ODBC Books

Access 2007: The Missing Manual

Matthew MacDonald

Amazon Price: $23.09 List Price: $34.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Pogue Press Amazon Marketplace: 45 new & used starting at $18.00

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Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Databases -> SQL -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 15 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Compared to industrial-strength database products such as Microsoft's SQL Server, Access is a breeze to use. It runs on PCs rather than servers and is ideal for small- to mid-sized businesses and households. But Access is still intimidating to learn. It doesn't help that each new version crammed in yet another set of features; so many, in fact, that even the pros don't know where to find them all. Access 2007 breaks this pattern with some of the most dramatic changes users have seen since Office 95. Most obvious is the thoroughly redesigned user interface, with its tabbed toolbar (or "Ribbon") that makes features easy to locate and use. The features list also includes several long-awaited changes. One thing that hasn't improved is Microsoft's documentation. To learn the ins and outs of all the features in Access 2007, Microsoft merely offers online help.

Access 2007: The Missing Manual was written from the ground up for this redesigned application. You will learn how to design complete databases, maintain them, search for valuable nuggets of information, and build attractive forms for quick-and-easy data entry. You'll even delve into the black art of Access programming (including macros and Visual Basic), and pick up valuable tricks and techniques to automate common tasks -- even if you've never touched a line of code before. You will also learn all about the new prebuilt databases you can customize to fit your needs, and how the new complex data feature will simplify your life. With plenty of downloadable examples, this objective and witty book will turn an Access neophyte into a true master.

FileMaker Pro 9: The Missing Manual

Geoff Coffey, Susan Prosser

Amazon Price: $23.09 List Price: $34.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: O'Reilly Media Amazon Marketplace: 50 new & used starting at $16.00

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Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Databases -> Specific Databases -> FileMaker
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Databases -> Data Mining
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

FileMaker Pro 9: The Missing Manual is the clear, thorough and accessible guide to the latest version of this popular desktop database program. FileMaker Pro lets you do almost anything with the information you give it. You can print corporate reports, plan your retirement, or run a small country -- if you know what you're doing. This book helps non-technical folks like you get in, get your database built, and get the results you need. Pronto. The new edition gives novices and experienced users the scoop on versions 8.5 and 9. It offers complete coverage of timesaving new features such as the Quick Start screen that lets you open or a create a database in a snap, the handy "save to" buttons for making Excel documents or PDFs, the multiple level Undo and Redo commands let you step backwards through your typing tasks, and much more. With FileMaker Pro 9: The Missing Manual, you can: Get your first database running in minutes and perform basic tasks right away. Catalog people, processes and things with streamlined data entry and sorting tools. Learn to use layout tools to organize the appearance of your database. Use your data to generate reports, correspondence and other documents with ease. Create, connect, and manage multiple tables and set up complex relationships that show you just the data you need. Crunch numbers, search text, or pin down dates and times with dozens of built-in formulas. Automate repetitive tasks with FileMaker Pro 9's easy-to-learn scripting language. Protect your database with passwords and set up privileges to determine what others can do once they gain entry. Outfit your database for the Web and import and export data to other formats. Each chapter in the bookcontains "living examples" -- downloadable tutorials that help you learn how to build a database by actually doing it. You also get plenty of sound, objective advice that lets you know which features are really useful, and which ones you'll barely touch. To make the most of FileMaker Pro 9, you need the book that should have been in the box.

Access 2003 for Starters: The Missing Manual

Kate Chase, Scott Palmer

Amazon Price: $13.57 List Price: $19.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Pogue Press Amazon Marketplace: 46 new & used starting at $2.45

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Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Databases -> Beginning & Introductory
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Maybe you got Access as part of Microsoft Office and wonder what it can do for you and your household; maybe you're a small business manager and don't have a techie on staff to train the office in Microsoft Access. Regardless, you want to quickly get your feet wet--but not get in over your head--and "Access 2003 for Starters: The Missing Manual" is the book to make it happen.

Far more than a skimpy introduction but much less daunting than a weighty tech book, "Access 2003 for Starters: The Missing Manual" demystifies databases and explains how to design and create them with ease. It delivers everything you need--and nothing you don't--to use Access right away. It's your expert guide to the Access features that are most vital and most useful, and it's your trusted advisor on the more in-depth features that are best saved for developers and programmers.

Access is sophisticated and powerful enough for professional developers but easy and practical enough for everyday users like you. This Missing Manual explains all the major features of Access 2003, including designing and creating databases, organizing and filtering information, and generating effective forms and reports.

Bestselling authors, database designers, and programmers Scott Palmer, Ph.D., and Kate Chase are your guides for putting the world's most popular desktop data management program to work. Their clear explanations, step-by-step instructions, plenty of illustrations, and timesaving advice help you get up to speed quickly and painlessly.

Whether you're just starting out or you know you've been avoiding aspects of the program and missing out on much of what it can do, this friendly, witty book willgently immerse you in Microsoft Access. Keep it handy, as you'll undoubtedly refer to it again and again.

