Rating: 
Summary: VERY USEFUL COMPANION
Review: As someone who has some programming experience, this book was very helpful to me.The project I am working on was already defined, and all I had to do was look in the books where an example was given or a syntax reference existed. Note that I used it in alongside Walkenbach's Excel 2002 Power Programming with VBA. Where certain areas aren't covered in this book (as it's only 500 pages), there will almost ceratinly be something in the other.
As an intermediate level part-time programmer (mostly self-taught) of Java, C, Javascript, HTML, CSS, XML, Assembly and others, this book certainly had what I was looking for.
It mainly offers concise language references and the descriptions are kept to the necessary, and this O'Reilly book is a vast improvement on some that I have bought for other languages in the past.
It does however assume some prior knowledge of programming techniques, and is therefore not for the beginner.
I would recommend THIS book only to those who have either a very keen interest in programming or those who have had some formal programming teaching. Definatly worth the money though.
Rating: 
Summary: An unpleasant read, but with good information...
Review: First off, let me point out that I like O'Reilly books, typically. They strike a good mix between readability and content. However, this book is severely lacking in the readability department. Perhaps it's naive of me to expect to be getting my feet wet in writing macros from the earliest chapters on, or to expect clarity from the author. Instead, the book's ongoing project doesn't start up until the tenth chapter (of 22), and from that point on, the clarity is lacking. Steven Roman seems to have adopted the writing approach of "throw lots of information at them, then try to make it clear with a few examples." While clarity may come (with some effort on the reader's part), a good author would never let the reader lose coherence like that.
On the other hand, the book is full of useful information (after you've sifted through the muddy explanations, anyhow). Perhaps you should buy this book if you absolutely can't find another book that looks more promising.
Rating:
Summary: An unpleasant read, but with good information...
Review: First off, let me point out that I like O'Reilly books, typically. They strike a good mix between readability and content. However, this book is severely lacking in the readability department. Perhaps it's naive of me to expect to be getting my feet wet in writing macros from the earliest chapters on, or to expect clarity from the author. Instead, the book's ongoing project doesn't start up until the tenth chapter (of 22), and from that point on, the clarity is lacking. Steven Roman seems to have adopted the writing approach of "throw lots of information at them, then try to make it clear with a few examples." While clarity may come (with some effort on the reader's part), a good author would never let the reader lose coherence like that.
On the other hand, the book is full of useful information (after you've sifted through the muddy explanations, anyhow). Perhaps you should buy this book if you absolutely can't find another book that looks more promising.
Rating: 
Summary: Only mathematician can write this book
Review: I don't know why this book is labeled as "2nd Edition". The cover is the 3rd "face" I have seen. I did learn good stuff from the previous editions, but never recommend it to anybody for its' dry. The new edition has a big change. It is succinct, reader-freindly, but also contains many useful information you won't find in other books. For instance, there is no any other book goes so depth into Pivot Table properties and methods. Comparing with the Excel 2002 VBA books written by John Walkenbach or Stephen Bullen and John Green, this book definitely presents more real 2002 features. If you want to learn more about Excel 2002 objects, get this book.
Rating:
Summary: Only mathematician can write this book
Review: I don't know why this book is labeled as "2nd Edition". It's the 3rd "face" I have seen. I did learn good stuff from the previous editions, but never recommend it to anybody for its' dry. This edition has a big change. It is succinct, reader-freindly, but still contains many useful information you won't find in other books. For instance, there is no any other book goes so depth into Pivot Table properties and methods. Comparing with the Excel 2002 VBA books written by John Walkenbach or Stephen Bullen and John Green, this book definitely presents more real 2002 features and undocumented Excel VBA issues. If you want to learn more about Excel object model, you should read this book.
Rating:
Summary: reference... sort of
Review: I have to say I'm very disappointed with the book. I usually expect great things from Oreilly books and this one fell short. It's an ok reference, but it's not big enough to be a complete reference. It tries to cover a lot of ground and ends up not doing each topic justice. There just isn't enough info on each topic. It seems like it'd be great if you're already an expect macro writer and just need a reminder about what certain functions do. If that's not you, then this book is probably not for you.
Rating:
Summary: VERY USEFUL COMPANION
Review: I was extremely disappointed in this book. The author does try to touch on a number of key elements of Excel programming. However, I was better served by the online help in Microsoft Excel. The author tries too hard to cover everything and the result is a book that is far too shallow in its coverage. For example, there are far too many concepts introduced without any concrete examples. After reading this book I wondered if the author actually knows the material or simply copied the online help. Also, a lot of the code examples he does include are not complete and contain errors. This is not a book for software programmers. Given the fact the author's background is in mathematics, this should tell you to look elsewhere if you are wanting to learn the Excel object model and how to program it.
