but does not guarantee good object-oriented code.That's where Object-Oriented Programming with Visual Basic .NET comes in.It will show you how to think about similarities in your application logic and how to design and create objects that maximize the benefit and power the .NET Framework enables.The concept of separating the interface from the implementation has been around for years, but with Object-Oriented Programming with Visual Basic .NET you'll put it all into practice and you'll never willingly go back to those old ways.With chapters on object fundamentals and class anatomy, you'll lay a foundation that will prepare you to think and apply code reuse principles.Following that, you'll be ready to dive deep into code and the dynamic ecology that it interacts with. Inheritance, containment, polymorphism, overloading, and overriding are just the beginning of this adventure.From there, you'll discover exception handling, reflection, serialization, and I/O. Packed with examples that will guide you through every step, Object-Oriented Programming with Visual Basic .NET is a guide for those with some programming experience.This book is for those who know Visual Basic 6.0 and are ready or have started the process of developing with Visual Basic .NET.It is an essential tool that will build your skills, as you become a master of Visual Basic .NET.It is one thing to know how to write object-oriented code. Knowing the when and the why is what makes good programmers. That's exactly what you'll know after reading this book. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

TRULY OBJECT-ORIENTED
As the name indicates, the contents of this book are truly object-oriented.
It has all the lessons that learners would need in order to comprehend the various options and applications that Visual Basic .NET offers. This book provided exemplary guides, which would encourage learners to endure some self-tests. It anticipates problems and helps provide solutions that programmers can count on. Almost everything about it is positive.
However, its information are not as detailed as some experts would like them to be. Again, anybody who has poor knowledge of Visual Basic 6.0 will not find this book easy. Its writer assumed that its readers are already familiar with VB 6.0. ... Read more

Book Description
Adoption of Bluetooth wireless technology has become ubiquitous in the last few years. One of the biggest steps forward is the standardization of Java APIs for Bluetooth wireless technology (JABWT). The latest updates to this standard is explained in detail in this book. The JABWT standard, defined by the JSR-82 Java Specification Request, supports rapid development of Bluetooth applications that are portable, secure, and highly-usable. Wireless device manufacturers have responded overwhelmingly to the JABWT specification by implementing JABWT applications in mobile phones and other personal wireless communications products.

"Bluetooth Application Programming Essentials: Programming with the Java APIs" explains in detail how to write Bluetooth applications using the Java APIs to exploit the power of both technologies. Written by the specification lead for JSR-82 and two other key participants in developing the standards of JABWT, this book provides the authoritative explanations and concrete examples needed to get started right away.

This book provides embedded Java developers with to-the-point information on the APIs in the specification with detailed programmatic examples of the APIs in use. A NEW chapter on the Push Registry definition (a new feature in the 1.1 version of JSR-82) has been added. Finally, the new Essentials version of the book will update the remaining chapters to reflect changes in the latest Bluetooth spec (2.1) and the industry as a whole.

As a bonus, this edition of the book offers over 200 pages of added content on the website. This "bonus material" includes complete source code from examples in the book, the javex.bluetooth code package, the java.obex code package, an enhanced set of "Example Applications", and a tutorial on "Implementing JABWT on a Device."These code-heavy sections are actually more effective in electonic format where the application can be easily downloaded.

KEY FEATURES & BENEFITS

* By focusing only on the essentials, this concise resource enables software and hardware vendors to quickly develop Bluetooth applications for mobile devices in an increasingly competitive market.

* The updated material examines crucial programming areas (including RFCOMM, OBEX, device discovery, service discovery, and L2CAP), which allows developers to not only successfully design, but master and build Java APIs for Bluetooth Wireless Technology.

* Includes a new and valuable chapter that delineates the pivotal Push Registry feature ? a recent development that will help programmers avoid the common problem of connection collision.