FileMaker Pro 8: The Missing Manual

Geoff Coffey, Susan Prosser

Amazon Price: $23.07 List Price: $34.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Pogue Press Amazon Marketplace: 47 new & used starting at $4.09

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Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Apple -> Databases
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Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Databases -> Data Mining

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 20 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Used by millions worldwide, FileMaker Pro is an award-winning database program for managing people, projects, images, assets, and other information. It's easy to use and totally customizable--so long as you know what you're doing. But FileMaker Pro doesn't come with a printed manual, so FileMaker Pro: The Missing Manual is the authoritative, jargon-free book that should have been in the box.

FileMaker Pro: The Missing Manual approaches FileMaker the way FileMaker approaches you: it's user-friendly and seemingly straightforward enough, but it offers plenty of substance worthy of deeper exploration. Packed with practical information as well as countless expert tips and invaluable guidance, it's an in-depth guide to designing and building useful databases with the powerful and pliable FileMaker Pro.

Covering FileMaker for both Windows and Macintosh, FileMaker Pro: The Missing Manual is ideal for small business users, home users, school teachers, developers--anyone who wants to organize information efficiently and effectively. Whether you want to run a business, publish a shopping cart on the Web, plan a wedding, manage a student information system at your school, or program databases for clients, this book delivers.

Author Geoff Coffey has many years of experience using FileMaker Pro (he was, in fact, an early beta tester for the product). Author Susan Prosser is a FileMaker Certified Developer who trains other developers. Together, Coffey and Prosser show you how to:

• Get FileMaker up and running quickly and smoothly
• Import and organize information with ease
• Design relational databases that are simple to use, yet powerful
• Take advantage of FileMaker Pro calculation capabilities
• Automate processes with scripting
• Customize FileMaker Pro to your needs and preferences
• Share information with other people (coworkers, clients, and customers) and other programs
• Understand and select the best security options

What could easily come across as dry and intimidating--things like relational theory, calculations, and scripting--are presented in a way that is interesting and intuitive to mainstream users. In no time, you'll be working more productively and efficiently using FileMaker Pro.

Advanced Professional Web Design: Techniques & Templates (CSS & XHTML) (Internet Series)

Clint Eccher

Amazon Price: $32.81 List Price: $44.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Charles River Media Amazon Marketplace: 38 new & used starting at $17.95

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Advanced Professional Web Design: Techniques and Templates (CSS & XHTML) is the must-have book for advanced designers who want to expand their skills and improve the quality of their designs. Learning CSS technology and continually improving one's design and developer skills is becoming increasingly essential for every Web designer in today's marketplace. This book teaches designers and developers how to bridge the knowledge gap from XHTML table-based design to full CSS-based design, and master the technologies and techniques needed. But the book isn't just about the theory behind design; it's about putting it into practice right away. Using the ~140 customizable designs, designers can use what they learn immediately. This indispensable collection of designs includes 20 CSS-driven templates, 80 XHTML table-based templates, 10 e-newsletter templates, 10 signature templates, and 20 Photoshop designs that can be coded. Too see some of the sample templates that come on the book's companion CD, visit the author's Web site at http://www.a5design.com/a5-book-designs. The book goes well beyond the authors' very successful Professional Web Design: Techniques and Templates by providing advanced tools and techniques that teach how e-commerce and shopping carts work, explain the concept of database-driven sites, and show how to create relative sizing designs, among other important topics. The techniques are taught with an emphasis on CSS, including explanations, examples, and templates that go far beyond existing CSS documentation. The database-driven and e-commerce examples in the book are written using CFML (ColdFusion Markup Language). Because the purpose of this book is to give a high-level explanation of such techniques, the techniques can be easily translated to other languages, such as ASP/ASP.Net, JSP, and PHP. This is a unique training course and free library of templates all in one!

Inside Odbc (Microsoft programming series)

Kyle Geiger

List Price: $39.95 By: Microsoft Pr Amazon Marketplace: 21 new & used starting at $0.93

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Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Computer Science -> Software Engineering -> Information Systems
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A MUST. Really an Inside look! 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 10 people found this review helpful.

Great book if you want not just to code ODBC, but understand how it happens. The guy doesn't leave anything to guess work.
An absolute must for serious programmers. Afterall, it is written by the author of ODBC.
Don't let the old publishing date keep you away from the book.
Get it, if you can find it.

good information 4 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

This book is great. Taught what I needed to know in a relatively short time. Good sample code as well, very important in a subject like this.

So when's the next version??

Fantastic book 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 5 people found this review helpful.

What you need to know (and what no one seems to understand) is that this book is much more than just about ODBC.

Whatever API you use for database access -- be it ODBC, or DbLib, or embedded SQL, or OLE DB ('objectified' version of ODBC really), or its new, yet another incarnation in .Net -- all of these are nothing more than nearly identical functionally client interfaces to the same damn thing. The _guts_ of the system remain the same (cursors, etc.).

