Berkeley DB

Rating:
Summary: An important omission in the book and reviews too
Review: I think it is important to know that the book documents version 3.

Rating:
Summary: Dazed and confused
Review: I'm dazed and confused, because here was an review from some user, which reviews this book as an ordinary paperback issue
of BDB online documentation which can anybody download and no
need to pay for it.
This review was DELETED by you and YOU should explain this, because those user's review was really right.

Thanks, Amazonas.

Rating:
Summary: Good Book/Great Reference Manual
Review: My first encounter with Berkeley DB was with Perl and a CGI web counter. I had to use it because I didn't want to use a flat text file, nor did I have the tools to use PostGres or MySQL available.

The book's format is very much like a bound set of well-written man pages and tutorials. I don't think - though the editors would know better - that there's much in the book you won't find online or in a Berkeley DB Distribution.

Hence, if you are comfortble reading man pages and source only and/or using a web browser and the Internet to read technical documentation you can:

a) preview the book b) avoid buying the book completely

Nonetheless, the book is worth it because there are times when written, paper documentation does excel over online documentation for format alone [try having 6 xterms open, three virtual consoles and remembering which one had the online man pages open].

The only detracting thing is that someone made a mistake when numbering the contents in the first print and I have one of the first prints. Hence I know what's in the book but not exactly where; not a major problem as I tend to get used to the book layout in the end.

Conclusion:

It's a good book; it's both a reference and a reasonable tutorial for those who need one. It won't teach you how to program, but it will help you understand the Berkeley DB style of thinking.

I'd suggest buying it...

Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive Reference Lacking Deeper Perspective
Review: This book will give you a printed version of the manual pages that come with the db distribution, the whole manual pages, and nothing but the manual pages. This in itself is a useful service if you (like me) prefer printed documentation over online documentation.

However, I was disappointed by the fact that the book does not go beyond the manual pages by providing more complete programming examples. Also, I would have appreciated seeing some of the excellent academic papers that exist about the algorithmic underpinnings included in the book.

As a final complaint, the book employs an increasingly popular binding style of using some sort of unsealed paper for binding. While I'm all for ecological packaging, I found that this style of binding (especially with a predominantly white cover) tends to take fingerprints and other smudges very easily, and makes it hard to remove them. As a result, the book starts looking ugly quite soon.