* By providing real-world issues and problems involved in implementing the Java APIs specification, the book allows developers to identify with the text and encourages repeated reference. ... Read more

Book Description
The era of practical parallel programming has arrived, marked by the popularity of the MPI and OpenMP software standards and the emergence of commodity clusters as the hardware platform of choice for an increasing number of organizations. This exciting new book, Parallel Programming in C with MPI and OpenMP addresses the needs of students and professionals who want to learn how to design, analyze, implement, and benchmark parallel programs in C using MPI and/or OpenMP. It introduces a rock-solid design methodology with coverage of the most important MPI functions and OpenMP directives. It also demonstrates, through a wide range of examples, how to develop parallel programs that will execute efficiently on today&#8217;s parallel platforms. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Over-priced, under-delivered
If you're looking for a textbook for a class on parallel programming, this may be for you, but I wouldn't know. If you're trying to figure out MPI to actually write some code, this one definitely isn't for you. Get Pacheco's book instead. Half the price, too.

Basically, there is very little tutorial-style programming coverage in here, more design and analysis of parallel algorithms. The majority of MPI function calls is not even covered in detail, but only listed in the appendix. Give me a break.

Very clear writing and good solid information
The thing that impressed me was that the writing was so clear.True, the sentences tend to be short, but that is high virtue in technical writing.My students have been very positive about the book.

I also think the mathematical analysis is good, too, not too easy but not super hard either.

This book just pulls together all the crucial information between two covers.I find myself agreeing almost exactly with where he places his "key" symbols in the margins to highlight important sentences, which is also a good sign that the book is "right on."

A good introductory book
I used this book in my parallel computing course. It is really a good introductory book on parallel programming. Some examples are given in the book. The first seven chapters discuss parallel algorithm design, MPI, examples on The sieve of Eratosthenes and Floyd's algorithm, and performance analysis. Some other topics that also covered (some of these may or may not have working examples) include the matrix-vector multiplication, Monte Carlo, matrix multiplication, solving linear systems, sorting, FFT, search, and finite difference methods. Since there are so many topics to be covered in a book of only 500 pages, the discussions on most of these topics are not very depth. Overall, I still recommend this book for beginners in parallel algorithm design. ... Read more

Book Description
Introduction to Programming with Visual Basic .NET introduces the major concepts and applications of this emerging language within the context of sound programming principles, in a manner that is accessible to the beginning programmer. The book addresses the new visual objects required in creating a Windows-based graphical user interface, event-based programming, and the traditional concept of procedural program code. The text places a strong emphasis on real-world business applications, case studies, and rapid application development to help engage students with discussion of practical programming issues. A full range of supplements for students and instructors accompany the text. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Great learning book
Had to get the book for a programming class and actually enjoyed reading it.Easy to understand, well written, need more textbooks like this for college students.

Had a poor index and no class library in the back :(

Solid introductory work
This book is an introductory programming text. To be clear, it is not an introduction to Visual Basic.NET for existing programmers; it is entirely aimed at new and learning programmers with no prior experience. It serves such an audience admirably.

The book opens with an historical overview of programming languages and the nature of problem solving. It then progresses in a methodical and sensible manner through working in the IDE, designing forms using visual components, responding to events, working with primitive data types, handling basic user interaction, conditional statements and branching, looping, procedures and functions, scope, arrays and algorithms, database integration, SQL, file handling, ASP.NET, and classes. This gives the book an excellent depth, with material not usually included in introductory texts but which are highly relevant to the construction of functional software.

An especially nice aspect of this book is the development of a "real-world" financial application at the conclusion of each chapter, giving immediate practical exposure to the theoretical concepts being discussed.

Scattered throughout the book are highlighted snippets entitled "tips from the pros". These attempt to convey wisdom from experienced programmers. Their value is somewhat dubious, as for the most part these do not - as may have been reasonably expected - explain best practices or highlight "gotchas" for new programmers. They do pitch sensible ideas, but which are largely common-sense and hardly revelationary.

