Building Web, Cloud, & Mobile Solutions with F# – #programming #bookreview

Building Web, Cloud, & Mobile Solutions with F#
Daniel Mohl
(O’Reilly – paperback, Kindle)

F# (pronounced “F-sharp”) is a relatively new functional, open-source programming language developed by Microsoft and the F# Software Foundation. F# can be used to create scalable applications with ASP.NET MVC 4, ASP.NET Web API, Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Azure, HTML5, Web Sockets, CSS3, jQuery Mobile, and other tools.

Daniel Mohl’s Building Web, Cloud, & Mobile Solutions with F# is a well-written guide to “everything you need to know to start building web, cloud, and mobile solutions with F#.” Mohl also give some how-to examples using a range of technologies, libraries, and platforms, including SignalR, CouchDB, RavenDB, MongoDB, and others.

Mohl says his book is “intended for technologists with experience in .NET who have heard about the benefits of F#, have a cursory understanding of the basic syntax, and wish to learn how to combine F# with other technologies to build better web, cloud, and mobile solutions.”

In other words, this should not be your first book about F# or the relevant technologies that also are covered. Mohl recommends Chris Smith’s Programming F#, 3.0 as a first step toward learning the language.

In its 160 pages, Building Web, Cloud, & Mobile Solutions with F# offers five chapters, three appendices, and a number of code samples and screen shots. The chapters and appendices are:

• 1. Building an ASP.NET MVC 4 Web Application with F#
• 2. Creating Web Services with F#
• 3. To the Cloud! Taking Advantage of Azure
• 4. Constructing Scalable Web and Mobile Solutions
• 5. Functional Frontend Development
• Appendix A: Useful Tools and Libraries
• Appendix B: Useful Websites
• Appendix C: Client-Site Technologies That Go Well with F#

Mohl’s text also contains numerous links to important and useful websites.

He notes that “the primary focus of this book is on how to use F# to best complement the larger technology stack”, so he spends “a lot more time talking about controllers and models than views. F# provides several unique features that lend themselves well to the creation of various aspects of controllers and models.”

– Si Dunn

Spring Data: Modern Data Access for Enterprise Java – #java #bookreview

Spring Data: Modern Data Access for Enterprise Java
Mark Pollack, Oliver Gierke, Thomas Risberg, Jonathan L. Brisbin and Michael Hunger
(O’Reilly, paperback – Kindle)

Big Data keeps getting wider and deeper by the second. And so do the demands for analyzing and profiting from all of those piled-up terabytes.

Meanwhile, the once whiz-bang technology known as the relational database is having a very hard time keeping pace. The sheer amount of data that companies now gather, store, access, and analyze is pushing traditional relational databases to the breaking point.

Many Java developers who are trying to keep these overloaded systems held together with baling wire, also are starting to learn to work with some of the “alternative data stores that are being used in mission-critical enterprise applications,” the authors of Spring Data point out.

A lot of data now is being stored elsewhere and not in relational databases. Yet companies cannot abandon what they have already gathered and invested heavily to access. So they need to keep using and supporting their relational databases, plus some newer, faster, more voracious solutions lumped under the heading “NoSQL databases,” (even though you can query them).

In “the new data access landscape,” the authors note: “there is a revolution taking place, which for data geeks is quite exciting. Relational databases are not dead; they are still central to the operations of many enterprises and will remain so for quite some time. The trends, though, are very clear: new data access technologies are solving problems that traditional relational databases can’t, so we need to broaden our skill set as developers and have a foot in both camps.”

They add: “The Spring Framework has a long history of simplifying the development of Java applications, in particular for writing RDBMS-based data access layers that use Java database connectivity (JDBC) or object-relational mappers.”

Their new book “is intended to give you a hands-on introduction to the Spring Data project, whose core mission is to enable Java developers to use state-of-the-art data processing and manipulation tools but also use traditional databases in a state-of-the-art manner.”

