Have you ever had difficulty overcoming the inertia of "getting started" when preparing for a requirements gathering session? How often do you encounter subject matter experts who are not quite sure just what it is that they "need" from an information standpoint? I have found "The Data Model Resource Book" to be of significant assistance in preparing for Logical Modeling Sessions. In an effort to develop "Straw Man" models, in particular, this book has proven to be an excellent resource. In some cases, the basic concepts identified in the book, if not the structures of the models themselves, survive the analysis effort. The definitions and the structures provide stimuli to the thinking of the project team, resulting in a more thorough analysis of the subject area under consideration. I agree that Kimball's book "The Data Warehouse Toolkit" is probably the best resource going for data warehouse design and implementation with today's technology. It is true that this book is not the "Silver Bullet" for slaying the data modeling werewolf. Nonetheless, for a wide variety of applications, (particularly Operational Applications) "The Data Model Resource Book" has been of much assistance.

I found this book to be well written and a reflection of a vast amount of data modeling experience. The book provides insight into a number of very good data modeling techniques and provides enough detail to enable substantial productivity benefits over developing a data model from scratch. I see this book as an excellent reference for anyone needing to develop a data model as a part of any system development activity, including data warehousing. I agree however with the other reviewers of this book that star schema design is a critical component of most data warehousing solutions and that if your developing a data mart solution that Ralph Kimball's "Data Warehouse Toolkit" is an excellent book to buy as well.

The Resource Book is one of the more useful books I have seen on data architecture. It is just what it says: an (excellent) resource library for seven logical data models, one warehouse design, and two data mart designs. These data models and designs can be used as templates or starting points for your own modeling, an introduction to subject areas you might not be familiar with, validating your existing models, and a help to building a corporate data model. The logical models tend to be very complete. You probably won't need all their features, but they provide a good reference.

The book provides a good notation for showing the relationship among high-level models, mid-level models, and data warehouse and data mart designs. Instance tables (sample data) help bring the models to life. The book also provides a good methodology for transforming logical data models to data warehouse designs. The book is an extremely useful resource.

I purchased this book, without having any background in programming in any computer language, except a small amount of Basic & HTML, hoping for fast results. The truth is that although the book is comprehensive and user friendly, it relys heavily on a pre existing knowledge of the subject matter and is really NOT for the absolute beginner. My only other observation would be the constant "I'll cover that part later" aspect of the text, which is very frustrating, and makes the reader want to skip ahead to consolidate learning. I would certainly recommend this book, but only as an addition to the library of someone who knew a great deal about Delphi first, without which 21 days is optomistic at best!

I purchased Delphi 5, and also the Developers Guide - but found it difficult to actually program in Delphi. I have a very strong programming background in procedural languages, but not in C or C++ or any other OO paradigm, and the Delphi manual and Delphi 5 Developers guide are far too advanced for beginners. This book was very easy for me to understand, and although I think that the subject matter simply cannot be mastered in 21 days this was the only book that was able to explain many of the reasons why (and how) you would use the different VCL components. Although there are many cases where more complex examples would have helped, I think that it was appropriate for the author to ignore them. This is obviously a beginners book. I would have preffered some more details on some of the more "odd" language features such as the typecasting, the use of "AS" and "IS", peculiarities of creating classes, etc, as well as some more info on the Object Pascal language and some programing conventions that may help to reduce coding errors - the syntax is particularly odd in its use of semi-colons, a fact that Borland admits in its own documentation as one of the prime reasons for intorduction of program 'bugs'.

One of the nice features of the book is the end of chapter tutorials. I did them and found the they did re-inforce the chapters, and also provided additional stimulus. You are encouraged to use the on-line help, and it does help. There is no way to progrm in Delphi without it. In order to really follow along you must interact with the software.

The book does not come with a CD, you must download sample code from the Internet, which is a bit of a bother.

In summary a very good book. The examples and text work for Delphi 5 as well as Delphi 4. I think that any beginning Delphi programmer should have this plus an advanced book, and they should be ready to take on most projects.

