I think every doctor and clinician should have this book as a reference. It is also useful for family members and patients. It is the best one that I have found that gives clear information regarding the benefits of clozapine, risperdole, and olanzapine as well as guidelines for changing from the older medications that have more risk of tardive dyskinesia. If you only buy one book on up-to-date treatment of schizophrenia, this is the one! There are chapters with advice for patients as well. I gave a copy to a friend who needed this information, so am ordering another!

Breakthroughs In Antipsychotic Medications provides an important, in-depth survey of the antipsychotic medications which have succeeded in helping many, surveying the pros and cons of their side-effects and applications and including insights on the symptoms and treatments of various mental conditions.

Resource life cycle analysis is an interesting technique that has changed my view of both project management and strategic planning. The essence of this approach is the integration of resources, value chains, and precedence as key factors in information systems planning. Although this book is described as an IS modeling technique, the basic concepts can be used outside of IS, making the approach more universal than I believe the authors intended.

The key elements of the approach are (1) Resources - the view taken by the authors is businesses are a collection of resources. This differs from most approaches that view businesses as a inter-related processes and functions. Because the unit of composition for businesses is a resource (or asset), each are viewed within the context of a life cycle. This is a natural way of looking at assets, and this view fosters systematic management of business resources. Resources can be human, software, time, money, etc. (2) Value chains - this is the element that does address business processes and functions because it treats them as value chains. This is not an uncommon way of viewing processes and functions, but combining this view with the resource view is. (3) Precedence - this element adds sequence to the functions in *support* of resources.

From the foregoing there is a clear connection between resource life cycle analysis and project management, especially with respect to resource and precedence elements. From a strategic planning point of view, there is also a direct connection between value chains and processes, both of which are determining factors for systems to be implemented in support of business processes. These connections highlight the value of resource life cycle analysis as a methodology, and underscore its value as a tool that can be "bolted on" to your existing project management and/or planning methodologies.

I have been deeply influenced by this approach and have incorporated it into the way I approach requirements analysis and project planning. If you are a consultant, IT professional or operational manager of a business unit this book will provide you with some deep skills and a new way of approaching analysis.

If you are a lay-person with no prior experience and you like the KISS(keep it simple) method, I know you will greatly appreciate the way this book is written. It makes information available in an easy to read manner. I consider myself a bit of a dummy and I don't want to become an expert. I just want to record, in a reasonably good way, my 78 yr.old mom's history before it is too late. The book is a KEEPER.

This is the book to read for anesthesia resident to complete their training

We have got the textbook and we thought that the book our main anesthesiology resource.

Recently we have a case of cerebrospinal fluid-cutaneous fistula following spinal anesthesia used for indirect inguinal hernia repair. But we couldn't see any comment in the textbook about the management of cerebrospinal fluid fistula from inthratecal space to skin due to postdural puncture for purpose of spinal (intrathecal) anesthesia.

Cutaneous cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) fistula are known to occur rarely under spinal puncture during spinal anesthesia, and CSF leaks via that fistula. This complication is often self-limiting but sometimes needed some treatment procedures such as intravenous fluid restruction, patient prone position, strecth dressing of wound, epidural injection of autologous blood patche or fibrin glue, or uncommonly use of CSF drainage system.

We think that if this complication and its' management is included in new edition of the textbook it will be better.

With our regards,

Hakan Erbay, M.D. Assisstant Professor of Anesthesiology Pamukkale University, Medical Faculty Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care, Denizli, Turkey

Erkan Tomatir, M.D. Associated Professor of Anesthesiology Pamukkale University, Medical Faculty Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care, Denizli, Turkey

We have got the textbook and we thought that the book our main anesthesiology resource. Recently we have a case of cerebrospinal fluid-cutaneous fistula following spinal anesthesia used for indirect inguinal hernia repair. But we couldn't see any comment in the textbook about the management of cerebrospinal fluid fistula from inthratecal space to skin due to postdural puncture for purpose of spinal (intrathecal) anesthesia. Cutaneous cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) fistula are known to occur rarely under spinal puncture during spinal anesthesia, and CSF leaks via that fistula. This complication is often self-limiting but sometimes needed some treatment procedures such as intravenous fluid restruction, patient prone position, strecth dressing of wound, epidural injection of autologous blood patche or fibrin glue, or uncommonly use of CSF drainage system. We think that if this complication and its' management is included in new edition of the textbook it will be better.

