As previous reviewers noted, this book concentrates on the Enterprise Manager interface. Some of the instructions are *very* detailed, right down to the "Click OK" level, which makes me worry; nobody who has any business administering a database server should need to be told "Click Next to proceed with the Wizard."

This kind of detail wouldn't be so bad, except that other, more useful information, is left out. There's very little attention given to T-SQL, even when using a simple T-SQL statement is much more efficient than working through the Enterprise Manager GUI.

And there's an assumption that you're familiar with previous versions of SQL Server (especially 6.5) and with basic database concepts.

There are a few too many assumptions for the rank novice, and a bit too much emphasis on the GUI for seasoned pros. However, it's set up in about the same format as the exam, and the questions are worthwhile.

When I studied for the exam, I found this book useful as *one* aspect of my study strategy -- but, like other reviewers, I can't imagine passing the exam with this book alone.

This is a good book for people never touch SQL server before. This book will provide you a good lads. However, this book will not make you pass the exam 70-028. This book give you only 60% of necessary information. It didn't teach you T-SQL. Need extra material.

This book is good for learning the product, but not good enough to pass the exam. I have use other New Riders' MCSE book to pass MCSE exams. But you can't simply rely on this book only, in order to write exam 70-028. However I like all the Step-to-step guide.

This book is a selection of illustrations from the 'Trachtenbuch.' This is a good source of ideas for late medieval/early renaissance costumers. The illustrations are "sketchbook" quality. The author seems to have travelled extensively and sketched the people of the cities that he visited. Costumers may find it difficult to translate the sketches into actual articles of clothing.

This book, in it's large size format and the wonderful colour pictures is a must for any costumer or medievalist. The images inspire you to make the clothing then find a horse and go parading down cobbled streets. Aaah, we can but dream

This is a basic book for those interested in history of costume in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. These are drawings of the clothing of the time made by an artist of the time. A range of people from a wide variety of walks of life and professions, as well as from many regions and countries, are presented. Gives an idea of what ordinary people wore, those who couldn't afford to have their portraits painted.

This slim 204-page book is for experienced C++ or Java programmers who need a quick introduction to C#. C# is the professionals' preferred development language for the .NET platform. There have been many changes in the .NET platform (although fewer in the specifications for C#) since the book was first published in July 2000. For example NGWS, next generation windows services, VOS, virtual operating system, and VES, virtual execution system, are used throughout to refer to essential portions of the .NET environment; but these generic terms have been replaced in the latest (beta 2) Microsoft release of .NET and C#. Having read two other .NET books prior to this, I was initially confused by the vocabulary of this book - until I looked at the copyright date.

Nevertheless, this small (9" x 6") book written by a seasoned professional can be usefully and easily stuffed into the briefcase of the experienced programmer.

The publisher should do a second addition. On the shelves of my local mega bookstore, this still seemed like the best of the more compact introductions to C#.

This book was handed out to all of the attendees at Microsoft's PDC in July. It is a very nice introduction to C#, assuming you are familiar with C++. I would urge you to read Jeffrey Richter's forthcoming book on NGWS first (they handed out a preprint of the first three chapters). Richter does a great job of laying the foundation that C# builds upon. The two books should complement each other nicely. The language C# itself deserves 5 stars. If you have ever tried to use COM from C/C++, and suffered from "VB envy", you will think you have died and gone to heaven. The new environment is very clean and well thought out. OOPS is finally poised to deliver on all of those old promises about code reuse and programmer productivity. By the way, if you are coming from a Java environment, this book will be pretty frustrating. Java is never mentioned. I think a short chapter summarizing the differences between Java and C# is crying out to be added. That is why I marked the book down to 4 stars.

I thought the book was a nice heads up to what's coming with the C# language. It covered the major points completely and somewhat thoroughly. Given the early beta nature of the product, I'm sure it is very hard to write for a language that want be formally available for several month. The book is more of a travel guide (a good one) for the language. Anyone who will work in it will probably want a more detailed reference when it eventually comes out. But until then, get the beta copy and start with this book.

This book is mainly translated into English from German; therefore, the explanation isn't very clear. You spend much time to get the understanding of a subject. It isn't very much related with numerical analysis, instead modelling. Don't expect to find problems about using Numerical Formulas... Another disadvantage of this book is that it is divided into two parts, so, you must spend too much money to get the full content from two parts.

This book gives an excellent overview of numerical analysis from both the theoretical and practical points of view. The in-depth discussion given by the author makes this book a welcome addition to the literature on numerical analysis and scientific computation. Fortran 90 is the language of choice for the author in discussing programming implementations of the examples and concepts. There are no exercises in the book, so it would be difficult to use as a textbook or a course in numerical analysis, but it does serve as a useful reference and supplement to such a course.