Additionally, two other matters are irksome. Firstly, the authors leave abstract data types right to the very end chapter, yet this should perhaps be raised earlier, after primitive data types. Secondly, leading on from the first, the authors title this chapter classes, yet beyond constructing one's own data types there is no real coverage of object-oriented design.

That aside, this is an outstanding and very easily digested work. It is well recommended for beginning coders, giving sound instruction in both the art and science of programming and a solid grounding in a popular and contemporary language. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Good for a quick reference library
I've used this book in preparing a three day "crash course" in C. I found the reference material invaluable when creating my presentation. The easy access to information and the clear, concise descriptions were just what I needed when preparing slides. I would recommend this book to any moderately experienced C programmer who has to teach C to others. I have also encountered one of my peers who used this book to learn C and he found it extremely helpful in learning C from the ground up.

A bad way to begin learning a programming language.
Like the title suggests, the book is fast paced.It quickly goes through basic principles and then gets into heavier data structures.Inadequate time is spent on the harder material, and there are no exercises anywhere.It is not possible to gain a working knowledge of C from this book. ... Read more

Book Description
The purpose of the book is to educate software professionals the techniques of multithreading programming, to show them how to use threads effectively to develop scaleable and parallel applications. Symmetric Multiprocessing machines (SMP) are becoming increasingly popular for many applications. Multithreading is the best technique available to developers to take advantage of the inherent parallelism of the SMP machines. The book starts with explaining SMP machines and discusses multithreading in general, and identifies the kinds of applications that can benefit from multithreading. This book explains in the clear and concise manner the techniques of multithreading programming on multiple platforms. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Good survey, but sloppy specifics.
If what you are after is a survey of available mutli-threading supportacross several operating systems, then look no further.There is a greatdeal of information about how generic multithreading concepts map ontospecific operating system features.In addition, the author details wheredifferent OS versions implement different behavior, and indicates OS'swhere some techniques are poorly suited.

However, if you want to learnthe multi-threading support of any specific OS, this book is a poor choice. The examples are extremely sloppy; almost half of them are syntactiallyincorrect.For example, 7 is substituted for >, == is exchanged with =,and {} braces are missing.Many examples are incorrect even after fixingthe syntax.Examples that might be correct contain techniques notexplained in the prose.

I suggest using this book as cross-OS survey ofmultithreading support, and buy something else for the details.

Great for cross platform programming
This book focuses on the thread APIs on POSIX and WIN32 (+ others). It shows also how some features can be emulated using the primitives. A great timesaver is the discussion of the differences between the POSIX drafts. This won't teach you thread design, but it is a very useful reference to the API's because you can look up very quickly whether a certain feature is available on your platform(s) of choice. ... Read more

Book Description
ADO .NET Programming provides a sophisticated reference to ADO .NET solution development. Aimed at database programmers with a working knowledge of the .NET Framework, this book dissects the ADO .NET component model and provides real-world examples demonstrating how ADO .NET can be used to manipulate data from different sources.

* Discover the differences between ADO and ADO .NET.
* Learn how to interact with databases using the Connection, Command, DataReader, and DataAdapter components and how to manipulate data with the DataSet component.
* Understand how XML is integrated with ADO .NET and learn the best ways to use that technology in your programs.
* Learn the subtle aspects of migrating ADO applications to ADO .NET.
* Develop and manipulate a data warehouse with ADO .NET and develop your own .NET data provider.

