A few more good reads
I was hanging out with my homie Chris last week when we decided to hit the Barnes and Noble across the street from my place. I was pleasantly surprised to see Juval Lowy's Programming WCF Services was in stock. I've been waiting for it for a while (and Justin and Scott have two more soon to be released WCF books both of which promise to be great).
If you've been following my posts lately, you know I've been pretty impressed with the recent crop of Windows Communication Foundation books that have been coming down the pipeline. I guess with some technologies one's game has to be pretty decent to even get admission. Although WCF in and of itself isn't 'hard', I think it qualifies here. Doing trivial tasks with WCF is cake. Doing many middle level tasks are cake. Understanding it and being able to architect it is another story.
So with the two previous titles, I said that I loved both of them but for different reasons. Well, I love Juval's book too, and again, for different reasons.
Which one do I think is best? Well, if you'll excuse the cliche, that's like saying Jenna Jameson is 'better' than Janine Lindemulder or Tara Patrick, or that a Porsche is better than a Ferrari or Lambroghini. Too tough of a call to make. Fortunately, there's an easy solutions. Buy all three. You'll be glad you did if you care about learning WCF.
They all have different strengths and emphasize different things. I don't think any of them are deficient in any way, but they each have a few areas that well over the 100% mark. Juval's strong points are :
- His ability to spell out big picture issues and then relate them to specific tasks. For instance, much in the style of Rocky's discussion of business objects via CSLA, Juval builds upon a useful framework that gets more involved as the book progresses.
- Data Contracts were discussed as well as anything could be discussed. All three books are pretty strong on Data Contracts, however I've largely focused on other things until now. I finally had some time to get deep into data contracts and happened upon Juval's book. Excellent. He aslo did a great job on Transactions and Security. Every time I think I've 'gotten' it with security, I read something else and realize how little I know.
- In the end, Juval wraps it up with a series of suggestions that are just plain good. At first I had trouble with a few of them. Juval found out about it and graciously sent me an email explaining them. I realized I was the bubblehead that hadn't paid enough attention.
All I can say is that Juval's book is top notch and it's clearly the work of a guy really committed to excellence in his profession. I say the same about the previous two WCF books and can promise you that you can't go wrong with any of them, and you're guaranteed to go right with all three.
Office Sharepoint 2007
As a staunch Bill E fan, all I can say is Bill knocked it out of the park again. My MOSS 2007 game was off to a good start, but I got distracted on too many other things. I'm trying to make a second pass at it now and am darned glad i got this. I'm taking the 70-630 next week, so the proof will be in the pudding but I'm quite sure I'll do well on it.
Can't go wrong with a Bill English book either.