They have organized their 288-page book into six parts and 14 chapters:

Part I – Background

• Chapter 1 – The Spring Data Project
• Chapter 2 – Repositories: Convenient Data Access Layers
• Chapter 3 – Type-Safe Querying Using Querydsl

Part II – Relational Databases

• Chapter 4 – JPA Repositories
• Chapter 5 – Type-safe JDBC Programming with Querydsl SQL

Part III – NoSQL

• Chapter 6 – MongoDB: A Document Store
• Chapter 7 – Neo4j: A Graph Database
• Chapter8 – Redis: A Key/Value Store

Part IV – Rapid Application Development

• Chapter 9 – Persistence Layers with Spring Roo
• Chapter 10 – REST Repository Exporter

Part V – Big Data

• Chapter 11 – Spring for Apache Hadoop
• Chapter 12 – Analyzing Data with Hadoop
• Chapter 13 – Creating Big Data Pipelines with Spring Batch and Spring Integration

Part 5 – Data Grids

• Chapter 14 – GemFire: A Distributed Data Grid

“Many of the values that have made Spring the preferred platform for enterprise Java developers deliver particular benefit in a world of fragmented persistence solutions,” states Ron Johnson, creator of Spring Framework. Writing in the book’s foreword, he notes: “Part of the value of Spring is how it brings consistency (without descending to a lowest common denominator) in its approach to different technologies with which it integrates.

“A distinct ‘Spring way’ helps shorten the learning curve for developers and simplifies code maintenance. If you are already familiar with Spring, you will find that Spring Data eases your exploration and adoption of unfamiliar stores. If you aren’t already familiar with Spring, this is a good opportunity to see how Spring can simplify your code and make it more consistent.”

Spring Data definitely is not light reading, but it is well-written, and provides a good blending of procedures, steps, explanations, code samples, screenshots and other illustrations.

– Si Dunn

Learning Node – A good how-to guide for server-side Web development with Node.js – #programming #bookreview

Learning Node
Shelley Powers
(O’Reilly, paperback – Kindle)

 “Node is designed to be used for [server-side] applications that are heavy on input/output (I/O), but light on computation,” veteran Web technology author Shelley Powers notes in Learning Node, her ninth and newest how-to book from O’Reilly.

“Node.js,” she explains, “is a server-side technology that’s based on Google’s V8 JavaScript engine. It’s a highly scalable system that uses asynchronous, event-driven I/O (input/output), rather than threads or separate processes. “It’s ideal for web applications that are frequently accessed but computationally simple.”

I’ve criticized some previous Node books (1) for assuming that all of their readers know a lot about Node.js and assorted programming languages and (2) for not giving enough step-by-step installation and start-up information.

Happily, Learning Node is well written, nicely illustrated with code samples and screen shots, and assumes only that you have some working familiarity with JavaScript. It gives a detailed overview of how to set up development environments in Linux (Ubuntu) and Windows 7. “Installation on a Mac should be similar to installation on Linux,” the author adds.

One caveat regarding code examples: “Most were tested in a Linux environment, but should work, as is, in any Node environment.”

The 374-page book has 16 chapters. The first five “cover both getting Node and the package manager (npm) installed , how to use them, creating your first applications, and utilizing modules.”

Shelley Powers notes that she incorporates “the use of the Express framework, which also utilizes the Connect middleware, throughout the book.” So if you have little or no experience with Express, you will need to pay attention to chapters 6 through 8. But: “After these foundation chapters, you can skip around a bit,” she adds.

Some of the additional chapters cover key/value pairs, using MongoDb with Node, and working with Node’s relational database bindings.

Two chapters get into specialized application use. “Chapter 12 focuses purely on graphics and media access, including how to provide media for the new HTML5 video element, as well as working with PDF documents and Canvas,” the author points out. “Chapter 13 covers the very popular Sockets.io module, especially for working with the new web socket functionality.”

