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Ah, BizTalk Server.... one of those Microsoft products that, watched from afar, always appeared so frighteningly towering. Training to climb Mount Everest would probably be a less strenuous endeavour. My previous experience with it was just the 2002 version's installation procedure, and that totally left me perceiving it like learning diving ...

Possess a driving license? That probably means you know the mechanics that makes cars work. Thereby the skill necessary to ferry ourselves to and from places in daily life. Wait, what has this gotta do with reviewing a technical computing book? Well, you knew incorrect air pressure worsens tyre grip, accelerates wear & tear, and reduces fuel ...

I am going to give a short review for this MS Press book, because at 287 pages, it is way too thin for a mountainous product suite like Visual Studio Team System. The book's title ''Working with'' set a level of expectation that I can get walk out feeling confident in putting VSTS into good use. Unfortunately that is not the ...

I have never known of Tim O'Leary before. But after this book, I wished I had learnt of this wisened individual earlier. This enterprising man has been an incredibly ambitious warrior since the days of his youth, bravely moving from venture to venture. In the course of his business dealings through the years he has met a vast variety of ...

The last trio of chapters put all the principles taught in the previous chapters into practice and motions the reader into the exercise of considering what is the optimal medium to display and communicate the multitude of dashboard data and information items. That is, when to use text, tables, or graphs (and which type of graph); how to group the ...

The first part is no misnomer; it lays out the first five chapters detailing some very crucial concepts that happen when people are called upon to calculate figures for projects (time, effort, staff-days, money, etc). If these concepts cannot be understood, then there is no point reading the rest of the book. And Steven McConnell again does his ...

This is something I should have quickly put up right after I completed the book well over a year ago. But life gets you, and many things get left in the cupboard. Like my 16-year-old unassembled B-17G Flying Fortress. Anyway, back then I had long read brief mentions about ''extreme programming'' (XP) and the ''agile movement'' but was ...

Woah. God sent.The golden key to knowing how to design useful stuff is to first and foremost understand how humans perceive the objects they see and think of them. Fail to understand this, then fail to design anything usable. Period.These chapters provide the core foundation to the psychology of human visual perception. They cannot be skipped. ...

The first chapter delves into the history of presenting data to ''executive level'' staff and the evolution of the dashboard format. Interesting for historical knowledge, but unnecessary for those who just want to learn. It goes on to showcase some live examples of dashboard designs, so Stephen Few can finally present his defintion of what a ...

In recent times I have been briefed on the possibility of embarking on a project that revolves around web dashboards. Not exactly being a UI expert, and in recent times not having touched web interface design, I recognised at least one skillset I was lacking - how to design effective dashboards. Neither am i am extensive dashboard user. But, ...

Fabulous. Just fabulous.Do we still need another review for a book that has been lauded to death for nearly two decades now?Oh yes. Only because we are still failing to produce objects designed to be usable by humankind. Miserably. Despite its age, The Design of Everyday Things hits the nail right on the head on a problem plaguing all people past ...

It's late. Really late. But finally have I gotten around dunking my own head into the murky water basin that is exam 70-320 - Developing XML Web Services and Server Components. Aspects of the .NET Framework I have so far not found any good opportunity to work on and learn in depth. During the period of preparation, I found strong reason to ...

Anybody who knows Rob Howard, knows he is the Caching guru. And boy does it show here yet again. Detailed with an FAQ, flow diagrams, nearly every parameter offered by the OutputCache directive, as well as the caching API options available in code, you will be armed with confidence on how you will plan to use Output caching within your ...

Anybody with a few months' experience of web application development should be aware about the challenges of maintaining state data over the HTTP channel. This chapter recalls the historical attempts of classic ASP, so that one does not forget and take the [enhanced] features of ASP.NET for granted. ;)Straight after that comes the elaboration on ...

This chapter concentrates on the possible ways of binding data to the various data display controls provided by ASP.NET, offering some background to the underlying generated code when one uses data binding expressions in the aspx page template, as well as the syntax options available (DataBinder.Eval, Container.DataItem).The segment detailing the ...

First line of the chapter: Let's be honest: performance tuning doesn't sound like fun. It's probably the last thing on your list of things to do when developing an application. Very true. I hardly measure performance in a controlled and repeatable manner. What i do is just constantly build awareness of the underlying performance implications of ...

Again, another terse chapter introducing things you already know as an ASP.NET developer (unless you are fresh), and would have known from SDK documentation. Perhaps this is in acknowledgement that to truly know the real ins and outs of Server Control development, as mentioned within the chapter, one has to read the fabulous Developing Microsoft ...

With a title stating ''Coding Strategies'' I was expecting to find a lot of gems revealing the under-the-hood workings of the ASP.NET framework that were not easily obtainable from the SDK documentation or web references. I was expecting some pretty advanced stuff here. So imagine my surprise when the first chapter begins explaining the history ...

The outer wrap of this book promises this to be a rich collection of tips and advice on how Microsoft developers themselves make use of the ASP.NET platform/framework, and to exploit its features to achieve best results. Authors: Matthew Gibbs, Rob Howard Publisher: Microsoft Press Approx # pages: 319 Reference: Amazon This is the first ...

belongs to Part 2: .NET Development with Open Source Tools This is one of the most important chapters, if not the most important. Anybody who works in a significantly large team with complicated segmentations of interdependent projects in a widespread environment of several development machines can truly appreciate the headaches involved in ...