In chapter 1, the author briefly overviews the strategies and techniques behind scientific modeling and gives many historical examples. A rather short discussion however is given on the testing and validation of models. More should have been said here about this very important phase of the modeling process.

The author introduces the principles behind numerical analysis in chapter 2. He uses the problem of the plane pendulum from elementary physics to motivate the issues involved, such as the accuracy of the mathematical model. The author then classifies numerical problems into four categories, and gives a rigorous discussion of the accuracy of numerical results. This is followed by a discussion of the types of error one would encounter when doing numerics, these being model errors, data errors, algorithm errors, and rounding errors. Data error analysis, which studies the impact on the solution by altering the data on which it is based, is given a fine treatment by the author in terms of functional analysis. He defines the important concepts of absolute and relative condition numbers, and then discusses ill-conditioned problems. The author emphasizes that characterizing a problem as being ill-conditioned depends on the desired level of accuracy. He then gives a fairly complete overview of the validation of numerical computations and numerical software. The author emphasizes the extreme difficulties involved in the accessing of software quality statistically.

Chapter 3 gives an overview of computer hardware and architecture used to perform numerical computations. The author discusses the use of parallelization, pipelining, vector processors, memory hierarchies, caching (the discussion of this is excellent), virtual memory, and interleaving. He also gives a useful discussion of how to quantify numerical software performance, and how to perform an analytical and empirical assessment of hardware performance.

The actual implementation of numerical algorithms is discussed in the next chapter, wherein the author discusses just how numerical data is represented in digital circuits, and how such data is operated on arithmetically. The implementation of floating-point arithmetic, via the IEC/IEEE floating-point standard is discussed. The author addresses well the accuracy issues that arise for problems (such as partial differential equations for example), involving an extremely large number of floating-point operations. In addition, he discusses the use and implementation of multiple-precision arithmetic, with examples given of the ISML, MP, FM, and MPFUN packages for doing this. I have found though that, in addition to some of these packages, high-level symbolic programming languages, such as Mathematica, can be very suitable for heavy-duty number crunching. The discussion of number systems and rounding in this chapter is excellent and well suited for the beginning student in numerical analysis.

Chapter 5 gives begins a discussion of numerical algorithms, and the author discusses the basic notions of algorithms and their complexity characterization via the O-notation. Case studies in matrix multiplication and summation are given to illustrate the contributions of rounding errors and error propagation. This is followed in chapter 6 by a discussion of numerical programs, wherein the author discusses the quality, efficiency, and computational overhead of programs. Performance optimization, via such techniques as loop optimization and blocked memory access, is given a fairly thorough treatment. Again, matrix multiplication is given as a case study for the concepts and techniques discussed by the author.

The software currently available for numerical algorithms is discussed in chapter 7. The IMSL and NAG packages are emphasized, but the author gives a very long list of the packages that are available, both commercially and as freeware.

In chapter 8, the author returns to a discussion of mathematical modeling, wherein approximation techniques are emphasized. After a brief discussion of analytic models, the author moves right into the techniques used to approximate these models, such as discrete and function approximation. More functional analytic techniques are brought in to discuss how to quantify the distance from a model function to the function actually being modeled.

The important technique of interpolation is discussed in chapter 9, and very thoroughly. Polynomial interpolation via Bernstein and Chebyshev polynomials is included, as well as the Horner, Clenshaw, Casteljau algorithms for finding the values of polynomials. Piecewise polynomial interpolation is also treated, as well as spline functions, the latter of which in particular is given a thorough treatment. Multivariate interpolation, along with tensor product interpolation is also discussed at the end of the chapter.

This extremely well written book about ABB comes at the right time. ABB is endlessly reinventing itself, taking bold moves such as the divesture from its joint-venture with Alstom in power systems. However, the book has a few defaults. The main one is the overemphasis on production and labor issues. Many of the writers have backgrounds in operations or industrial relations, and it shows. Most of the papers depict factory-level efforts to raise productivity, quality,etc. This is fine, but I think ABB's success has a lot more to do with its ability to offer total solutions to its customers, including financing and maintenance. This is of course what its chief competitor GE does, but ABB has the advantage of being a truly transnational company, i.e. without an American (or in its case, Swedish) bias.The service is truly global. This side of ABB is not fully developed in the book. The impression we get is that ABB is the Toyota of electrical engineering, while I suspect it's more than that. The service aspect should have been researched more.

While definitely inclined toward those of the Catholic faith, Schönborn's work provides an enlightening view of the Catholic Creed and its implications in light of myth, modern-day Christmas commerciality. It addresses the question which is pertinent in any epoch: "But how can we believe in this myth?"