The final chapters are crucial, particularly if you want to move from learning Node to working in a production environment. Chapter 14 covers “Testing and Debugging Node Applications.” Chapter 15 “covers issues of security and authority…it is essential that you spend time in this chapter before you roll a Node application out for general use.”

Meanwhile, Chapter 16 describes “how to prepare your application for production use, including how to deploy your Node application not only on your own system , but also in one of the cloud servers that are popping up to host Node applications.”

Learning Node is both an excellent overall introduction to Node.js and a how-to reference guide that you will want to keep close at hand as you develop and deploy Node applications.

– Si Dunn

For more information: Node.js, paperback, Kindle

Node: Up and Running – A fine intro to Node.js, the new 799-pound gorilla in the room – #programming #bookreview #in

Node: Up and Running
Tom Hughes-Croucher and Mike Wilson
(O’Reilly, paperback, list price $34.99; Kindle edition, list price $27.99)

Node.js is often described as “the dominant player” in the world of server-side JavaScript development. Whether that’s completely true or boastful hype, big players such as Google, LinkedIn, eBay, Walmart and Microsoft now are using it. And so are countless smaller players and startups. If Node.js is not yet King Kong, it has at least grown into a 799-pound, but reasonably tame, programming gorilla for those who want to write scalable server-side code using JavaScript.

In today’s weird, challenging job market for programmers, it would not hurt you to feed this new gorilla a few bananas and gain at least passing familiarity with it. You never know when you may need to ramp up some Node.js skills in a hurry, to get or keep a job or land a contract.

I like O’Reilly’s “Up and Running” book series for that very ramp-up reason. They do a good job of introducing a programming language and showing how to use key aspects of it. And they point you to additional resources for skills and knowledge you can pick up on the fly.

According to the two authors of Node: Up and Running,“Node.js is many things, but mostly it’s a way of running JavaScript outside the web browser.” They add: “Many people use the JavaScript programming language extensively for programming the interfaces of websites. Node.js allows this popular programming language to be applied in many more contexts, in particular on web servers. There are several notable features about Node.js that make it worthy of interest.”

For example: “Node is a wrapper around the high-performance V8 JavaScript runtime from the Google Chrome browser. Node tunes V8 to work better in contexts other than the browser, mostly by providing additional APIs that are optimized for specific use cases.”

The two authors point out that “JavaScript is an event-driven language, and Node uses this to its advantage to produce highly scalable servers. Using an architecture called an event loop, Node makes programming highly scalable servers both easy and safe.” Node.js also features non-blocking I/O.

Node.js “runs on Windows, Linux, Mac, and other POSIX OSes (such as Solaris and BSD),” the authors state. And this is the second Node book I’ve reviewed that claims the installation process is “extremely simple.” The previous book did not give enough information for beginners. This one follows “extremely simple” with instructions and screen displays spread across nearly four pages. But – a hurried beginner may miss this at first – the steps are only for those who choose to do a source install rather than use one of the Node.js installer links.

The first time I used a Windows link to install Node.js (trying to follow the previous book), I somehow ended up with stuff scattered and duplicated in several subdirectories  –. an “extremely simple” mess.)  This time, my installation did seem “simple,” if not quite “extremely simple.” (Once it completed, I had to go to a command prompt and run “node” rather than just click on a brand new Windows icon — my definition of “extremely simple.” )

Of course, you are expected to have some JavaScript knowledge and programming experience before tackling this book, so you may not want to get ahead of yourself on the learning curve. If you’re currently a JavaScript novice, put this one on the shelf for a little bit later. But definitely get it.

Node: Up and Running offers plenty of code examples, and the paragraphs between them are well-written and kept reasonably short. Thus, knowledge and skills can be gained in manageable small chunks. Only a few other illustrations are offered, and, unfortunately, they tend to be more goofy than helpful.

