O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Learning Ruby.
Aimed at programmers of all experience levels, this volume uses a series of hands-on tutorials to get them started using the Ruby programming language. It also offers a wealth of code examples they can imitate or modify. Topics include (for example) installing Ruby, using conditionals, manipulating strings, and working with files. The final chapter covers the basics of Ruby on Rails. Fitzgerald is the author of Ruby Pocket Reference and several other technology titles. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Linux system administration.
Appropriate for Linux users and Unix administrators, this guide explains how to set up a Linux server on the internet, build a DNS server using BIND, install the ISPConfig software configuration system, and administer the Apache web server. Later chapters discuss load-balanced clusters, the dynamic host configuration protocol (DHCP), virtualization, bash shell commands, and tools for backing up data. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Managing the test people; a guide to practical technical management.
Practitioner and consultant McKay has seen it all: the incredibly tight deadlines, the 80-hour work weeks, the unbelievable idiosyncrasies, and the projects gone up in smoke as key employees go to work across the industrial park for five more cents an hour. She covers recruiting and hiring to meet both industrial and human goals, interviewing, building workable job descriptions, creating a real team, motivating and communicating with individuals and groups, creating pride, leading a disparate group of individuals, evaluating performance at all levels, and managing growth and change. She concludes with the "delousing" process, including dealing with overload and picking the victims for layoffs. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Photoshop elements 4; the missing manual.
Photoshop Elements may be a cool program, but the "manual" that comes with it is really a quick reference guide and its help files assume some familiarity with the software. With well-illustrated chapters focusing on each type of task involved in editing, organizing, and displaying digital photos, the author of Elements 3: The Missing Manual offers tips on the basics plus getting freebies from the Internet. Appendices cover the Organizer and Editor features menu-by-menu, installation and troubleshooting. Photoshop Elements 5 has come out since this guide's publication. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Programming Firefox.
Feldt (Cholabris Workgroup Solutions) explains how to use the Mozilla component framework to build standards-based Internet applications. Aimed at designers and developers, this combination reference and tutorial focuses on practical issues related to XML User Interface (XUL)-based design. Sample topics include configuring for chrome, extending the interface, and deploying standalone applications and extensions. The final chapter deals with the definition and implementation of XUL widgets. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
RESTful web services.
The web is no longer just the web, of course, and in some ways it has strayed far from its original incarnation as a relatively simple platform for distributed computing. Enthusiasts of representational state transfer (REST), an architectural style or a way of judging architectures, find significant gaps between that abstract concept and the reality. Master practitioners Richardson and Ruby have learned from their research into multitudes of ad hoc REST-like architectures and here offer a starting point for applications of those concepts to web services through resource-oriented architecture (ROA). They use basic web technologies, introduce ROA as a common-sense set of rules, show how RESTful designs are simpler, more versatile and more scalable than present remote procedure call practices, include current front-line examples, explain how REST works with programming languages, and show how to implement RESTful services in popular frameworks. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
Understanding MySQL internals.
Pachev, who was on the original MySQL development team explains structures of its code that developers will find helpful in extending the open-source database software to serve specific purposes. Among those structures are client/server communication, thread-based request handing, concurrent access and locking, storage engines, and replication. Administrators and users will find little of use here. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
XQuery.
Walmsley presents the W3C XQueryy 1.0 standard, which was finalized in January 2007, along with the background knowledge namescape, schemes, built-in types, and regular expression relevant to writing XML queries. Readers are assumed to be query writers with some knowledge of XML basics but not necessarily advanced knowledge of related technologies. Cover-to-cover, it serves as a tutorial; hunt-and-peck, it becomes a reference. (Annotation ©2007 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