An ideal book for anyone who wishes to begin learning Delphi (version 4, 5 or 6). I an experienced Visual Basic programmer and purchased Delphi 5 hoping to use the on-line documentation to learn Delphi but found it too advanced and not an ideal learning environment. (On-line help tends to be a great reference tool but it's always hard to learn from.) I then purchased the Delphi Developer's Guide, which seems to be regarded as the best book on the subject. Although a superb book in its own right, its not aimed at beginners. I have now completed the Sam's Delphi 4 in 21 days, and let me say, it's a terrific book for beginners, which teaches in a lesson format, which is actually surprisingly easy and fun to follow. Don't be put off by the Version 4 title either, all the lessons work just fine in Delphi 5.

Although this book is a little outdated,if you are beginner with Boland C++ Builder,this book is just for you.
It provides the fundamentals of C++Builder much enough.
If you finish reading it, I recommend "C++Builder HowTo" as second step.
PS. Day19, which explains DLL, is exceptionally bad, because some sample codes is not able to compile on BCB5.
See "C++ Builder5 Developer's Guide".

In all fairness, I have the "condensed" 14 day edition of this book that came with BCB3 when I bought it several years ago. The title says it will teach you to use "C++ Builder" in 14 ( 21 ) days, not teach you "C++" in 21 days. If you know the basics of C++, this book will start you making Windows applications with C++ Builder. From the first "hello world" program to beginning database design, you're introduced to many of C++ Builders capabilities. There's lots of example code and quite a few screen shots. After using this book a while you'll need something more advanced no doubt, but this is probably the best place for the beginning BCB user to start.

i have said that i will never buy any book titled 'teach yourself ...... in N days' after reading 'TYS Visuall C++'. but this book about C++ Builder broke the bond. it's comprehensive and very detailed, written in clear and humorous language. recommended to ANY one startig using BCB.

...so remember to open your mind and exercise your sense of humor when you read this hilarious book. I read it in the '80's, early '90's and again just this year, and every time I find another gem contained within its pages. Not only will you be treated to a highly entertaining, biting piece of satire, but you'll come away with lots of new ammo in your own snappy come-back arsenal.

As always, you'll look at the world a little differently after this Imus encounter.

I read the book. I have both the early 1980's copy and the new one. I have given _away _ copies of "God's Other Son". Why?...

...Because I believe this is one of the funniest books ever written on the subject of Televangelists. Bill Sol Hargus, a low rent son of a hooker and a passing interest, seeks fame and fortune in the poor souls who believe in his lightning fast hellfire and brimstone sermons. But Billy has to deal with _his_ own personal demons FIRST...

He has been programmed to believe that sex is evil and when his "sinful tool" starts up, Billy Sol must deal with it...with some painful, but hilarious results. Billy Sol becomes addicted to drugs and alcohol to deal with his pain and shortcomings as a person.

The audio book contains the fine vocal talents of Rob Bartlett and Larry Kenney as well as Don Imus as Billy Sol.

They bring the book to life, bringing the reader into a skewed world of religion and show business.

A fanatstic way to enjoy "God's Other Son"!

When I got this audiobook I was prepared to listen to Don Imus just read the book to me, but I was pleasanly suprised. Imus uses things that make the bits on his radio program great in the audiobook. If you are a fan of the I-man and you are looking for a good time and a quick way to kill 2 hours I suggest this audiobook. CAN I GET AN AMEN?!

Though told from the point of view of one college student, "Hippies" is not necessarily a promotion of one point of view, but the many conflicting emotions of the people of that time. To do this is a challenge, but to do so with as much humor as Jedick has put in to this book, and still remain credible, is a tribute to his talent. The device of peripherally introducing the four slain students - Sandy Scheuer, Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, and Bill Schroeder - into the story humanizes them in a way that our modern history books have allowed us to forget. An outstanding first novel, and a historically important text.

This book about 1969-1970 college students from Kent State University is truly inspiring. As the characters gain knowledge and growth, so will you. Jeddick captures every aspect of the sixties in an easy, "can't put down" text. The characters will trap you, their experiences will excite you and the history will haunt you.