The 184-page book has eight chapters:

1. A Very Brief Introduction to Node.js
2. Doing Interesting Things
3. Building Robust Node Applications
4. Core APIs
5. Helper APIs
6. Data Access
7. Important External Modules
8. Extending Node

Some readers have noted that this book does not contain the traditional appendix giving links and referrals to other sources of more information on Node.js, and that’s a fair criticism. However, the book’s Chapter 6, “Data Access,” does have links to, and discussions of, “the basic ways to connect to common open source database choices and to store and retrieve data.” The topics covered include using Node.js with CouchDb, Redis, MongoDB and relational databases such as MySQL and PostgreSQL. The chapter also looks at connection pooling and message queuing (MQ) protocol.

“The Node project is still very young,” the two authors state, “and yet rarely have we seen such fervor around a project. Both novices and experts have coalesced around the project to use and contribute to Node, making it both a pleasure to explore and a supportive place to share and get advice.”

Their new book, Node: Up and Running, can help you get friendly fast with this new 799-pound gorilla in the room, Node.js.

– Si Dunn

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MongoDB and PHP – Document-oriented data for web developers – #bookreview #in #programming

MongoDB and PHP
By Steve Francia
(O’Reilly, paperback, list price $19.99; Kindle edition, list price, $14.99)

You can’t blame Steve Francia for being vocal in his praise for MongoDB®. He’s the chief solutions architect at 10gen, Inc., which develops and supports this well-respected document-oriented database.

One consequence of the current, explosive growth of social media is that “all data and experience [needs] to be personalized – on a large scale,” he writes in his new book, MongoDB and PHP. Today, the data stores and caching techniques used over in the past three decades are losing their ability to keep pace. So: “It was out of this need that MongoDB was created. A database for today’s applications, a database for today’s challenges, a database for today’s scale.”

MongoDB, according to its 10gen, Inc., website, is “a scalable, high-performance, open-source noSQL database,” written in C++. Its features include: document-oriented storage; full index support; replication and high availability; auto-sharding (horizontal scaling with a partitioning architecture); querying; rapid in-place updates; map/reduce (for batch processing of data and aggregation); and GridFS (a specification for storing large files in MongoDb).

Francia explains that MongoDB is a document database. “At the highest level of organization, it is quite similar to a relational database, but as you get closer to the data itself, you will notice a significant change in the way the data is stored. Instead of databases, tables, columns, and rows, you have databases, collections, and documents.”

Meanwhile, in PHP (PHP: Hypertext Processor), “a document is equivalent to an array …,” for all intents and purposes.

PHP, which can be downloaded from this site, “is a widely-used general-purpose scripting language that is especially suited for Web development and can be embedded into HTML,” according to the PHP Group.

Francia notes in his book that “[i]n MongoDB, the primary object is called a document. A document doesn’t have a direct correlation in the relational world. Documents do not have a predefined schema like relational database tables. A document is partly a row, in that it’s where the data is located, but it’s also part columns, in that the schema is defined in each document (not table-wide)….The best way to think of a document is as a multidimensional array.”

Meanwhile, Francia adds: “Documents map extremely well to objects and other PHP data types like arrays and even multidimensional arrays.” So PHP users contemplating building PHP applications with MongoDB will find that “the PHP array has the closest correlation of any data type. It’s nearly a 1-to-1 correlation.”

His code examples, illustrations and succinct paragraphs show how MongoDB and PHP can work together closely and effectively when building database applications.

If you have been contemplating diving into PHP and/or MongoDB, this is a worthy book to add to your learning and reference collections.

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– Si Dunn is a novelist, screenwriter, freelance book reviewer, and former software technical writer and software/hardware QA test specialist. He also is a former newspaper and magazine photojournalist. His latest book is Dark Signals, a Vietnam War memoir available soon in paperback. He is the author of a detective novel, Erwin’s Law, a novella, Jump, and several other books and short stories.