The appendixes include references to the new object-oriented paradigm of VB .NET, database normalization, views, stored procedure and trigger programming, and techniques for adding SQL functionality. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Ten things that are wrong, wrong, wrong with this book
1. I did not read chapter 1.
2. Chapter 2 start off with a short paragraph warning the reader that the discussion on data provider is very "conceptual". And then it proceeded to list down the various properties and methods in ALPHABATICAL order -of Connection, Command, DataReader, DataAdapter - right to the end of the chapter. I do not think reading a dictionary like listing of properties and method of each object is any thing "conceptual"-neither is it the preferred learning method encourage throughout the English speaking world -which I presumed this book is targeted for since it is written in English. I could be wrong, though.
3. Chapter 3 - see chapter 2 -this time we have ALPHABATICAL soup for DataSet.
4. Chapter 4 -in some 20 odd pages it covered Data binding, window form, console application, window services, ASP.NET, XML web services, Stored Procedure, SQL statement, Data Warehousing, Protecting the Application, and more (or is it less?). There are some codes (some "class" code I think) litter around here and there, BUT, there is not a single example showing you how to create any of the thing that he discussed. PErhaps may be this is also a "conceptual" chapter. Could have fool me.
5. This is a chapter in XML. It defied all my past, present, and future attempts to understanding it. Also at this point -I noticed that with half the book gone -we have not yet create a single dataconnection or dataset -chapter 2 and 3 are sheer "conceptual", remember?
6. Chapter 6 is practical case study -codes are everywhere but there is still no sign on how to drag a dataAdapter from the toolbox to the window form and setup a connection. Perhaps should rename Theoritical case stufy.
7. Chapter 7 -see chapter 6.
8. See chapter 8.
9. Chapter 9 manipulating multidimensional data -something to do with OLAP solution, SQL server 2000 Analysis service. Oh, I just noticed that codes on this chapter includes a full view of the highly sought after "Windows Form Designer generated code"- but of course I am left wondering how the form looks like -it was never shown.
10. Sorry to say this, but arguably the only wrong thing that they manage to do right is not to have chapter 10. I congratulate myself for finally able to end the tremendous suffering of going through this book.

IF THIS IS the best ADO.NET book then GOD HELP US
I gave this book 2 stars because of the VERY misleading title.
(I also took the book back to the store)

The book does not even come close to being an ADO.NET book. It states Learn How To interact with databases using the Connection, Command, DataReader, and DataAdapter Components and how to manipulate data with the dataset component.

This is a JOKE. Chapter 2 Interacting With Databases is nothing more than a list of the objects mentioned above and their properties and methods. NOT EVEN AN EXAMPLE on how to properly use them.

The book should have been named more for the interaction of ADO.NET and XML, because that is what most of the focus appears to be on.

But what the book does cover is very well written !

The best ADO.NET book (if you are a VB.NET Programmer)
I got this book a couple of days ago from Amazon.When I opened the book that I so eagerly waited for, It put me off to find that 100% of the samples in this book are in VB.NET (Oh! Did I forget to tell you that I am a C# programmer).Though ADO.NET framework is the same for any .NET language, It is a little hard to follow the flow of the sample program codes when you don't understand the language.So, the authors should have named this book "ADO.NET Programming for VB.NET programmers".

Having said that, the topics this book covers seem to be very good.This book does teach you how to use ADO.NET (efficiently - and that's important).The bottom line is, it is an excellent book.I took a star away from my rating for not letting me know this was a VB.NET book.

The best ADO.NET book (if you are a VB.NET Programmer)
I got this book a couple of days ago from Amazon.When I opened the book that I so eagerly waited for, It put me off to find that 100% of the samples in this book are in VB.NET (Oh! Did I forget to tell you that I am a C# programmer).Though ADO.NET framework is the same for any .NET language, It is a little hard to follow the flow of the sample program codes when you don't understand the language.So, the authors should have named this book "ADO.NET Programming for VB.NET programmers".

Having said that, the topics this book covers seem to be very good.This book does teach you how to use ADO.NET (efficiently - and that's important).The bottom line is, it is an excellent book.I took a star away from my rating for not letting me know this was a VB.NET book.

