SharePoint 2007 Developer’s Guide to Business Data Catalog

SharePoint 2007 developer’s Guide to Business Data Catalog is an essential guide to anyone who wishes to become proficient in building complex SharePoint applications. This book starts off assuming that the reader is a complete beginner to BDC, and explains in detail what it is. Soon afterwards, the reader is taught what can be done with it and how.

The book is divided into 11 chapters. Chapter 1 provides information for what BDC is. The BDC is a layer of defining heterogeneous data sources so that the SharePoint is aware of them. The data sources can be any of those: Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, ODBC (Open Database Connectivity) and Web Services. Chapter 2 discusses the Application Definition File (You can think of it as being a configuration file). The ADF is used to tell SharePoint to get the data from those different data sources. Chapters 3 through Chapter 7 examine the security which allows users to use different authentication methods within the BDC and the out-of-the-box functionality of BDC can be configured through the application definition file. I think the configuration is the responsibility of SharePoint system administrator, but the lucid writing style of the book makes it easy to understand by most developers. Chapters 8 through Chapter 11 delve deep into the customized solutions which are really the job for developers. This book provides the namespace and DLL and sample code to allow developers easily to follow.

Most SharePoint books will spend one or two chapters to describe the BDC; this is the first book I have seen that provides a detailed analysis of a specific concept of SharePoint. Users should be aware of that the BDC is a component that can be used only on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Enterprise Edition.

Reviewed by Henry

The Art of Unit Testing

As a Database Architect, I often work with Object-Oriented Programmers, but thankfully don’t often have to code in other languages other than SQL.  However, it is useful to understand the methods and basic frameworks by which my team members develop; hence, I decided to review Roy Osherove’s The Art of Unit Testing (Manning Press, 2009).  Although many of the examples in the latter half of the book were a little over my head, I do appreciate the fact that Osherove builds to that point in a simple, easy-to-follow manner.

The first chapter was particularly useful to me, because the author lays out some very basic criteria for defining a unit test, which I’ll paraphrase below:

• Is the test repeatable after a period of time (years, months, etc?)
• Is the test portable?  Can other team members run the same unit test?
• Is the test simple to run?  Can it be run with the push of a button, and in just a few minutes?
• Is the test simple to build?

If the answer to any of the previous questions is no, then you’re probably not doing a unit test; Osherove argues that you’re probably doing some form of integration testing, which may be useful, but is not a true unit test.  His argument for the art builds from there.

This book is very well laid out, with lots of examples (written in C#).  It’s a short read (under 300 pages, including indexes), and has a straightforward style that lends itself well to both the beginning programmer (or programmers from other traditions, like myself) all the way to experienced programmers who want to refresh their memory on basic concepts.

SQL Server 2008 Administration in Action

Rod Colledge’s book SQL Server 2008 Administration in Action is a great asset for most SQL Server DBA’s; it covers a variety of issues in a simple-to-understand format. Let me preface this post by saying that while I am a DBA, I’ve been doing mostly development work for the last few years. However, armed with this book, I felt like I could easily dive back into administrative duties.

The book is broken up into three sections, each with several supporting chapters: Planning and Installation, Configuration, and Operations. Each chapter does a relatively deep dive into issues by starting with basic definitions, moving quickly through options and concepts, and then finally wrapping up with a bulleted list of best-practice considerations. If I had but one suggestion to make for the publishers, it would be that they consider consolidating all of the checklists into one document. What is probably the most amazing fact to me is that the book is very short (compared to some other administrative guides); it’s only 440 pages, including the index. It’s just well-written, straight to the point, and focuses on just the important stuff.

I also like the Appendices at the end, especially the Top 25 WORST practices, and the basic schedule in Appendix B. Although it’s probable that most DBA’s will have much more complicated schedules than described herein, it’s a useful template (especially for those “accidental DBA’s”). Overall, I really liked this book; I think it will be very helpful for me in the future (especially as I begin to study for the 2008 certification exams).

Here's an interview with the author:

Also, you can download a few sample chapters:

Sample chapter 4 Installing and upgrading SQL Server 2008
Sample chapter 10 Backup and recovery

Stu