Book

Book review (and recommendation): Learn T-SQL Querying

Book review (and recommendation): Learn T-SQL Querying

The Fundamentals

In the first section of the book, the authors give us an overview about the anatomy of a query (going very deep) and how SQL Server (also on Azure) processes queries. They also explain how SQL Server optimizes queries and how different versions of SQL Server are processing them differently, which can result in different performances for complex queries.

Dos and Don’ts

The second section of the book is guiding us through how Query Execution plans work and how they can help to write more efficient SQL queries. The section has a bunch of tips that developers can use in their everyday life with databases. The perhaps most important part in this section are the two chapters about T-SQL antipatterns. This is the section where I learned the most throughout the book.

Troubleshooting and tools

The last section of the book shows a lot of troubleshooting techniques and how to use them properly. Microsoft’s SQL Server Management Tools itself comes with a bunch of such tools, and the book helps not only to find them, but also to use them correctly. On top, there are also references to some Open Source tools that can be helpful at times. The book closes with the Query Tuning Assistant, which is the recommended tool to perform SQL server updates.

Conclusion

I got the book because my current job requires me to write efficient T-SQL code for the interfaces I am developing. The book already helped me during the reading time to better understand what I am doing and how I can optimize my own queries. It will be one of my reference books in future when it comes to troubleshooting and query performance with SQL. Long story short, if you are working regularly with Microsoft SQL Server (also on Azure), you should have this book in your (digital) bookshelf.

Book metadata

Posted by msicc in Book Review, Dev Stories, Editorials, 0 comments

Book review: iOS Development with Xamarin Cookbook (Dimitris Tavlikos)

I love to learn and expand my knowledge. Because of this, I was absolutely happy when I was asked for a book review about Dimitris’ iOS book.

The book is a huge collection of iOS recipes using Xamarin. The first three chapters are going deeply into the UI of an iOS application, looking on a lot (almost all) possible aspects of UI elements. What I like very much is that the author shows the code, usually with a step by step guide, and after that delivers a detailed explanation why something works in the way it does.

The next two chapters are all about creating and displaying data, files and sqlite, providing the same experience as the first chapters.

The sixth chapter is all about consuming services, such as web services, REST services or even WCF services (I wasn’t even aware of this being possible). Very good starting point for so many app ideas.

So far, the book shows already a lot of what we can do with Xamarin. But modern apps often contain media content: videos, photos, capturing media – this is what chapter 7 is all about.

Like all modern Smartphone operating systems, iOS provides some methods to let our apps interact with the OS. The 8th chapter is all about those interactions, like contacts, mail and more and has the matching real world scenarios.

The most usable apps use a device’s sensors, touch and gestures. Of course, with Apple being the leader in this space for a long time (we just need to be fair in this point), iOS has a lot of APIs for these. Chapter nine has some good recipes to help us with improving our app’s UX.

If your app needs location services and maps, chapter 10 is your friend. It shows you how to interact with Apple’s map services, add annotations and a lot more.

Users love when apps have some nice animations when something changes in an app. iOS provides a lot of options, and chapter 11 explains a lot about animations and drawing methods.

One of the most important parts when developing an app is lifecycle handling. As with any other OS, also iOS has its specific methods to handle the lifecycle. Background operations are part of this handling. In chapter 12, Dimitri tells us a lot about handling the states of an app as well as background operations.

Chapter 13 consists of tips and recipes for localization of an iOS app.

One of the most important steps when creating an iOS app is deploying the app. Apps should of course be tested on real devices, and this what chapter 14 is about – but not only. Also the required steps to prepare and app for submission as well as the submission to the store are explained.

The final chapter contains some additional recipes that can make your app more valuable like content sharing or text-to-speech.

Conclusion

I only began with Xamarin.iOS a few month ago. This book provides a great insight into development for iOS using the Xamarin IDE. As I said already, I like the approach of showing code first and then explaining what it does exactly and provide additional info if suitable. This book is absolutely worth every single cent if you want to start with iOS and Xamarin.

If you’re interested in the book, you’re just a click away: http://bit.ly/1tnxmGX

Note: This post was completely written on my phone. If you find typos, you can keep them ;-).

Posted by msicc in Dev Stories, iOS, Xamarin, 0 comments

Book review: Learning Windows Azure Mobile Services for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 (Geoff Webber-Cross)

During the last months, I used the few times of my spare time when I wasn’t in the mood for programming to read Geoff’s latest book for diving deeper into Azure Mobile Services. Geoff is well known in the community for his Azure experience, and I absolutely recommend to follow him! I am really glad he asked me to review his book and need to apologize that it took so long to get this review up.

The book itself is very well structured with a true working XAML based game that utilizes both Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 and connects them to one single Mobile Service.

Even if you are completely new to Azure, you will quickly get things done as the whole book is full of step-by-step instructions. Let’s have a quick look on what you will learn while reading this book:

  1. Prepare your Azure account and set up your first Mobile Service
  2. Bring your Mobile Service to life and connect Visual Studio
  3. Securing user’s data
  4. Create your own API endpoints
  5. use Git via the console for remote development
  6. manage Push Notifications for both Windows and Windows Phone apps
  7. use the advantages of the Notification hub
  8. Best practices for app development – some very useful general guilty tips!

I already use a Mobile Service with my Windows Phone App TweeCoMinder. I have already started a Windows 8 version of that app, which basically only needs to be connected to my existing Azure Mobile Service to finish it.

Screenshot (359)

While reading Geoff’s book, I learned how I effectively can achieve this and also improve my code for handling the push notifications on both systems. The book is an absolutely worthy investment if you look into Azure and Mobile Services and has a lot of sample code that can be reused in your own application.

As this is my first book review ever, feel free to leave your feedback in the comments.

You can buy the book right here.

Happy coding, everyone!

Posted by msicc in Archive, 0 comments