I am a fourteen year old from Kent who just finished reading "Hippies". As a lifelong citizen of Kent, I was saddened to know that such violent things took place here. My parents were going to KSU during 1970 and they have told me a lot about what happened on May 4th, but I felt like reading this book patched up all the hole s that were missing from their story. I really enjoyed reading the story set against the background of the KSU tragedies, as well as learning more about my hometown's history. This is a great book!

There aren't that many books out there that are written by women on what the men want, instead of what the women think the men want. But here is one of them, and one of the best ones. She offers a lot of ideas to use that will attract more men your way. Yes, there are some things in here that don't make sense and may seem a bit too forward for shy women, nevertheless, it's what men like, and want from you. That's what counts. You don't have to agree with the whole book. I didn't, but it's still a must read, because it's what men want. I tell my customers to read this if they are looking for more good books to read. Perry Rose author of "I Love You...Will You Marry Me?!"

Okay, so some women may be put off by the advice to be a bitch and the suggestions on how to dress (don't dress dumpy and wear make up) but the idea that one must be informed and methodical about finding the right man to marry is the most important concept in this book. Most of her advice is based on appealing to men in a very general sense (most men prefer long hair and stuff like that), so if the man of your choice isn't typical, then you would ignore some of that information. The best parts of the book are: her list of questions to ask a man to find out if he is the man for you and her advice on when and why you should move out of a live-in relationship. It's a good book with which to start your quest and I have to add that two friends were married with in two years after reading and applying the information in this book.

After many, many failed relationships, I read this book. It helped me to understand the things I had been doing wrong - i.e. the wrong signals, the wrong attitudes...

The very next relationship I had developed into my 10 year marriage.

It's about recognizing the things that are most important to you - the things you HAVE to have and then going out and finding those qualities in a man with a very liberating determination.

It's too bad some of the reviewers have been offended, feeling this book is pre-women's equality movement material. I believe that a truly deep relationship involves BOTH partners having their needs met, and BOTH partners sacrificing some for the other. This book never recommends being something that you are not, putting on some absurd facade. This book is NOT about merely attracting men (come on ladies, how hard is THAT?) I think the author is very clear on that.

Of course, not everything said applies to every man or woman but the general advice given is right on the money!

This book was a good overview, but leaves you with a lot of questions in the end. The title turned out to be misleading as well, since I read it and understood it in a couple of days, not twenty-one.

To summarize, the book was a good introduction to visual programming, and the visual aspect of Borland C++ Builder, but did not discuss any practical applications in any depth. I found that it discussed a lot of how to "drag here, click here, enter your code here", but did not cover on what code you could put and where.

I also found it somewhat lacking in covering the VCL and Events. For example, the book covered on the fact that you could create drag-and-drop events, but not how.

A good beginners book, but I felt it belonged more in the "For Dummies" series than in the TYI21D's series.

Teach Yourself Borland C++ Builder in 21 Days, is a thorough and fun book to learn C++ Builder. It will show you all the ins and outs, tips and tricks of learning VCL programming that other books cannot match. I am a self-taught, experienced Delphi programmer, who has read many books on VCL programming. If I had a book like this when learning Delphi, my bookshelf would contain a lot less books

Very cogent, very detailed, very well-written, this book is a must have for any serious Builder developer. The forays into language fundamentals, database programming, and Internet development are among the best I've seen. This version is targeted at C++Builder 1.0, but applies quite well to any version of the tool. I enjoyed this one immensely and commend Reisdorph and Henderson on their find work.

Between the Rivers is the story of Sharur, son of a master trader from a city called Gibil, in a semi-fantastical Mesopotamia at the dawn of civilization. The premise of the book is that each city-state has its own patron god, who interacts directly with the people of the city. The god controls and affects the daily life of every individual person in his city and the outlying area, and as a result, the people of each city-state are dull-witted and dependent, relying on their god to make decisions for them. In recent generations, Engibil, the god of the city of Gibil, has grown lazy, and has allowed his people to think for themselves. The result has been a slow increase in technological advancement. The people of Gibil have discovered how to make bronze, and how to keep records that live longer than a man's memory - the secret of writing.

