Book Review
I must say right up front that I think this is a great book. A
couple of months ago I upgraded to Borland C++ 5. At about the same time, I
decided to undertake a project which required a medium sized database. I had
just started looking at the facilities provided by Borland C++ 5 and the
Borland Database Engine (BDE) when this book appeared on the review list. I
selected it for review in the hope that it could help me get started. I'm
glad I did.
This is quite a massive book which covers a lot of diverse material. The
twenty-three chapters are subdivided into seven subsections
- Introducing the BDE
- Database Design
- Programming with IDAPI
- Programming with ODBC
- Programming with Visual Database Tools
- Additional Database Tools
- Finishing the Job
The book is well structured and well written. The editors and authors have
done a good job of seamlessly integrating the contributions of five co-
authors. The book covers a lot of difficult, technical material and it is to
the authors' credit that it is able to maintain my attention as well as it
has. The section on Database Design is one of the best introductions to
database design that I have read in any book. It could almost be published as
a small book in its own right. I have been once through the book quickly and
am now ploughing through it again in more detail. There is a huge amount of
detail in this book, though you probably don't need it all. It covers all the
variants on database access, including BDE, ODBC, Visual Database Tools and
IDAPI. You can gloss over the ones you aren't using. The book also goes into
considerable depth on related topics, such as documentation, testing and
distribution. If you are looking to create database programs with Borland C++
5, I can strongly recommend this book as a top tool to help you on your
way.
Other
Authors with the same surname
Cohn
Java Developer's Reference by Mike Cohn [Recommended] (Reviewed Mar 1997)
Last Update - 13 May 2001.
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