Although I am not a Catholic, nor even a Christian, I found the book easy to read and enlightening. The author discusses various modern theories and questions which seem to be very pertinent to this generation.

I recommend this book for those who are interested in further understanding of not only the Incarnation, but also of the Catholic faith.

This book is not well organized compared with other MCSE TEST PREP books. There are lots of wrong answer in the questions which will wast your time for sure but it still provede some helpful information. Remember, all these book are reference only. If you think you can pass the test with only one book, you are either very good or you must be dreaming.

The book should in no way be your only source of test preparation material nor does it advertise itself to be such. The practice exams following each chapter were helpful for giving you an idea of the types of questions you may encounter on the exam, but I noticed it contained many errors. Some of the errors were very careless which makes me wonder if portions of the book were proof-read at all.

Overall, the book is helpful at highlighting the keywords and concepts, and types of test questions which you need to pass the exam despite the many errors.

Although there are some mistakes in the text, and a few obvious errors in the test questions, OVERALL this is a great book to use for your final pre-Test preparations. It WILL NOT stand on it's own (hence some of the bad reviews it has gotten). You must already have a good grasp of the material. This book will help you to reinforce that knowledge and pass the test. I spent 4 days with the book (after taking the 803 and 922 courses in an ATEC) and passed the test with an 855.

There a so many books out there to help you...my feeling is that this series is best used in conjunctin with a Reference-type Book: read thoroughly 1-2 times a Reference Book, then use this series to go over the subjects and answer all the questions...you'll be prepared.

Yes indeed there are some errors, as some of the questions may have been rejected by Microsoft because they were presumed too ambivalent or outright wrong...but that accounts for no more than 8% of questions.

Enrico Savorelli

I am an MCSE (NT 4.0 - SQL Server 6.5 track). I have 2.5 years of experience not only with NT but with most of the Back Office Suite. Until recently, I was also a Webmaster. I believe this gives me some authority to give some high marks to the book. Yes, some of the questions were miserably phrased, some of the answers had either no relationship to the question asked or were flat out wrong - but we are talking about 1% of the instances. I believe, if you know your subject - this book is a great tool for making sure that you know what you are supposed to know in order to either pass the technical interviews or be successful on the job. The catch is - you have to know the subject before you read the book, and you have to test EVERYTHING you are being taught, and that you are not familiar with.

Read some of the other reviews here and yes - this text has got quite a few errors in it.

That's inevitable in a book this size.

Most importantly, the subject matter is covered well and enough questions are given to make your memory work - or at least that's the way questions help me in my study efforts.

I bought the New Riders books before and there's nothing in them, (well very little), which isn't here.

Worse still when I first started my MCSE 'endeavour', I paid £1500+ for a course by a certain large education company which came nowhere near the usability and quality of this book.

If this sounds like I'm a fan - then YES I AM.

My only regret is spending money on other study aids - because they weren't necessary.

Congratulations QUE - you have a winner - but you need to spend a bit more time proof reading in the future. Keep it up.

Mark Hodgkinson - MCP - CNA

I am interasted in all aspects of algorithms and methods VLSI design automation

Christoph Cox's _Nietzsche: Naturalism and Interpretation_ is an example of the recent effort to reconcile Nietzsche, French post philosophies and analytic epistomological naturalism. There is obviously a good bit of similarity with Nietzsche's thought and contemporary trends in philosophy and Cox does an adequate job of pointing these out; however, there is also a vast and irreducible difference (to use a term Cox likes to invoke) that Cox, although he acknowledges, glosses over. Doubtless Cox is keen to cash in on the current (though certainly fading) popularity of the "radical chic" of postisms and various anti- driven philosophies. But no amount of overlooking on Cox's part can justify the equivocation of the Hegelian and logographic concept of _differance_, as the negative activity of differing and deferring, simultaneously spacializing and temporizing the negative, with Nietzsche's positive materialism. Nor is there any basis for discussing Nietzsche's political philosophy with the "radical democracies" and rejection of "social hegemony" found in the work of Laclau and others postmarxists attempting to hold on to some kind of Marxism. Nietzsche is simply not nearly as "Anti-Platonic" as he is often represented as being by those who, following Heidegger, see some kind of linear progression of Western philosophy that started with Plato and ended with Nietzsche. Having said that, there is an accurate description by Cox of Nietzsche's materialism vis a vis mechanistic materialism, and a fairly good explanation of why Nietzsche is not best seen, as some argue, as a strange kind of skeptical Neo-Kantian, but rather as a monistic and naturalistic materialist. I could not say, however, that I recommend this book, as there are much better and far more accurate treatments of Nietzsche to be found.