chittur@cb.ecn.purdue.edu (Venkatesh K Chittur) (03/16/89)
I'd posted a request for information on books about
dbase III plus. Several people requested a summary, so
here it is.
Thanks to all who responded. I have
removed the names, as I didn't ask for permission first.
<1>
I found a good "advanced" Dbase III book, but it's not really a reference
book as such -- it doesn't concentrate heavily on all the specifics of every
command. It contains alot of useful suggestions that have saved me alot of
time (the suggestions are the type of thing that I eventually would have
figured out, but I would have done it the hard way). The book goes through
the development of a database system for an imaginary company. The system
is very complete and is not over-simplified as are many of the examples in
other books. The book deals with all the problems associated with setting
up a complete turnkey database system from scratch, and does NOT bend the
database system requirements to try and avoid the more difficult problems.
The book is written by M. Liskin, and published by McGraw-Hill. The title
of the book is something like "Advanced dBase III+ Programming &
Techniques."
I don't know of any good non-advanced dBase III+ books. Most of the ones
that I've seen are way too simple and don't really cover much useful ground,
so I just use the users' manual instead.
<2>
This is the book I learned dbase II plus from and it
took me about a day to get really familiar and have
a good start on my project using it. I think it's
pretty good.
Title: dBase III Plus Handbook
Author: George Tsu-der Chou
Publisher: Que Corporation
<3>
I don't have a lot of comparative data on different books, but
I found Alan Simpson's book _Advanced Techniques in dBASE III Plus_ to
be a pretty good introductory (!) book on dBASE programming and have
been using his dBASE III Plus Programmer's Reference Guide
as a reference and have been fairly well satisfied with it.
<4>
Introductory:
Barnes, L. (1987). Dbase demystified. Microtrend Inc. ISBN 0-07-003844-9
Advanced:
Carrabis, J-D. (1987?). Dbase III Plus Programmers reference library.
Howard W. Sams & Co. ISBN 0-672-22579-4.
Both these books I consider excellent. For the advanced programmer I
would strongly argue in favour of Carrabis who provides a series of very
useful kernels and demonstrates both their functionality and
extensibility in a number of true-to-life applications.
You won't be disappointed.
--
__________________________________________________________
Venkatesh K. Chittur | Arpanet: chittur@ecn.purdue.edu
Purdue University | Bitnet: chittur@purche
Chemical Engineering | uucp: {intelca,rutgers,decvax,uiucdcs}!pur-ee!chittur