Book reviews
Review 1:
This handy, quick reference book contains concise solutions and instructions for developing with SharePoint and InfoPath. The book is well organized and is easy to follow and understand. There is no fluff in the book, just meaningful and useful content! I wanted to learn web service creation for SharePoint and this book served it's purpose. I learned not only creating web services but also learned excellent way of creating installers for the web services. This was very unique. I had been looking for help on the net but couldn't find anything meaningful. Step-by-step guidance and screenshots were very helpful in completing the coding exercise. Apart from web services, book has chapters on web parts, SharePoint's integration with MS Office, SharePoint search, developing electronic forms using InfoPath and SharePoint, etc. The initial chapters explain the installation and configuration processes. Book is full of tips and tricks. The last chapter is devoted to tips and tricks, and gives solutions to several common errors that occur in SharePoint. SharePoint is a big product. All features and functionality cannot be incorporated into one book. Therefore, it is important that you buy book that fulfills your needs. If you are an admin, you should look for another book. This book, although has sections teaching administration but is by no way an admin book. It has lots of coding samples and all code can be downloaded from the accompanying website. I needed help with web services so I bought this book and took full advantage of the content. I also liked the chapters focusing on InfoPath. There are different sections that teach you how to create solutions with InfoPath and publish them in SharePoint. There are code samples. There is a chapter that teaches creating electronic forms and publishing of electronic forms using stsadm command line tool as well as through GUI. There is also a chapter on InfoPath programming. If you are a developer with intermediate level skills and want to learn more about SharePoint and development with SharePoint, then this book is for you. Last but not least, the book is inexpensive. 348 pages of content for just under $25 is a very good deal. I am an avid reader of books and have a sizeable collection of SharePoint books. All books that I bought were $50+ (I bought them when they were newly released) and when I compare this book's price with those, I feel this book was inexpensive and rich in content with no fluff and just real content. I have one suggestion though for the publishers. It would have been better had they provided the source code on a CD or DVD. I don't mind downloading code from the accompanying website but still having a CD or DVD in hand is something that I would have loved. It's all about your comfort. If you change your machine, all you have to do is get code from the CD again instead of downloading code samples separatebly from the website. Just a suggestion! I highly recommend this book to beginners and developers with intermediate level skills. I hope you will find this review useful. I have tried to give my honest opinion.
Nick Scott
Review 2:
I rarely write reviews but I got to say this book was awesome. I usually don't find time to read books. Being a SharePoint consultant, I spend a busy life. There is no time for learning. I do buy books but they stay on my book shelf for indefinite time. I just check them out when I am in need of a quick solution. I guess that's the way I am and it suits my needs. This book provided exactly what I was looking for. You guessed it! Tips and easy to understand step by step walk throughs! I always struggle when it comes to deploying web services in SharePoint. I have done it several times before but I always get stuck, god knows why! Yesterday, when I was exhausted after searching net for solutions, I opened this book and found the solution I was looking for. I agree I did not read the whole book but I can tell you after looking at the chapters, the book is very well written and has lots of screenshots which makes following the steps very easy. I am always sure that I am doing it right. Screenshots help and all books (especially step by step series) should have screenshots with each step. I am not a professional reviewer or writer but wanted to recommend this book. It's easy to read and understand. Printing is very fine. Content is legible, clear with spaces in lines that makes reading very easy. I thing that I would like to mention is price. I could have bought the electronic copy but I love seeing paper books on my shelf. Ok. because i am recommending this book, let me share some more information about the book. It has chapters on web parts, web services, infopath, search, data view, groove, one note and of course lots of tips. I like the web services chapter because i benefitted from it. I also liked the web parts content. Lots of examples and code! I wish the code was provided in a CD or DVD along with the book but anyway downloading from the website was not an issue (at least for me) but I like the idea. All code and sample applications can be downloaded from the URLs given in each chapter. I would like to thank the author for writing such a useful book. It helped me it will definitely help others. All the best!
Rajesh Verma
Review 3:
An excellent book. I started learning SharePoint last year and enthusiastically bought SharePoint books from Amazon but unfortunately they were too advanced for me. This book cater to the needs of a person with intermediate skills. I wanted to learn developing web enabled forms and this book provided exactly what i was looking for, a very detailed step by step guide that walked me through the whole process. I created and deployed a web enabled form within one hour. Deployment is the tricky part. I always stumbled when deploying the form but now I have the tools and the information required to deploy the forms easily and correctly. The tips given in the book are very useful. I also found other topics very interesting. Authors have explained the web services in detail. Very easy to understand! One more topic that I liked and would recommend was the search customization. I always wondered how search could be customized and a chapter in this book covered and explained the details effectively. I highly recommend this book to beginners and people who have some history of using SharePoint but are looking to hone their skills. Last but not the least, book is inexpensive. SharePoint books usually cost $40-$50 but this one (new condition) costs only $26.40 which is a reasonable cost.
James Pischka