As the novel begins, Sharur is beginning to lead a trade expedition outside the land between the rivers. He meets with unexpected resistance, and his caravan fails to make a profit. The reason for this initally seems to be that the gods of other lands have decided that the people of Gibil carry dangerous ideas and thoughts, which might cause the foreign gods' own people to leave them behind. However, as we find out later, and which comes off as a hastily rewritten premise by the author, the real reason is that a divine artifact has been unwittingly taken from these foreign gods into Gibil.

At the time of this story, writing had been invented only a couple generations ago. I recall reading in my history textbooks that most of the cuneiform writing that has been discovered has been trading invoices and inventories, and that's exactly how Turtledove has his characters using it. As a son of a master trader, Shurur keeps track of customers' debts and counts trade inventory. Other aspects of early Bronze-age life is depicted in the story. Turtledove writes about marriage customs, slave-keeping practices, and day-to-day activities of the inhabitants of this ancient city. I enjoyed the descriptions of life in the city, as well as the battle between the two nations as the gods came out to fight alongside their people.

The novel was interesting as a scenario of the dawn of civilization. However, the story moved along very slowly. The failed trade expedition took up about a quarter of the book, and was heavily redundant in places. Also if this is supposed to be Mesopotamia, a map of the cities under the names Turtledove gives would have been nice. If it's a non-earth fantasy-world, it would have been nice to have that confirmed with a map. None of the city names bear a resemblance to any places I'd known, so it didn't really matter if the story was set in Mesopotamia, or ancient Indiana. Another thing that took away from the story was that much of the plot hinges on Sharur's ability to trick the gods, and this seems to me to be a little too easy for him.

Though there is much about the premise to recommend the novel, it was a bit too slow for me. It's not that there's no action, because there is. It just seems like a formality to the story. Turtledove had a good concept for the setting, but could have developed a better story to set in it.

I teach ancient history and regularly recommend this book to my students as a fun accompaniment to our course. Turtledove's usual meticulous scholarship works wonderfully in Between the Rivers where he creates a believable take on Bronze Age Mesopotamian society (with a fantasy twist, of course). Some idiosyncracies can only be appreciated if you know the history: for instance, the characters' habits of restating key phrases reads just like some early Sumerian texts. There are many wonderful historical tidbits about daily life, dining, business and housing that Harry Turtledove has worked into this book.

That said, this is a historical fantasy and, by giving these cities "real" gods, Turtledove deftly works in the fantasy elements to his story. The conflict between humans and the gods, starting with the people of Gibil and spreading to the other cities (through trade and example) is a bit predictable and the hero's character might seem one-dimensional, but Between the Rivers still makes for a rollicking good read!

This is a fantastic book. I was overjoyed to discover that Turtledove took the trouble to imagine the hypotheses of Julian Jaynes, a psychologist who suggested that once, men really did hear the gods speak to them. Jaynes suggested that humans have evolved significantly over the last 8 to 15 thousand years, primarily in terms of the integration of their cerebral hemispheres. In earlier times, when poor integration was more common, most people could hear the words spoken by their gods; really their own learned rules and beliefs spoken compellingly and very hard for them not to listen to because it was actually the things they themselves were conciously thinking. Jaynes said that the only people today who hear such things are called schizophrenics. Be that as it may, Turtledove's book makes this come alive in ancient Mesopotamia. Besides all that, this book is an excellent story!

Judith Krantz is an extremely skilled writer with that genuinely, authorly flair for creating subworlds on her own terms - a talent possessed by any writer worth reading, from Dickens to Agatha Christie, whatever the genre or actual literary merit of his or her output. I read The Jewels of Tessa Kent with as much enjoyment as all her other works, very little more or less, since she is if nothing else consistent and the predictability of her formula - if you like this sort of thing, as I do - is part of the attraction. She is very good at drawing a detailed and superficially convincing picture of a specialised environment or social situation - in this case, the worlds of film-making, auction houses and applied Catholicism - and, despite the superabundance of positives and superlatives in her novels (nobody is ever just slightly beautiful, or a little bit rich, or reasonably good at what they do) she always includes a couple of entertaining vignettes of nasty, obsessed characters. Unfortunately, however, her great weakness seems to be an inability to portray a convincing romantic relationship. Her heroines generally fall madly in reciprocated love at first sight and marry within a week, in a way that never seems remotely plausible.

