Books

Book Review - Professional SharePoint 2007 Reporting

Darrin Bishop — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:28:08 GMT

I returned from SharePoint Conference to find my copy of Professional SharePoint 2007 Reporting with SQL Server Reporting 2008 Reporting Services waiting for me. I happened to get in involoved in some technical editing towards the end of this book. If you are a SharePoint person who knows the basics of Reporting Services and want to learn more about the integration of SharePoint and SSRS then pick up a copy. If you are a SharePoint person who needs to learn SSRS then you Must pick up a copy of this book.

I "officially" met Reza, one of the three authors, in Montreal where he was speaking on SharePoint and Reporting Services integration. I can easily say the Reza knows his SSRS, inside and out. I also know Coskun and Jacob but have not seen them speak. Every time I spoke at same venue as Coskun we spoke during the same time slot.

This book covers topics including:

- Install of SSRS 2008 in integrated mode
- Basic report design
- Business Intelligence Developer Studio
- Creating reports of various complexities such as linked reports
- Deployment of reports
- Management of reports

For myself I found the Deploying Reports to SharePoint, Advanced Deployment Techniques and Managing Reports chapter to be most valuable. Advanced Deployment Techniques includes a great PowerShell script to allow you to easily publish your report. The Managing Reports sections covers topics including unattended report processing, on-demand report execution and subscriptions.

This is one of the few, if not the only, book dedicated to the topic of SQL Server Reporting Services and SharePoint. Many other books contain a single chapter on SSRS and SharePoint . If you are working with SSRS in SharePoint or contemplating integrating SSRS with SharePoint then this book should be on your shelf.

Two New Asp.Net AJAX Books Going on the Shelf

Darrin Bishop — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 02:49:14 GMT

Picked up our own SharePoint MVP Rob Foster's "ASP.Net 3.5 Ajax Unleashed" book for the ride home from MSDN DevCon. So far this seems to be a great introduction into ASP.Net Ajax. I have not spent that much time working with Ajax so I thought this would be a good read on the train. I would catagorize Rob's book as a hands on type book, lots of easy examples to explain the basics of ASP.Net 3.5. It is not a hard or complicated read, simple and to the point.

Now if you like something a little more advanced try out, once again our own SharePoint MVP Daniel Larson's "Developing Service-Oriented AJAX Applications on the Microsoft Platform" book by MSPress. I volunteered to be one of Daniel's tech reviewers. That might seem strange as I mentioned that I have not spent time with AJAX. Rest assured I volunteered for the reader who needs to learn AJAX role. Daniel had other heavy hitters that knew service-oriented AJAX development inside and out. My role was to learn and point out areas where Daniel could better clarify a concept for a more "intro-level" reader. This book does an intro into ASP.Net AJAX but quickly moves into using AJAX to develop service-oriented applications and ends up with a chapter on SharePoint and AJAX.

If you are new to AJAX I would start with Rob's book fist. If you are already know AJAX then grab Daniel Larson's book. Either one is worth the read.

Books - Many New SharePoint Books Have Hit My Shelf

Darrin Bishop — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 00:00:20 GMT

It used to be that you could count the number of SharePoint books on one hand. Now just the MOSS 2007 books are consuming a lot of space on my shelves. It seems that every few weeks a new MOSS book is released. I am currently reading Inside SharePoint 2007 Administration by Steve Caravajal, Todd Klindt, and Shane Young. I will post more books that made it to my bookshelves, I am quite behind on these posts to be honest.

Here is are a handful that recently made it to my office shelves: