Systems Analysis & Design Books

Web Analytics: An Hour a Day

Avinash Kaushik

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 60 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Now this is what I call Web Analytics! 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I can consider myself as pretty noobish in the field of web analytics. I know SEO and usability, but web analytics has always been just looking at the number of visitors and pageviews. Until I received this book, because this book is a real eye-opener for the new comers to web analytics. It totally change your way of thinking about what web analytics is and how you can pull the best out of it.

I can't wait to finish it, which costs a lot of time by the way.

And students, you can consider this as a good step up to web analytics with theory plus hands on stuff. Like a real school book you learn everything you need from what to why. More than 400 pages long.

P.S. There is also a cd included with some nice stuff like a presentation from the writer, pdf and mp3 files with valuable information.

Editorial Review:

Written by an in-the-trenches practitioner, this step-by-step guide shows you how to implement a successful Web analytics strategy. Web analytics expert Avinash Kaushik, in his thought-provoking style, debunks leading myths and leads you on a path to gaining actionable insights from your analytics efforts. Discover how to move beyond clickstream analysis, why qualitative data should be your focus, and more insights and techniques that will help you develop a customer-centric mindset without sacrificing your company’s bottom line.

Note: CD-ROM/DVD and other supplementary materials are not included as part of eBook file.

Head First Design Patterns (Head First)

Elisabeth Freeman, Eric Freeman, Bert Bates, Kathy Sierra

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Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Java -> General
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Software Design, Testing & Engineering -> Object-Oriented Design
Subjects -> Computers & Internet -> Programming -> Software Design, Testing & Engineering -> Software Development

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 243 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

You're not alone.

At any given moment, somewhere in the world someone struggles with the same software design problems you have. You know you don't want to reinvent the wheel (or worse, a flat tire), so you look to Design Patterns--the lessons learned by those who've faced the same problems. With Design Patterns, you get to take advantage of the best practices and experience of others, so that you can spend your time on...something else. Something more challenging. Something more complex. Something more fun.

You want to learn about the patterns that matter--why to use them, when to use them, how to use them (and when NOT to use them). But you don't just want to see how patterns look in a book, you want to know how they look "in the wild". In their native environment. In other words, in real world applications. You also want to learn how patterns are used in the Java API, and how to exploit Java's built-in pattern support in your own code.

You want to learn the real OO design principles and why everything your boss told you about inheritance might be wrong (and what to do instead). You want to learn how those principles will help the next time you're up a creek without a design pattern.

Most importantly, you want to learn the "secret language" of Design Patterns so that you can hold your own with your co-worker (and impress cocktail party guests) when he casually mentions his stunningly clever use of Command, Facade, Proxy, and Factory in between sips of a martini. You'll easily counter with your deep understanding of why Singleton isn't as simple as it sounds, how the Factory is so often misunderstood, or on the real relationship between Decorator, Facade and Adapter.

With Head First Design Patterns, you'll avoid the embarrassment of thinking Decorator is something from the "Trading Spaces" show. Best of all, in a way that won't put you to sleep! We think your time is too important (and too short) to spend it struggling with academic texts.

If you've read a Head First book, you know what to expect--a visually rich format designed for the way your brain works. Using the latest research in neurobiology, cognitive science, and learning theory, Head First Design Patterns will load patterns into your brain in a way that sticks. In a way that lets you put them to work immediately. In a way that makes you better at solving software design problems, and better at speaking the language of patterns with others on your team.

Systems Analysis and Design, Seventh Edition (Shelly Cashman)

Gary B. Shelly, Thomas J. Cashman, Harry J. Rosenblatt

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Comprehensive Introduction 4 out of 5 stars.
16 of 19 people found this review helpful.

Ok, firstly this book has excellent presentation and pedagogy. Somebody took some serious care to ensure this book is visually pleasing and well organized. It contains a CD-rom with summaries of each chapter as well as well as weblinks, glossaries of each chapter and chapter outlines. There are no design tools CASE tools however.

Content: This book is a very good introduction to systems analysis and design: the operative word being INTRODUCTION. It paints a very broad picture in reasonable detail. There are enough examples and explanation to be able to extrapolate how to do very basic structured systems analysis. Object oriented analysis on the other hand while covered, is done so in a fairly rudimentary manner (in a toolkit- ie. appendix- rather than in the body of the book). This book is less about the mechanics of how and more about the why and why not and what you're likely to need before you do do some systems analysis. Personally I think the book by WHitten (isbn 0072552360) provides more bang for your buck in that it covers functional decomposition, functional primitives, decision tables, databases, ERDs, prototyping, OO analysis and design in greater depth and with more reality and for significantly less money. WHitten is far less accessible though, the price of being far more technical than this one- and it is fairly old now. This book is very accessible, but that comes at the cost of content. If you want deeper how-to, try Whitten...if you want a easier overview then try this. However the price is quite significant for this book.

Pedagogy wise, this book is very good. Lots of pratical examples and expositions of real life situations, review questions (no answers) directions to a web site to chase down further understanding and knowledge. A case study permeates the book which makes it very accessible because the case study I found was interesting and quite 'likely'. The toolkits (ie. appendices) are quite interesting, if somewhat 'lite'. To me, they seemed more of a checklist and point of reference than a substantive learning source.

So, in all, a nice, neat book, if rather expensive though. Look at it if you're looking for a broad overview and/or a jumping off point for systems analysis and design. ELsewhere may provide you with work of a more concrete, down to brass-tacks (leveling) nature. It can also serve as a reasonable adjunct to a more technical text, to clarify concepts and provide a philosophical overview of systems analysis and design as well as clarifying some concepts in a clear, concise way. It probably won't teach you 'deep thought' systems analysis and design however.

Editorial Review:

Building on the proven pedagogy of its predecessors, with an increased focus on object modeling and project management, Systems Analysis and Design, Seventh Edition presents a clear introduction to systems analysis and design. Students will find concepts easy-to-understand through the clear writing style and full-color figures that illustrate current technology and trends. Examples and cases are drawn from actual systems projects that enable students to learn in the context of solving problems, much like the ones they will encounter on the job. This approach, combined with motivating tools such as the SCR Associates interactive Web-Based Case Study, Systems Analyst’s Toolkit, the Student Study Tool on CD-ROM, and more, makes Systems Analysis and Design, Seventh Edition a wise and exciting choice for your introductory systems analysis and design class.

Signals and Systems (2nd Edition) (Prentice-Hall Signal Processing Series)

Alan V. Oppenheim, Alan S. Willsky, with S. Hamid

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 51 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The second edition of this well-known and highly regarded text can be used as the basis for a one- or two-semester undergraduate course in signals and linear systems theory and applications. Topics include basic signals and systems concepts, linear time-invariant (LTI) systems, Fourier representations of continuous-time and discrete-time signals, the CT and DT Fourier transforms, and time- and frequency-domain analysis methods. The author emphasizes applications of the theory through numerous examples in filtering, sampling, communications, and feedback. The parallel development of continuous-time and discrete-time frequency domain methods allows the reader to apply insights and intuition across the two domains. It also facilitates a deeper understanding of the material by bringing into focus the similarities and differences between the two domains. The text also includes introductory chapters on communication systems and control theory. This book assumes that you have a background in calculus as well as exposure to complex numbers and elementary differential equations. Because of its thoroughness and unhurried pace, this text is highly recommended for students and those interested in self-study.

Security+ Guide to Networking Security Fundamentals, Second Edition

Mark Ciampa

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Lightweight textbook; lab material is dated 3 out of 5 stars.
7 of 7 people found this review helpful.

My instructor uses this as one of two textbooks for the Network Security course, primarily because there is an answer key for the chapter review questions. The book isn't bad, although I find it lightweight in comparison to the other text, Designing Network Security 2nd ed., by Merike Kaeo.

My biggest issue is that the lab material presented is woefully out of date, since this book was published in 2004. The principles of network security do not change radically in two years' time, but software certainly does!

I attend Illinois Institute of Technology, which is unique in that some programs mix graduate students and undergrad students in classes, with the expectation that graduate students perform at a higher level than the undergrads. IIT is also known for the [...], or Interprofessional Projects Program, which brings together students from engineering, science, humanities, business, architecture, psychology, law and design to solve many unique and useful problems.

As you can see, IIT encourages diversity and teamwork. My project team consists of myself (grad student with a good deal of experience) and three undergrads with varying levels of experience.

If one does not have a certain level of PC experience, doing some of the labs in this book without current instructions can be tedious, if not impossible for some people.

The official website has only two downloads for the book. One is a list of errata, dated July 2006. The other maps the textbook content to the LabSim content, which I suspect would be useful only if you purchased that option. My suggestion to the author is that he publish a quarterly update on the website with revisions to the labs in the textbook.

Regardless, I would not advise paying full price for this book, especially since the Security+ exam is going to be revised soon, from what I have been reading.

Editorial Review:

Completely rewritten to include Microsoft Windows Server 2003 coverage and other cutting-edge technologies, this best selling text will ensure your students' success on CompTIA's latest Server+ Exam.

Systems Analysis and Design Methods

Jeffrey L Whitten, Lonnie D. Bentley

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Broad, but sometimes not deep 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Whitten and Bentley have put together a very good text for a one-semester intro to systems analysis. After a wide-ranging introductory section, the real meat of this book appears in Parts 2 and 3: Analysis and Design.

Part 2 spends just one chapter on requirements discovery. This is the one section of the book that I found a lot thinner than it should be. The first problem is that requirements engineering is a field all its own, and has (or should have) direct connections to every work product that comes after in the development cycle. Although later chapters (especially use cases and even protoyping) offer additional ways to elicit meaningful requests from users, the whole task of making sure that the requirements are complete, consistent, and traceable to downstream effort is barely addressed. The second, and I think bigger problem is that the authors talk only about requirements from the users, plus "non-functional" requirements like reliability and performance. There's a lot to debate in categorizing requirements as non- or functional, depending on the kind of application, but the real defect in the discussion is one they share with most other authors in the field: they simply ignore the standards and regulations that affect system development. The SEC, FAA, and FDA impose requirements, as do legal enactments (HIPAA, ITAR for crypto, Sorbanes-Oxley), look&feel, and standards for networking, data exchange, and a gazillion other areas. Depending on the field you work in, you'll spend a lot more time worrying about regulatory and standards compliance than about anything the customer said.

Despite this uninspiring start, Part 2 moves along well. It presents use cases (though in a particularly fussy way), modeling techniques, and enough UML to help but not enough to overwhelm - and the whole can be quite overwhelming.

Part 3 addresses high level design. If your classroom is a typical one, this is where the students students with little, no, or ancient programming experience may start to struggle. It does a fair job with the common kinds of human-oriented IO, even if it shortchanges other systems with more intricate kinds of data manipulation (e.g. compilers or weather modeling). Because this addresses analysis as a separate task from programming, the authors have no reason to go into a lot of directly codable depth. This will frustrate the techies, but the little depth that it does address might intimidate thosewith more of a business orientation. It's a problem that I think has no solution as long as the people who build systems and the people who want them are in the same classroom.

Finally, Part 4 acknowledges the fact that systems are not just designed. Although it skips deployment and maintenance, this section does touch on low-level implementation and day to day operations. Now that they've gotten away from the core requirements, specification, and design content, I think the authors are making a quiet suggestion to the instructor who uses this book: it's your curriculum, add your spin to it. Everyone who looks this text over will see soft spots, but I'll bet that no two people see the same ones. We all come into this text with our own interests, specialties, experience, and strengths. One of the joys of teaching is the chance to add your own kind of depth to a course.

This is a fair cookbook. By that, I mean that you can follow the instructions and get a reliable set of results from it. Or, if you read this a little more broadly, it invites all the embellisments and complements that an active researcher or practitioner is sure to think of.

//wiredweird

Editorial Review:

Today's students want to practice the application of concepts. As with the previous editions of this book, the authors write to balance the coverage of concepts, tools, techniques, and their applications, and to provide the most examples of system analysis and design deliverables available in any book. The textbook also serves the reader as a professional reference for best current practices.

Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design (Interactive Technologies)

Bill Buxton

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Bill Buxton and I share a common belief that design leadership together with technical leadership drives innovation. Sketching, prototyping, and design are essential parts of the process we use to create new products. Bill Buxton brings design leadership and creativity to Microsoft. Through his thought-provoking personal examples he is inspiring others to better understand the role of design in their own companies--Bill Gates, Chairman, Microsoft

Informed design is essential. While it might seem that Bill Buxton is exaggerating or kidding with this bold assertion, neither is the case. In an impeccably argued and sumptuously illustrated book, design star Buxton convinces us that design simply must be integrated into the heart of business--Roger Martin, Dean, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto

Design is explained, with the means and manner for successes and failures illuminated by engaging stories, true examples and personal anecdotes. In Sketching User Experiences, Bill Buxton clarifies the processes and skills of design from sketching to experience modeling, in a lively and informative style that is rich with stories and full of his own heart and enthusiasm. At the start we are lost in mountain snows and northern seas, but by the end we are equipped with a deep understanding of the tools of creative design.--Bill Moggridge, Cofounder of IDEO and author of Designing Interactions

Like any secret society, the design community has its strange rituals and initiation procedures. Bill opens up the mysteries of the magical process of design, taking us through a land in which story-telling, orange squeezers, the Wizard of Oz, I-pods, avalanche avoidance, bicycle suspension sketching, and faking it are all points on the design pilgrims journey. There are lots of ideas and techniques in this book to feed good design and transform the way we think about creating useful stuff". Peter Gabriel

I love this book. There are very few resources available that see across and through all of the disciplines involved in developing great experiences. This is complex stuff and Buxton's work is both informed and insightful. He shares the work in an intimate manner that engages the reader and you will find yourself nodding with agreement, and smiling at the poignant relevance of his examples.--Alistair Hamilton, Symbol Technologies, NY

Books that have proposed bringing design into HCI are aplenty, though books that propose bringing software in to Design less common. Nevertheless, Bill manages to skilfully steer a course between the excesses of the two approaches and offers something truly in-between. It could be a real boon to the innovation business by bringing the best of both worlds: design and HCI. --Richard Harper, Microsoft Research, Cambridge

There is almost a fervor in the way that new products, with their rich and dynamic interfaces, are being released to the publictypically promising to make lives easier, solve the most difficult of problems, and maybe even make the world a better place. The reality is that few survive, much less deliver on their promise. The folly? An absence of design, and an over-reliance on technology alone as the solution.

We need design. But design as described here depends on different skillsetseach essential, but on their own, none sufficient. In this rich ecology, designers are faced with new challengeschallenges that build on, rather than replace, existing skills and practice.

Sketching User Experiences approaches design and design thinking as something distinct that needs to be better understoodby both designers and the people with whom they need to work in order to achieve success with new products and systems. So while the focus is on design, the approach is holistic. Hence, the book speaks to designers, usability specialists, the HCI community, product managers, and business executives. There is an emphasis on balancing the back-end concern with usability and engineering excellence (getting the design right) with an up-front investment in sketching and ideation (getting the right design). Overall, the objective is to build the notion of informed design: molding emerging technology into a form that serves our society and reflects its values.

Grounded in both practice and scientific research, Bill Buxtons engaging work aims to spark the imagination while encouraging the use of new techniques, breathing new life into user experience design.

Covers sketching and early prototyping design methods suitable for dynamic product capabilities: cell phones that communicate with each other and other embedded systems, smart appliances, and things you only imagine in your dreams;
Thorough coverage of the design sketching method which helps easily build experience prototypeswithout the effort of engineering prototypes which are difficult to abandon;
Reaches out to a range of designers, including user interface designers, industrial designers, software engineers, usability engineers, product managers, and others;
Full of case studies, examples, exercises, and projects, and access to video clips (www.mkp.com/sketching) that demonstrate the principles and methods.

About the Author

Trained as a musician, Bill Buxton began using computers over thirty years ago in his art. This early experience, both in the studio an on stage, helped develop a deep appreciation of both the positive and negative aspects of technology and its impact. This increasingly drew him into both design and research, with a very strong emphasis on interaction and the human aspects of technology. He first came to prominence for his work at the University of Toronto on digital musical instruments and the novel interfaces that they employed. This work in the late 70s gained the attention of Xerox PARC, where Buxton participated in pioneering work in collaborative work, interaction techniques and ubiquitous computing. He then went on to become Chief Scientist of SGI and Alias|Wavefront, where he had the opportunity to work with some of the top film makers and industrial designers in the world. He is now a principal researcher at Microsoft Corp., where he splits his time between research and helping make design a fundamental pillar of the corporate culture.

* Covers sketching and early prototyping design methods suitable for dynamic product capabilities: cell phones that communicate with each other and other embedded systems, "smart" appliances, and things you only imagine in your dreams;

* Thorough coverage of the design sketching method which helps easily build experience prototypeswithout the effort of engineering prototypes which are difficult to abandon;

* Reaches out to a range of designers, including user interface designers, industrial designers, software engineers, usability engineers, product managers, and others;

* Full of case studies, examples, exercises, and projects, and access to video clips that demonstrate the principles and methods.