Rating:
Summary: Not a good primary reference
Review: I was looking for a primary reference for the Excel object model. I have years of programming experience, some VB, and was looking for something to get me started programming Excel VBA. This book is not suitable as a primary reference. Much better are either Power Programming (Walkenbach) or Excel VBA (Bovey) which contain many useful tips and gotchas that helped me out of a few baffling situations. Roman's book seemed to focus on the few examples he developed, rather than be a resource for problems a beginning/intermediate Excel programmer was likely to encounter.
Rating:
Summary: Very good reference information...
Review: OK... I can hear it now... What are we doing reviewing Microsoft application books in a Notes/Domino context? Trust me, it actually makes sense here. Read on... This book is a refreshing change from the 1000+ page manuals you often see when you are looking for a technical reference book. The author's philosophy is such that he doesn't resort to handholding, nor does he try to explain every last nuance of an application. Instead, he gives a concise explanation of the material, and builds upon the information as you go. When you are done with the material, you should have the basic knowledge you need to be productive immediately, as well as the tools you need to delve further into VBA and Excel programming. The first part of the book shows you the editing environment used to program Excel. Once you have that down, he explains the basics of VBA. VBA, or Visual Basic For Applications, is a subset of the Visual Basic language, and is well suited for scripting activities within an application object model. Once you understand all that, you start putting that newly acquired information to work by creating Excel applications that allow you to automate functions within Excel. OK, now back to the Notes/Domino world. Why do you need to know anything about Excel and how to program it? It depends if you want to really want to extend the power of Notes. With LotusScript, you can create an Excel object in code using COM technology. Once you have the Excel object declared, you could use LotusScript to start manipulating the properties and methods of all the Excel objects. So for instance, you could build an agent that would read all the documents in a view and create a simple Excel spreadsheet without having the user work through the cumbersome view export menu option. Or to be more impressive, you could use the Excel object model within LotusScript to create monthly reports with all the formatting you would normally do manually within Excel. This keeps the user from having to manually transfer data from one application to another. So why this book? To effectively program LotusScript and Excel, you MUST understand the object model of the application. If you don't understand the object hierarchy of Excel, it makes it nearly impossible to do anything more than the simplest of tasks. The author does a great job of explaining the different objects in Part 3 of the book. While not all of the objects are applicable to your Notes/Domino programming, most of the material will give you the information you need to understand where to start and to figure out what is possible. Conclusion
I recommend this book to any Notes/Domino developer who wants to create applications that interface with Excel. Other books concentrate too much on how to work with Excel as an application. This book gives you the tools you need to work with Excel as a programmable tool.
Rating:
Summary: Very good reference information...
Review: OK... I can hear it now... What are we doing reviewing Microsoft application books in a Notes/Domino context? Trust me, it actually makes sense here. Read on... This book is a refreshing change from the 1000+ page manuals you often see when you are looking for a technical reference book. The author's philosophy is such that he doesn't resort to handholding, nor does he try to explain every last nuance of an application. Instead, he gives a concise explanation of the material, and builds upon the information as you go. When you are done with the material, you should have the basic knowledge you need to be productive immediately, as well as the tools you need to delve further into VBA and Excel programming. The first part of the book shows you the editing environment used to program Excel. Once you have that down, he explains the basics of VBA. VBA, or Visual Basic For Applications, is a subset of the Visual Basic language, and is well suited for scripting activities within an application object model. Once you understand all that, you start putting that newly acquired information to work by creating Excel applications that allow you to automate functions within Excel. OK, now back to the Notes/Domino world. Why do you need to know anything about Excel and how to program it? It depends if you want to really want to extend the power of Notes. With LotusScript, you can create an Excel object in code using COM technology. Once you have the Excel object declared, you could use LotusScript to start manipulating the properties and methods of all the Excel objects. So for instance, you could build an agent that would read all the documents in a view and create a simple Excel spreadsheet without having the user work through the cumbersome view export menu option. Or to be more impressive, you could use the Excel object model within LotusScript to create monthly reports with all the formatting you would normally do manually within Excel. This keeps the user from having to manually transfer data from one application to another. So why this book? To effectively program LotusScript and Excel, you MUST understand the object model of the application. If you don't understand the object hierarchy of Excel, it makes it nearly impossible to do anything more than the simplest of tasks. The author does a great job of explaining the different objects in Part 3 of the book. While not all of the objects are applicable to your Notes/Domino programming, most of the material will give you the information you need to understand where to start and to figure out what is possible. Conclusion
I recommend this book to any Notes/Domino developer who wants to create applications that interface with Excel. Other books concentrate too much on how to work with Excel as an application. This book gives you the tools you need to work with Excel as a programmable tool.
| 
