Books That Will Change

Your Professional Life

The Data Warehouse ETL Toolkit : Practical Techniques for Extracting, Cleaning, Conforming, and Delivering Data

by Ralph Kimball and Joe Caserta

Written by the father of modern data warehouse systems, the book presents the best practices for developing procedures for Extraction, Transformation and Loading (ETL) of  data warehouses using a number of industry examples.

The Data Warehouse Lifecycle Toolkit : Expert Methods for Designing, Developing, and Deploying Data Warehouses 

by Ralph Kimball

Required reading material for anybody designing and maintaining data warehouses, OLAP or decision support systems.

Written by the father of modern data warehouse systems, the book covers topics such as planning, information gathering, dimensional modeling, and architecture.

Data Warehousing Toolkit 

by Ralph Kimball

The original Kimball's book dedicated to presenting dimensional modeling. The author defines and clearly explains on real world example concepts such as dimensions, facts, measures, star-schema, and slowly changing dimensions.

Practical SQL Handbook

by Judith S. Bowman, 
Sandra L. Emerson and Marcy Darnovsky

This is the fourth edition of an excellent book for learning Structured Query Language and the fundamentals of database design. It is not tied to any proprietary database implementation. Readers should be able to use examples found here in any ANSI SQL-92 compliant RDBMS. The CD contains a copy of Sybase SQL Anywhere.

SQL Server 2000: 
A Beginner's Guide

by Dusan Petkovic

Very good material for learning the architecture of SQL Server and the fundamentals of development in Transact-SQL. It is written for SQL Server 2000, but it is applicable to other versions as well. Contains exercises (with solutions) you can use to improve and test your skills.

Data Modeling Handbook

by Michael Reingruber

The book to read if you want to learn to design high-quality, enterprise-level database models.

Topics in this book range from standards such as normalization forms and supertypes to practical design rules for entity and attribute design and evaluation.

Inside SQL Server 2000

by Kalen Delaney

This is the book for SQL Server professionals. It covers the internal workings of SQL Server, its core architecture, optimization techniques, etc. 

It is not recommended for junior, intermediate, or casual developers and DBAs. It does not cover topics such as administration, XML, and client access (and it shouldn't).

ADO Examples and Best Practices

by William R. Vaughn

Bill Vaughn is the famous author of the Hitchhiker's Guide to Visual Basic and SQL Server and a former product manager of the Enterprise Edition of Visual Basic. His latest book focuses exclusively on ADO. You will improve your ability to optimize database access by at least an order of magnitude.

Code Complete

by Steve McConnell

The classic software construction book that does not  focus on the details of a specific language, but presents advice on how to write maintainable, elegant, self-documenting code. It contains many code examples showcasing good and bad practices in different languages, methods for size and time estimation, basic rules for procedure, module, or object design, checklists that you can use to evaluate your own work, and much more. The meticulous application of the methods described in this book is what differentiates the software engineer from the Gonzo programmer.

Bug Proofing Visual Basic

By Rod Stephens

This book presents proper coding practices for Visual Basic. It is a mix of 'Code Complete' and 'Mastering Visual Basic' written for senior (or future senior) developers. You can use it in your projects as a manual of style and standards to help your team write unified, maintainable solutions.

Non Designers Design Book

By Robin Williams

This is not exactly a book about development, but developers will gain much in reading it. Graphic design is a very important (although somewhat neglected) element of application, Web site, and document development. 

You have probably been in the situation where you felt that something was wrong with a design on your screen, but you felt helpless to analyze and correct it. This book will help you to verbalize what is wrong with the design, which is the first step toward good design. The material is a valuable design course that presents four important principles of design: proximity, alignment, repetition, and contrast in fun and creative ways.  

Developing Windows User Interfaces for Microsoft Windows

by Everett N. McKay

The common-sense guide to user-interface design for applications.

I would like to think that user acceptance of an application is driven by the use of proven development and management techniques (such as well designed architecture, pragmatic coding, properly managed testing, etc.), but the truth is that users will miss all of your efforts in these areas if the user interface does not meet their needs.