The best ADO.NET book around.
If you seriously want to learn all about ADO.NET then look no further, this is the book for you.The book is my favourite ADO.NET book, and acts as a very good reference.The book also has really good examples and the appendix is also valuable resource for a refresher on database issues such normalization, views, stored procedure and trigger programming. ... Read more

Product Description
Part of the JONES AND BARTLETT SERIES IN BIOMEDICAL INFORMATICSOnce again, Jules J. Berman provides biomedical researchers and hospital professionals with an introduction to a time-saving programming language.In this new how-to manual, Berman expertly guidesboth experienced and inexperienced programmers through the Ruby programming language.Ruby Programming for Medicine and Biology opens with three chapters of Ruby language instruction followed by discussions of 100 ruby scripts covering the most common computational tasks in the field of biomedicine.With helpful explanations of how scripts work, and how they might be implemented in real-world situations, readers will become familiar with this free, open source, object-oriented programming language that is quickly gaining momentum within the bioinformatics community. ... Read more

Book Description
Functional programming, is a style of programming that has become increasingly popular during the past few years. Applicative programs have the advantage of being almost immediately expressible as functional descriptions; they can be proved correct and transformed through the referential transparency property. This book presents the basic concepts of functional programming, using the language HASKELL for examples. The author incorporates a discussion of lambda calculus and its relationship with HASKELL, exploring the implications for parallelism. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Excellent Introduction
Davie's book is aptly named; although he briefly outlines the important syntax of the Haskell language, this is not intended to be "How to Program in Haskell."This book is an introduction to the ideas of functional languages rather than a tutorial on the nuts and bolts of programming.As a result, many of the techniques of programming in Haskell are presented, but in the broader context of his explanation of functional programming rather than in the more narrow, "In Haskell, you must do x and y to accomplish z" sense.I thought that this was very effective; although I have used functional programming systems in the past this was the first time I had read a clear presentation of their theory and history.Parts of the book are very dense and make for heavy going, but overall I think Davie has done a very good job of introducing the reader to the idea of a functional programming language.

Interesting language
The Haskell programming language is part of the backlash against "big" languages such as Ada and C++. Although its syntax is not (not necessarily) like Lisp, it follows in the Lisp tradition of maintaining a tight bond to its roots in the formal logic of mathematics. And, like Lisp, it presents itself as a strict functional language.

Haskell has versatile syntax, allowing many different representations of any expression. It also supports high-order functions, or functions of functions. You'll also find a Prolog-like pattern matching facility (without the full capacity of Prolog's unification engine), which enables some kinds of overloading. The language supports "modules" as well, a limited kind of scoping mechanism intended to support programming in the large.

If "functional" programming is a term you haven't heard before, it means that, ideally, a program runs entirely in terms of expression evaluations without side effects - the program has no state except for transient state on its stack. This ultimately makes it a poor match to the real world. Even the ideas of storing a Haskell program on disk and holding its output pixels on screen violate the stateless paradigm, since that storage would be long-lived state. In the end, a functional programming language must violate its stateless purity to be relevant to commercial problem solving, or must leave state management to some part of the system outside of the language. The latter doesn't really solve the problem of state, it simply pushes the problem around - i.e. to some other programming language.

Haskell is an interesting exercise in language design, embodies many useful concepts from formal logic, and gives up many of the features that make it difficult to reason about programs in rigorous ways. It may have given up too much, though. When I try to picture using its techniques to solve systems of linear equations, write device drivers, or process a payroll, I end up with a very unpleasant image.

//wiredweird ... Read more

Book Description
The job of the constraint programmer is to use mathematical constraints to model real world constraints and objects. In this book, Kim Marriott and Peter Stuckey provide the first comprehensive introduction to the discipline of constraint programming and, in particular, constraint logic programming. The book covers the necessary background material from artificial intelligence, logic programming, operations research, and mathematical programming. Topics discussed range from constraint-solving techniques to programming methodologies for constraint programming languages. Because there is not yet a universally used syntax for constraint logic programming languages, the authors present the programs in a way that is independent of any existing programming language. Practical exercises cover how to use the book with a number of existing constraint languages. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Very good introduction
This book is one of the few devoted to constraint programming, and does a good job of introducing the field to those interested. Optimization problems are finding use of constraint programming and there are a few commercial packages available that implement constraint programming technique in optimization. The book can be used as a textbook of an actual course, since there are many exercises included in it. The authors encourage the reader to use the CLP(R) package, which is freely available, to solve some of the practical exercises.

