From davidnicol at gmail.com Tue Dec 7 15:46:41 2004 From: davidnicol at gmail.com (David Nicol) Date: Tue Dec 7 15:46:48 2004 Subject: [Kc] review of "Real World Web Services" by Will Iverson Message-ID: <934f64a2041207134659e3761c@mail.gmail.com> Real World Web Services starts with a recitation of the history of the internet, then discuses some of the web service offerings currently available, including Java code for programming remote procdure calls to them, then concludes with a short visionary chapter in which the author relaxes his prohibition against opinionating and speculating. The discussion of N-tier architecture, and the checklist of things to be careful about, when considering deployment of a web service, and the nod to capitalist realities -- if you don't have a business plan, you're just playing around, not like that's bad or anything, but the angels aren't going to kidnap you and issue you your very own beach house -- are most useful, and come from a solid perpective. How do you choose between raw CGI, SOAP, REST, binary, and XML? What are the good points and drawbacks of each? Real World Web Services discusses these generalities. Is UDDI worth the trouble when WDSL already comes with commercial SOAP development tools? Real world web services will tell you, probably not. As a developer of web services since before the term had been coined, I tend to use the traditional Comman Gateway Interface key/value pairs data declaration method for passing data to my web services rather than XML. Iverson touches on this legacy method, in a box, on page 99, while discussing PayPal's Instant Payment Notification system: "Using a simple HTTP request/response is perhaps the most basic, universal web service. It works with virtually every programming language and requires no special configuration to use. It's a classic case of the simple solution being the best solution." There is no further discussion of simple HTTP request/response, also known as "common gateway interface." Perhaps he wishes to discourage reinventing too many wheels, when the available ones (SOAP) take care of a mess of details. I suppose the plentiful Java example code will be welcome to fans of Iverson's previous books on Jakarta and J2EE Four of five stars. From davidnicol at gmail.com Tue Dec 7 23:52:56 2004 From: davidnicol at gmail.com (David Nicol) Date: Tue Dec 7 23:52:59 2004 Subject: [Kc] o'reilly t-shirt poll Message-ID: <934f64a2041207215263b1bd5f@mail.gmail.com> The o'reilly people invite us to look at the o'reilly home page as often as possible, and currently they are doing a poll regarding preferred t-shirt colors. I think that t-shirts should vary depending on what is printed on them; which is not one of the options, but if you have an opinion you wish to share in this matter, presumably new o'reilly t-shirts will follow the results from this focus group. -- David L Nicol "Happy hacking!" http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596002874/tipjartransactioA/ From garrett at scriptpro.com Mon Dec 13 13:52:46 2004 From: garrett at scriptpro.com (Garrett Goebel) Date: Mon Dec 13 13:52:54 2004 Subject: [Kc] Book Review: Excel 2003 Programming: A Developer's Notebook Message-ID: Reviewer: Joel Walk Title: Excel 2003 Programming: A Developer`s Notebook Author: Jeff Webb Publisher: O'Reilly Published: August 2004 (First Edition) ISBN: 0596007671 Pages: 312 Price: $29.95 US Rating: 2 out of 5 highlighters > There is a lot to be said for ambition and humor in presenting resource > and reference material that is of a technical nature. Excel 2003 is a > continuation of the progressive improvements in power and flexibility of > this de facto numerical analysis package with features that make multiple > user access available. We have all had our share of academic instruction > where either the book was the resource used, or the presentation condensed > notes of the presentor. Getting inside the "mind" of either (material or > lecturer) was the focus of our efforts in understanding the material. > > It has been this reviewer`s experience to work with developing predictive > "what if" tools using spreadsheets since the SuperCalc days of the 1980`s, > programming in macros and VBA as the calculative power grew. The > presentation of the material in Excel 2003 Programming is described in the > preface as trying to glean the best tools and methods to implement > solutions to common applications, as if one were able to observe and query > an uber-coder as they engineered and developed a solution to a typical > requirement. There is a bold statement (paraphrased) "this series (of > which the book under review was grouped with) says that the assumption > (the inability to capture a coder`s mind on a piece of paper) is patently > wrong" in the preface that is misleading given the examples that are used > and the coverage of material. > > At first glance amongst topics of Excel books on a shelf, the title jumps > out as a general resouce for expanding the power of this tool. Natural > progression in the selection process would then involve skimming the table > of contents, preface, and index, where one would be drawn to purchase the > book expecting the abilty to acquire general algorithms in cookbook form > from a wide range of topics. The material instead quickly focuses in on > the use of XML and other web-type server level topics such as Sharepoint, > Infopath and .NET that require administrator access to a network in order > to complete. Some points are reached where the author even admits that > add-ins are necessary including VSTO (Visual Studio Tools for Office) and > that if access is not available, just follow along for sake of > understanding the concept. > > Like a majority of developers, it is our nature to try to achieve the > results that are alluded to in the text we are presented with. There were > examples early as page 7 dealing with setup and access to pre-existing > solutions where not all of the steps are clear. This approach has > potential problems when massive amounts of data are involved and the > configuration settings of Excel can come into the implementation. There > are simulated views present in the book that are illustrative of the end > results the author achieved, but let the reader beware that to try getting > the same will quickly result in frustration. > > There are some facts that are covered that help understanding the scope of > the power that Excel 2003 offers, but given the preface description that > this book is meant to demonstrate that it is possible to capture a coder`s > mind on paper, one might get the idea that the mind is a disarray of > information. A great deal of historical and sidebar information is > present that is entertaining and informative, but in regards to providing > a tool that allows for Excel programming, the subject matter quickly > centers on the specifics of network level solutions, which for most Excel > users is beyond the scope of their need. If the book title were more > reflective of this fact, and the preface centered on admitting the > specialist market (e.g. data sharing) it was addressing, plus there was > mention that additional resources (in the form of add-in toolsets and > network access privileges) necessary, then the target audience could > quickly decide if the book was for them. > > The book is targeted toward the market segment that has corporate body > needs to manage versus the majority of Excel programmers who have > individual tasks to implement covering a much narrower scheme of data. It > would be more advantageous in the reviewers experience, however, for the > former group (network shared level) to instead undertake such a task in a > real relational database environment rather than Excel. > > On a scale of highlighters (as used for making annotations of sections and > material that is useful), five being the highest, the Excel 2003 > Programming developers notebook would rate about a 2 for the average > layreader, and possibly a 4 for those who have departmental resources and > network administrator access to install the requisite support tools and > licensing needed to develop an Excel based multi user pseudo data > warehouse. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.pm.org/archives/kc/attachments/20041213/4ac0f6b6/attachment.htm