Modern Systems Analysis and Design (5th Edition)

Jeffrey A. Hoffer, Joey F George, Joseph S Valacich

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Editorial Review:

Complex, challenging, and stimulating, this book addresses information system analysis and design; it is full of information that shows the organizational process that a team of business and systems professionals use to develop and maintain computer-based information systems. It stresses the importance of responding to and anticipating problems through innovative uses of information technology. The book provides an excellent foundation for systems development, then goes on to making the business case, analysis, design, implementation and maintenance. For future systems analysts, or for those information technology that need a great resource for implementing new ideas and strategies for success.

The Data Warehouse Toolkit: The Complete Guide to Dimensional Modeling (Second Edition)

Ralph Kimball, Margy Ross

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 26 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

A tool rather than a toolkit 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 3 people found this review helpful.

This book delivers exactly what it says. Except that word "toolkit" in its title - you'd better think about this book being a single tool, not a whole toolkit. Ralph Kimball actually has a whole lot of books on data warehousing published, this is one of them, a tool in the toolkit. This one seems like a good starting point to the entire series, and it only shows a single facet - the dimensional modeling.

The book explains the basic principles of creating dimensions and fact tables in a data warehouse (assuming a relational star schema), and then dedicates a chapter per industry to show how those principles apply to sales, order management, CRM, accounting, human resources, financial services, telecoms, logistics, education, health care, e-commerce, insurance etc. Each one appears to be significantly different from the others.

There is a couple of teaser chapters starting with "we have that other book covering this, but will brief you out". Nice and makes you want to read the other books too.

The book also includes guidelines to the warehouse building process, in terms like "know your business sponsor", "talk to your users" and so on. Difficult to say what it has to do with dimensional modeling, perhaps it's included in all the books in the series.

There is no word on software, hardware, physical architecture, tuning or performance in this book. It is a textbook in dimensional modeling, period.

The book is written clearly, has a handful of simple and uniform diagrams and is easy to follow. It only leaves you wondering just how exactly large is the whole data warehouse area, how many pieces you need to collect yet.

Recommended.

Editorial Review:

Single most authoritative guide from the inventor of the technique.

• Presents unique modeling techniques for e-commerce, and shows strategies for optimizing performance.
• Companion Web site provides updates on dimensional modeling techniques, links related to sites, and source code where appropriate.

New Perspectives on Creating Web Pages with HTML, XHTML, and XML, Comprehensive, Second Edition (New Perspectives (Paperback Course Technology))

Patrick Carey

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 2.5 of 5

An obvious retrofit 2 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

What originally attracted me to this text was that the code examples use valid XHTML. Unfortunately, the book is obviously a rewrite of an older book written with 1995-era design and structure approaches. Formatting attributes within the HTML tags have merely been replaced by inline styles, defeating the purpose of having a style sheet in the first place. Not until Tutorial 7 is there an external style sheet. There is even a chapter on how to design a site with tables; i.e., the old school way, and one can sense the author's comfort throughout that chapter. While it's good to be familiar with that approach, since one will run into such sites and have to work with them, to have such a large portion of the text devoted to it seems inappropriate in 2006 (this edition's printing). When HTML elements are employed in a modern fashion, there is some faltering, such as the label tag for an input element being followed by a break tag instead of setting its display property to block in the stylesheet, thus requiring as many break tags as there are labels. And as with many of the Course Technology books, the page numbers restart with each major section: the HTML section ends at HTML 578, then there are some additional cases (HTML ADD 1, HTML ADD 2, etc), then XML ends at XML 224, then there are appendices HTML A1 through HTML J16, then an XML appendix, then Ref 1 through 27 (reference section). At least the index indicates both the HTML and XML sections. One could complete this very thick book and be an expert at creating web sites the way we used to do it in the mid-nineties, the only enhancement being that the sites would be valid. I do think that many of the exercises could be reworked to be quite valuable, and I should mention that much of the instructional text is well done. The book is printed on very thin paper, as are many of the Course textbooks, but there is color throughout. I would not recommend this text to anyone considering adopting it as a class text.

Editorial Review:

This second edition from the New Perspectives series provides comprehensive, step-by-step instruction on coding Web pages from scratch using HTML, XHTML, and XML. Offering new case problems, tutorials, and a new appendix on Web accessibility and Section 508 compliance, this text keeps students up to date on the latest in coding Web pages.