After a brief introduction to constraint programming, the authors introduce three types of constraints that exist in constraint programming, namely arithmetic, tree, and finite domain. They also introduce three operations involving constraints: satisfiability, simplification, and optimization. The authors spend most of the chapter on the question of satisfiability. Constraints are defined from the standpoint of mathematical logic, along with what it means for them to be satisfiable, and a discussion on modeling with arithmetic constraints and constraint satisfaction is given with an example from electric circuits. Tree constraints are then discussed with an example of a C-language binary tree used to motivate the discussion. Boolean constraints are then discussed, along with sequence constraints, which are shown to have an interesting application to DNA mapping and decoding. An application to artificial intelligence is given, and this one involves constraints that are not taken from mathematics. The authors

finish the chapter with a discussion of constraint solving using local propagation, a technique used in graph theory.

The authors discuss the simplification and optimization of constraints in the next chapter. They show when constraints are redundant, give rules for deciding when one constraint is equivalent to another, and show how using projection can allow the simplifying of a constraint with respect to the variables of interest. When projection cannot be done, they then show how to add variables to a constraint in order to achieve simplification. The (polynomial-time) Dantzig simplex algorithm is discussed for problems with linear real arithmetic constraints. Algorithms are discussed for deciding when two constraints are equivalent or when one implies the other.

In chapter 3, the authors discuss constraint problems for the case where the constraint domain is a finite set. The arc and node consistency, bounds propagation, and integer programming techniques, familiar from AI and operations research, are discussed in detail. The famous N-queens problem is introduced as motivation for the constraint satisfaction problem. The free-ware Prolog package ECLiPSe is introduced in the practical exercises. The authors give references to an interesting application of constraint satisfaction problems to planning gene-splicing experiments (the MOLGEN system).

The next part of the book concerns the constraint logic programming (CLP) paradigm wherein the authors define constraint logic programs and programming techniques. The reader familiar with logic programming (Prolog for example), will clearly see the influence of ideas from that area, such as rules, goals, rewriting, and derivations. An interesting and useful example of applying CLP to the modeling of options trading is given. Also, the authors show how to employ some of the more common data structures, such as lists and binary trees into CLP. In addition, they show how one can measure the efficiency of a CLP program, and how to improve it using various programming techniques to reduce the search space. The authors show how CLP can be implemented for both cases of infinite and finite domain constraints.

In the last part of the book the authors discuss other ways of viewing constraint logic programs, such as thinking it in terms of a database, called a constraint database. The discussion is very interesting, for the authors show how they are generalizations of the standard databases, and they show how the usual evaluation techniques in CLP, such as backtracking, must be generalized if one is to efficiently implement constraint databases. This "bottom-up" evaluation is compared with the "top-down"; approach usually employed. They show in great detail how constraint databases are a natural generalization of relational databases. They also show how CLP can be generalized to the case of concurrent constraint programming, where agents can execute concurrently and communicate via some global constraint in memory. In addition, they give a brief overview of how CLP can be implemented into the functional and imperative programming paradigms. They mention the use of various commercial packages for doing constraint programming, such as Mathematica, Maple, Macsyma, and ILOG SOLVER. Since the time of publication a very powerful commercial package, called ILOG OPL has appeared.

The applications of constraint programming are mushrooming, and I have found it to be a very powerful tool for example in network modeling and simulation, and in mathematical portfolio analysis, although sometimes one must be patient because of performance.The programming methodologies used are different than the usual ones, but I find them to be very effective for program transparency and economy of thought. Others have also apparently found constraint programming to be useful, for example the problem of protein structure prediction has recently made heavy use of constraint programming techniques. Other recent uses of CLP include a system for transport planning and scheduling for a large food industry, a system for a TV/radio company to plan and control the assignment of journalists and technicians to different emissions, and a system to develop work plans and schedules for train drivers and conductors, optimal planning of digital cordless communication systems, and nuclear fuel transportation and scheduling.