The Jewels Of Tessa Kent was a typical Krantz book. It was easy enough to read and enjoyable enough to finish. I felt bad for poor Maggie, being raised by her mother's parents, and then being shuffled off to total strangers to be raised after her parents die. I still feel as though she should have lived with her birth mother, the whole thing was very cruel. This book was not as thrilling to me as Scruples 2 or Lovers, but Krantz definitely gets a thumbs up for this one.

At the beginning of this novel, Tessa Kent is but a 14-year-old extraordinarily beautiful girl whose mother lives only for the day when Tessa will become a movie star.

However due to a one-night indiscretion Tessa becomes pregnant and the family moves to another city. There, in secrecy, Tessa gives birth to a little girl (Maggie) whom her parents decide to raise as their own.

Tessa is still under twenty when she wins an Oscar for the best supporting actress and from then on her star continues to rise spectaculously.

Soon after she gets married her parents die in a car accident. Tessa's husband doesn't know her secret and so Maggie is brought up by a cold, unsympathetic couple (relatives of Tessa's husband).

Tessa becomes a widow in the meantime and, when Maggie is 18, she decides to tell her everything but Maggie finds out from another source and decides never to speak to her mother again.

A few years pass and special circumstances make Tessa desperately try to make peace with her daughter... if it's not already too late.

I must admit I am a big fan of Judith Krantz and I read all her novels. Every one of them is magic, glamorous and has some inner joy that willy-nilly rubs out on you.

The old magic is still here in this book, but not nearly as much as in the other novels.

Also there are far less people and secondary story lines, something I regret.

All in all, a book not to be missed!

I bought this book hoping to figure out what all of this Web Service stuff is about. Scott writes for MSDN, so I figured that he must have a clue. As a prior reviewer noted, Scott goes into detail about the specifications. I read the SOAP spec and it is fairly difficult to read. Yes, he follows the specs fairly closely but he explains things in easy to understand terms and does a far better job explaining things than the SOAP or WSDL specs do.

I've been working on a web service for the past month now. Not surprisingly, I've had to dig into SOAP messages and WSDL whenever I was doing my interoperability testing. Thanks to Scott's book, I can actually understand what I'm reading.

The case study is a good read as well. Make sure to read it if only for the architectural guidance.

Almost everybody on my team bought a copy. Do yourself a favor. If you are starting a project that exposes or consumes a Web Service, include copies of this book for all devs in the budget. It'll be worthwhile.

Just a couple of quick comments:
1. The brief history that explains why SOAP was invented was handy in understanding where the need for SOAP came from.
2. Great job on explaining the only XML you need to know in order to understand SOAP. So far, the content has been dead on.
3. The book has given me a good understanding of how all this stuff works.

I grabbed this one because of Scott's interop article he did for MSDN. I figured that he had to learn the info somewhere-- this book must be the location. I hope he revs this one soon after SOAP v1.2 comes out. Hopefully, he'll also include info on the new WS-xxx specs that Microsoft is pumping out. If anyone can explain this stuff well, it's Scott!

I've read the other positive reviews on this topic and they already say quite a bit about the book-- explains SOAP well, good XML primer, yadda yadda yadda. I learned quite a bit from this book. The thing this guy does that many authors don't do is he explains all the basics (fairly common) and then shows how everythiing works across C#, VB 6, and Java on *nix and Windows. Most authors cop out and stick with only Linux or only Windows. None of the books I've seen build an example that crosses the bridge.

Before buying this title, I highly recommend that you check out the At Your Service column on MSDN. Scott's a co-author on that column. If you like the writing style in his columns, you'll love the book. For more in depth writing, consider searching for his name and look for more articles. That's what I did.