This book is a must if you want to understand the workings of the whole database-access system, rather than just learn a few function calls (which you will never use efficiently if you don't know what takes place inside).

The book should be renamed into something like "Programmatic Database Access Methods", augmented with OLE DB/.Net material, and re-issued. It's a shame it's out of print: most of it is totally relevant today; I don't know of another book that covers networking, cursors, and fetching as clearly and simply from the applications programmer's point of view.

Teach Yourself ODBC Programming in 21 Days

Bill Whiting, Bryan Morgan, Jeff Perkins

List Price: $29.99 By: Sams Publishing Amazon Marketplace: 13 new & used starting at $1.01

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Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Databases -> General
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Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Microsoft -> Development -> C & C++ Windows Programming

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This book helps you successfully self-instruct your way to competency in ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) programming. Teach Yourself ODBC Programming in 21 Days provides you with 21 discrete instructional units, each of which you can work through and comprehend in a couple of hours.

The authors start slow, devoting an entire week's worth of lessons to application design, driver installation, the ODBC SDK (software developer's kit), and other general information. They then shift into high gear, explaining the mechanics of connecting to a database, figuring out ODBC's capabilities, and performing SQL (structured query language) operations on ODBC. Key operations, such as UPDATE, INSERT, SELECT, and DELETE, get lavish coverage. The book also adequately briefs readers on ODBC transaction-processing issues.

As is typical of books in this family, readers learn what they need to make applications work in a basic sense, but little about advanced topics. Another unfortunate aspect of this guide is that it describes ODBC 2.0, which has been replaced by ODBC 3.0. You'll want to supplement Teach Yourself ODBC Programming in 21 Days with a more advanced text soon.

The Odbc Solution: Open Database Connectivity in Distributed Environments/Book and Disk (Mcgraw-Hill Series on Computer Communications)

Robert Signore, John Creamer, Michael O. Stegman

List Price: $50.00 By: McGraw-Hill Companies Amazon Marketplace: 18 new & used starting at $0.50

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Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Databases -> Distributed Databases
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This textbook is designed for use in a college-level computer-science class. As such, The ODBC Solution has the characteristics, both good and bad, of an academic work. On the positive side, this book does a superior job of clearly showing how to open a connection to a database, perform operations upon the database, and close the connection. That is what ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) is all about, after all, and any book that communicates the concepts and procedures involved in ODBC database transactions deserves praise. The authors do a fine job of explaining the ins and outs of the various API (application programming interface) calls, as well as SQL (structured query language) statements and the basics of transaction processing. All the relevant source code (in C) appears on the companion diskette.

Negatively, this book covers only the outmoded ODBC 2.0 API, and the authors fail to say much about networked database applications, particularly as they apply to the Internet and intranets. (There's no coverage of three-layer database architecture, for instance.)

Taken as a whole, The ODBC Solution is appropriate if you're brand-new to ODBC; particularly if you need to work with a legacy system that employs ODBC 2.0.

SAS ODBC Driver 9.1: User's Guide And Programmer's Reference

SAS Institute

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Editorial Review:

The SAS ODBC driver enables you to use SAS data in ODBC-enabled applications and to access data in large databases on remote SAS servers. This title explains how to use and configure the SAS ODBC driver and includes information about defining data sources, defining servers and data libraries, accessing your data, how the driver is implemented, return codes and associated messages, and changes and enhancements to the ODBC driver. Programmers' reference information is also provided, including information about ODBC functions. This title is also available online. This title is intended for application programmers, database administrators, and end users who know how to use their operating environment but who might not be familiar with SAS.

Supports releases 9.1 and higher of SAS software.

Microsoft Odbc 3.0 Software Development Kit and Programmer's Reference: Software Development Kit and Programmer's Reference (Microsoft)

List Price: $99.99 By: Microsoft Pr Amazon Marketplace: 12 new & used starting at $11.36

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Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Networking -> Networks, Protocols & APIs -> ODBC
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Software Design, Testing & Engineering -> Software Development

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 2.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

This boxed set of software and documentation comes from the company that invented ODBC (Open Database Connectivity). The CD-ROM of the ODBC 3.0 SDK (software developer's kit) contains drivers for Windows NT Server, Windows NT Workstation, and Windows 95. The CD-ROM also includes installer utilities, testing tools, and sample applications and similar materials for Alpha and PowerPC platforms.

However, the CD-ROM isn't the whole show: the two books that come with this boxed set explain, to a limited degree, how to write programs that use ODBC. The first volume of the set explains how to connect to a driver, form an SQL (structured query language) statement, and perform actions upon a database. The book covers networked databases well, but the information is predictably slanted toward Windows NT environments.

The books devote much more space to documenting the ODBC API (application programming interface) completely. As is typical of Microsoft API documentation, the two volumes give information about each API call's version compatibility, purpose, syntax, arguments, and return values. Entries also include some troubleshooting information, related-item data, and comments. Experienced programmers crave this kind of documentation and the Microsoft User Education team, led by Jim van de Erve, does a fine job of providing it.