February Mini Book Reviews

Over the past month, I've read four books that I wanted to review for
you: Learning Perl Objects, References &
Modules, Text Processing
in Python, Core PHP Programming, 3rd Ed.
and MySQL 2nd Ed.. All of them are good books for
the audience each is trying to hit. Take a look below for some more
information.

I tend to review books that are interesting to me (no surprise there),
but if you'd like me to review a book,
let me know at
pate-reviews@eylerfamily.org, and I'll do my best to put it in my
reading pile.

In addition to a short review of each book, I'm also rating them on a
scale of 1 to 10. Tens represent something pretty close to life changing,
so don't look for them too often.

Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules

Randal L. Schwartz with Tom Phoenix

O'Reilly

ISBN: ISBN 0-596-00478-8

Many years ago, I found a copy of Randal Schwartz's Learning
Perl, which I really loved. I've suggested it to a number of
Perl neophytes since then. I even bought a copy for my daughter
last year so she could get a feel for what Perl can do. I'd always
wanted a follow up that was more approachable, and now Randal and Tom
have provided exactly the book I was looking for.

Learning Perl Objects, References & Modules is a fairly small book,
179 pages discounting exercise answers and appendix, but it packs a solid
amount of information into that small space. The book is laid out to
support a Perl training class, and permission (and advice) is given
for instructors who want to use it as a text book. It works perfectly
well for self-guided learning though, so don't worry about picking it
up for yourself.

My only nit was that some of the OO related bits are familiar to
avid readers of Randal's work. Other than that, I really enjoyed the
book. The chapter on Essential Testing probably is my favorite,
although a number of good things are scattered throughout. I'm
giving this book a solid 9 stars--and I'm giving a copy of it to my
daughter as soon as she finishes Learning Perl.

Text Processing in Python

David Mertz

Addison-Wesley

ISBN: 0-32-11254

Upon picking up and leafing through Text Processing in
Python, I
immediately took a liking to it. David skips over a lot of the
extraneous clutter that tends to fill books. His preface (chapter
0) has a meatiness missing from most others. While not huge, 416 pages
in all, the book presents a fairly dense chunk of information.

Although David manages to convey both the philosophy of text
processing and the use of Python quite well, it sometimes felt as
though I was reading a Python reference with some of text munging
information tossed in. Another downside to David's presentation is
his typography is quite different from what you'll see in most
other books. The book is easily readable though, so neither of these
should present a big problem.

Although the book is quite good overall, I think I learned the most from
Chapter 4, "Parsers and State Machines". I'll keep this book handy for
a while, and try to absorb some of its lessons as I go back to it with
specific problems to solve. Text Processing in
Python gets 8 stars.

Core PHP Programming, 3rd Edition

Leon Atkinson with Zeev Suraski

Prentice Hall

ISBN: 0-13-046346-9

Part desktop reference and part programming guide, Core PHP
Programming is a great book for both the beginning PHP programmer and
those with more experience. It has been updated to include PHP 5, as
well as new material covering XML, object techniques and design patterns.

The authors do a great job of evangelizing PHP; the more I read, the
more I found myself wanting to use PHP to create Web sites. Chapters
1 - 7 form a PHP Programming unit. Chapters 8 - 20 (a whopping 669 pages) comprise a functional reference.
And Chapters 21 - 25 comprise a section on
algorithms. The final four chapters cover software engineering
including design, debugging and design patterns.

I really enjoyed this book, and plan on keeping it handy for the odd
bits of PHP work that come my way. I'm giving it eight stars.

MySQL, 2nd Edition

Paul DuBois

SAMS

ISBN: 0-7357-1212-3

The first edition of this book was my introduction to MySQL, and it's
been a well-used part of my bookshelf ever since. When I saw that a new
edition had come out, I knew I'd need to grab a copy. Happily, the
2nd edition didn't disappoint.

This book is even bigger than the last go-around, weighing in at 13
chapters and 8 appendices, for a total of 1,150 pages. The first four
chapters present an overview of MySQL use. The next four describe the
programming interface in general and for C, Perl and Python,
respectively. The author also has a great pair of Ruby-related articles
on his Web site,
and I wish they'd been included in the book. The final five chapters
are geared toward MySQL administration. The appendices provide a number
of references.

Paul DuBois writes in a way that is both authoritative and easy to
read. His examples are clear and help the reader understand the
concepts Paul teaches in the text. I think MySQL 2nd
Edition deserves nine stars.