svv@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Nobody in Particular) (01/29/88)
Netlanders: Here are the results of my mini-Dbase III survey of books. Rather than count votes, I just collected common postings and grouped them by each book. I hope this helps. Thanks for all the folks who contributed. ------------------------------------------------ #include <disclaimer.h> S.Vasudevan svv@cory.berkeley.edu ===================================================================== DBASE III BOOK SURVEY # - denotes separate postings from separate people COMMAND PERFORMANCE SERIES: DBASE III PLUS Douglas Hergert >I only bought one dBASE book, and it was Douglas Hergert's COMMAND PERFORMANCE >SERIES: DBASE III PLUS. It's thorough, and the dictionary format is >excellent for my needs. It isn't an introductory work, though; it's more >a reference book. But I love it. # >I would choose dbaseIII+ by Douglas Hergert, Microsoft Press UNDERSTANDING DBASE III/UNDERSTANDING DBASE III PLUS Alan Simpson >I teach a dBASE course on the graduate level, and most of my students like >Alan Simpson's introductory book for just starting. # >Understanding DBIII by Alan Simpson for a beginner >and Advance Techniques by Alan Simpson get my vote ADVANCED DBASE III+ Que,Corp. >I personally purchased a book named, "Advanced Dbase III+" by Que Corp. >On first sight this book seems as though it ought to worthwhile. It >has nicely formatted text etc etc. Upon getting into the guts of the book >the author tends to talk about systems that he has created, and how he has >done certain operations, however, the code for these non-trivial operations >are no where to be found. I am not saying that every operation need be >coded, but the whole point of an advanced book is to learn the advanced >topics. Most often the difficulty with Dbase III+ is not what to do, but >how to code it. This is because Ashton-Tate has made many of the power >commands extremely difficult to combine without hours of experimentation. >This is what I wanted the book for. This is not what I got. I got an >explanation of what I wanted to do, (which I already knew), along with no >example of how you are to put the thing together. > >Another sore point is that a noticeable amount of the code in the book does >not work as provided. One guess is that the author used Clipper (which he >states he uses) to put together the examples. Unfortuantely the author >mentions that there are some inconsistencies between the two and that for >the book he has stuck to db III+. Oh well. # DBASE III: THE COMPLETE REFERENCE Osborne/McGraw Hill >Out of all this there may be a single book I have seen worth considering. >It is "Dbase III The Complete Reference", by Osborne/McGraw-Hill. If >nothing else it is one of the biggest books around. # HELPFUL HINT: >Another thing to beware of is that many books are simply intro to >programming texts. They will cover dbIII basics and then switch into >simple programming. They never make it to the powerful commands of DBIII >that you really want to use. #