Customer Reviews

Database Developer's Guide With Visual C++ 4.0 (Sams Developer's Guide)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

There is no concrete example in this book! Only a few which is either generated by AppWizard or copied from the samples come with Visual C++ 5.0. You cannot get any idea how to develop robust DB front-end applications after reading it. Maybe you can use it for reference for some ODBC and DAO classes.

This book is supposed to be designed for an advance developer. Well, my opinion is that this is not designed for a developer but for somebody who has a management and non-technical background who just want to read something about Visual C++ Development. Most of the code in this book were created by just using the appwizard of the Visual C++ package. Anybody can do that! If you know Visual C++ software development and read this book, you will probably doubt if the authors really know Visual C++ and MFC programming. Perhaps the authors are expert in their own field but this book is poorly organized and I guess haphazardly written. I do not recommend this book unless you have nothing else to do.

I agree wholeheartedly with the majority of the comments I just read here. This is a very poorly organized piece of work. The subject matter is not only in total disarray but is also rather incomplete for a book with this many pages. For example, don't expect this book to give you any kind of a tutorial on the fundamentals of relational databases and SQL, not even a short one! If the terms "foreign key", "aggregate function" and "outer join" mean absolutely nothing to you at this time, DO NOT ORDER THIS BOOK in the expectation that such concepts will be clearly explained to you along the way. Even if you do have a solid foundation in relational database fundamentals, you'll find that the order and manner in which this book presents information make it virtually impossible to use what it is telling you to extend your existing knowledge usefully. I guess the authors might argue that, just as the book isn't supposed to teach you about Visual C++ / MFC programming, so it isn't supposed to teach you about relational database fundamentals either. Well, fair enough. But even if that was their "design prerequisite", they've done a pretty poor job of combining these disciplines together in a manner that is easy to follow or useful. Needless to say, if you aren't very familiar with C++ programming, Windows programming and the Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC), this book isn't for you either. To summarize, I give it three thumbs down. Go pick another book on the subject. I fail to see how it could be any worse!

There are very few books in Visual C++ which writes about Visual C++ Database environment. This book has specialized and concentrated on Databases in particular

This book purports to be an advanced book on Visual C++ 4.0 and database development. I must disagree. Though the book covers the ODBC - and marginally - the DAO database classes, their is virtually no insight on how to use these classes effectively in real world applications. The 1000 or so page book could have been easily wittled down to 500 by removing repetitve giberish, repetitive giberish. The examples they provide are generated with the Development Studio's App Wizard and presented with virtually no explanations or modifications. I could have done that myself. Also their description of ODBC looks like it was taken verbatim from the ODBC SDK guide. Again little explanation or insight. Again I could have referenced this raw information elsewhere. Their early explanation of what objects are and what object oriented programming is all about is lacking and childish. The way they talk around C++ and objects, together with the APP Studio generated examples, (with no insight) leads me to doubt that the authors even know the language. Or don't know it to the degree self proclaimed experts should. The database portion is marginally better but is weighted heavily toward desktop - single user - databases. Since this book is supposed to be an advanced book about using C++ to connect to databases I would have expected the weight to be put on database servers - that is multiuser database servers. The authors instead concentrated on MS Access as their preferred target. They also talk ad nausium about the MS Jet Database engine. Finally, this book lacks the glue required to tie the C++ portions of the book to the database portions of the book. If you didn't know how to write C++ database applications prior to reading this book, you still won't when your done. At best this book might be used as a reference once you know C++ database techniques, but you sure ain't gonna learn em here. Save yourself the bother, the time, and the $80 Canadian. Don't buy this book. Sams Publishing ought to be ashamed of themselves for publishing this book under the category "Expert Programming"

A casual glance at the back of this volume reveals a "User Level" indicator: accomplished to expert -- definitely not for the casual or inexperienced programmer. The buyer is given fair warning. This is a good reference for the experienced C++ programmer who knows some SQL/Windows/VC++IDE and wants to put them all together to create PROFESSIONAL, industrial-strength programs for a living. The author makes no bones about targeting the most financially profitable areas of database programming. The format of this book is not geared to the dive-in-and-get-your-hands-dirty approach (which is what I prefer.) A "Hello, world!" tutorial mindset, like mine, is bored and confused by not having written anything by the end of the first few pages. Chapter 1 is a (very objective) evaluation of the available tools to do the job and why VC++ is the best. If I had been sufficiently warned, I would have skipped that one. From there on out, it is a well-organized reference and tutorial (in my opinion). This is definitely a get-the-job-done tools book for a professional writing professional programs in a real-world environment. If you want to get the skills for those six-figure jobs, this is the book to buy. (Make sure you know something about SQL/VC++ Windows development first, though.)