With our regards,

Hakan Erbay, M.D. Assisstant Professor of Anesthesiology Pamukkale University, Medical Faculty Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care, Denizli, Turkey

Erkan Tomatir, M.D. Associated Professor of Anesthesiology Pamukkale University, Medical Faculty Department of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care, Denizli, Turkey

This is not a book one simply reads. It does for business rules what Ted Codd's 'Relational Model Version 2' did for data management: details an incredibly complete and robust foundation for an entirely new discipline, but possibly little else. Ross does a fair job of suggesting why the new discipline is important, but doesn't prepare the reader for (what I found to be) an entirely new and foreign language. With over 10 years of data modeling experience, I am still unable to decipher his definitions of data type and entity. And in spite of a half-dozen commonly used notations for ERDs, I think Ross manages to introduce yet another one.

By page 16 I felt completely overwhelmed, with no sense of what problem was being solved with, for example, the Table of Atomic Rule Types (even though it's clearly pretty cool), and no sense of how rules would be used after they were so carefully captured, identified, classified, and normalized. My mental picture was the specter of pouring 1000s of labor hours into building a taxonomically-correct butterfly collection, and proclaiming, "Here are the rules of your business. I know all their names and I've organized them properly." With a data admin background, I have less of a problem doing the very same thing with data...but I know conceptually how my work can be implemented and utility achieved. Not so with this material.

My biggest disappointment: the book doesn't provide a conceptual architectural implementation. Without some foundation portrayed in architectural components (e.g., a rulebase and its possible structure, a rulebase management system, rule interpreter or rule object broker, etc.) there's little motivation to move forward.

Again, like Codd's RM Version 2, Ross's work seems to be very 'important' and very intellectually appealing. But, it too leaves me with the feeling of, "So what"? On the other hand, Ross's own presentations and those of other business rule proponents leave me with no doubt about the soundness and potential of the overall approach--it could be a huge IT breakthrough. Unfortunately, this book did nothing at all to help me understand how that breakthrough might be possible, or how the effort to capture rules could be practically applied to solve business problems.

As designs for middleware software layers increase with the arrival of Web Services, a crucial question arises about how to enforce server side business rules while executing well-formed transactions. In "What, Not How," C.J. Date gives examples of how to support transactions declaratively.

Unfortunately, most commercial off the shelf software does not allow for such possibilities, which necessitates the need for procedural enforcement of business rules through the use of properly designed triggers and stored procedures. The tome from Donald Ross gives a formal methodology for the enforcement of such business rules in the design of a software application.

It lists eight categories of business rules which can be created in an Object/Relational environment. These can be used to provide an integrated approach to transactions for the application to be developed. He provides a formal graphic set of design tools which can be used to address these procedurally on data.

The author provides hundreds of examples of business rules in the designated categories. It should prove a valuable reference for integrated application design for all concerned architects, developers, and subject matter experts.

CASE tools with code generators have attacked the problem of requirements specification in a piecemeal manner. This has led to significant (and unpredictable) gaps in the ability to generate useable code from the specifications.

Ronald Ross presents what could best be described as a unified field theory to explain how to define business rules. His generic way to define precise and unambiguous rules (and in a graphical manner!) lays the cornerstone for truly significant CASE tool breakthroughs in capability.

Like Das Kapital by Karl Marx, this is a long book, it's full of powerful insights that can change the face of analysis as we know it; and it can best be described as tediously brilliant. If you are looking for an analytical razor to hone your specification skills, this is well worth slogging through!

Parts of this book seem to me superficial. It explains only very basic concepts about business rules and it does not go into detail how you can manage and implement these rules in a company. The book has only 99 pages whereby 30% of the book are cartoons and pictures. Therefore, I think that the book is totally overpriced and doesn't deliver enough knowledge how to apply business rules in a real-world situation.

Ross presents the underlying concepts of using business rules as a fundamental component of system development (or just running the business!) This is an easy book to read. It presents the concepts so clearly that even Dilbert's boss could understand it and act correctly.

His courses are also well worth attending.

All that is missing is how to build and implement an architecture that supports this vision (though the basic rules-based features that it must support are discussed).