This is the best book on the subject.
So simple, straight forward, highly comprehensive but elegant bok on this subject is rarely available. Most topics covered in the book are readable with almost no effort. This is due to the authors' inherent capability ofpresentation. The foundation of the book rests on constraint simplificationand optimization(chapter 2). Definitions are clear with adequate examples.Chapter 4 to 10 deal with Constraint Logic Programming. Here the authorsfocuss various important issues that are needed to researchers in thisdomain.Many applications in these chapters are highlighted to introduce theconcepts. The last 2 chapters deal with constraint databases and concurrentconstraint programming languages. Though it is a monograph readers ofgeneral interest in AI will find the chapters 1-4 useful and highlyreadable for knowing the state-of-the-art of this subject. ... Read more

Book Description
An Introduction to Programming with Mathematica® is designed to introduce the Mathematica programming language to a wide audience. Since the last edition of this book was published, significant changes have occurred in Mathematica and its use worldwide. Keeping pace with these changes, this substantially larger, updated version includes new and revised chapters on numerics, procedural, rule-based, and front-end programming, and gives significant coverage to the latest features up to, and including, Mathematica 5.1 Mathematica notebooks, available from www.cambridge.org/0521846781, contain examples, programs, and solutions to exercises in the book. Additionally, material to supplement later versions of the software will be made available. This is the ideal text for all scientific students, researchers, and programmers wishing to deepen their understanding of Mathematica, or even those keen to program using an interactive language that contains programming paradigms from all major programming languages: procedural, functional, recursive, rule-based, and object-oriented. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Best book on basic programming with Mathematica
This is by far and away the best basic book for learning how to program with Mathematica. I spent 2 hours a day using the book for one month and I'm now quite comfortable with the software. If you are new to Mathematica, do yourself a favor and read this book.

Incredible, consistent text
This book is extremely useful to take a beginner through simple, well explained exercises.I can honestly say you will learn tremendous amounts about Mathematica.

If I could only have one book and needed to program Mathematica, this would be it.Hands down.I can only believe this book was intended as a book for a course.I feel the book is paced to allow any student to read the pages and work the very well thought out exercises.


If you are working on your own and learning Mathematica, do yourself a favor and buy this book.The only other book that I would get is the amazing reference "Mathematica Navigator".You won't learn how to program Mathematica from it.You will learn an amazing amount about how Mathematica works by reading it.If you don't believe me, check out it's thorough explanation of cubic splines.It's better than the Mathematica Help.It also comes with the complete book which can be installed in the Mathematica help system.

There are other books which are good.Between these two books, you will an amazing arsenal to work with!

Paul

Excellent. A must have.
As a mathematical hobbyist, I love Mathematica(TM). Also, I love the Lisp programming language. This book, at last, opened my eyes. Now, after some years, I finally can say what "programming Mathematica" is. If you really need to learn to programming in Mathematica, this book is for you. A big thanks to the Authors.

Omissions
Please note that the book does NOT cover Object Oriented programming as stated on this page in the description - in fact OO is not even in the index.

The 3rd Ed.is based on Mathematica 5.1
This book is an excellent introduction to Mathematica. It is based on Mathematica 5.1 and hence bring the 2nd Ed. based on Mathematica 2.2 up to date to the most recent version of this software package. The book covers all aspects of programming functionalities available in Mathematica: procedural, functional, recursive, rule-based, and object-oriented. There are ample examples in science and mathematics as well as devising one's own software packages. The emphasis of the book is on the fundamental programming concepts. While there are examples of complete packages that solve specific problems more emphasis in this direction would even further strengthen the book.

... Read more