Title : SharePoint 2010 for dummies

Author : Vanessa L. Williams

Summary :
This book places the readers at the place of a user or a power user of the SharePoint 2010 platform. It describes the functionnalities or feature of the lists, document libraries and goes through the different aspects of SharePoint 2010. But it does not stop at the end-user level and goes beyond, by explaining some tricks or some administrator functions.
Several advanced features are demonstrated, like the Excel Services, the Business Connectivity Services, just to name a few.

Book Review :
Ok, colleagues were wondering why I was reading such kind of book. That is true, if you want a developer or a complete guide to SharePoint 2010, pass your way, this book is definitely not for you. Anyway, when all the day-long you work either as a developer or working at the implementation of a SharePoint 2010 solution, there is a tendancy to forget the basics, or just how users are approaching the product. Not only that. It is the kind of book that your users or your clients will read most likely. It is always good to put yourself in their shoes and see SharePoint from their viewpoint, just to see how they understand the product.
For someone that has already some notions of SharePoint, this book is easy to go through. It has a good level for end-users and power users (not administrators !). Finally, it is interesting to see it as a starting point for other books going more deeper in SharePoint 2010 and definitely, a book that SharePoint users should have.

Title : Mastering Your Organization's Processes

Authors : John O'Connell, Jon Pyke, Roger Whitehead

Summary :
In another post I mentioned why BPM is important today for the companies. Mastering the processes and the change is primordial for the managers in an enterprise. This book explains what is a business processes and their management, then describes the different systems of an organization. It also defines the actors involved in business processes, such as the ones outside the organization, the people and other systems. Finally, it gives some strategies for BPM and also some guidance to choose a BPM product.

Review :
I found this book difficult to read, most likely because I am not in the targeted audience for this kind of book. For me, it was too high-level and too conceptual. It seems, for me, that to apply the concept, there will be a missing pieces between the book and the reality of the field. One great positive point : every chapter ends with a case study that is very well explained.

Title : Business Process Change - A Manager's Guide to Improving, Redesigning, and Automating

Authors : Paul Harmon

Summary :
In the software industry, BPM or Business Process Management is present since the mid-90's. Even earlier according to different sources. But nothing is really new and nothing has really changed since Henry Ford in 1903 when he started Ford Motor to design and build a high-quality but easy to assemble car. What is done since ages in the manufactory industries tried to be applied to many other sectors.

Nowadays, having the best product on the market is not enough and companies have to constantly adapt themselves to changing parameters such as new competitors, suppliers, new technologies and so on. Today, it seems that the only way for a company to survive is its business processes and its ability to change them quickly (others would put the word "agile" here, but I keep myself making this shortcut).

The book starts by explaining the value chain and what is process management. A whole part is dedicated to the modelisation of the processes before going into BPM, including Six Sigma. In the middle of the book, some technologies are explored, such as XML and some ERP systems without forgetting UML.

Review :
Really good book, with excellent explanation. What I liked was also the level of details and the numerous examples and case studies. Nevertheless, if requires a little knowledge of what is BPM and is definitely not a technical book (I knew this before reading it, but it is more for clarification as most of the posts I do on this blog are technical). In addition, there are a lot of diagrams that help to understand the concepts explained throughout the book.

Title : Essential SharePoint 2007 - Delivering High-Impact Collaboration

Authors : Scott Jamison, Mauro Cardarelli, Susan Hanley

Summary :
Deploying SharePoint and leaving it to the users and not monitoring it is the best way for failure. This is known and true also for non-SharePoint projects. But what really lacks with SharePoint is how to demonstrate the management what could bring SharePoint in an organization and how to improve the SharePoint infrastructure during its life. In other words, when deploying SharePoint, governance is one of the important keys to success.
This books not only describes the SharePoint functionalities but also gives some guidance to better know your organization and how to solve its collaboration problems and is the first SharePoint book I read that is talking about "information architecture". It describes the different 2003 to 2007 migration options, what are the possible backup, restore and disaster recovery scenarios. Then it goes through Records Management, workflows, Search and finally Business Intelligence, providing plenty of step-by-step examples and screenshots

Onthe other side, I had the chance to attend the SharePoint Conference 2009 in Las Vegas session of Scott and Susan that was very interesting and a source of inspiration to make a SharePoint deployment a success not only from a provider point of view, but also a success for the users.

Review :
This book is not for developer or technical people, but more for people that need to sell SharePoint as a collaboration platform. For me, it is not for end-users as well. We can feel that the book is not relying only on the functional expertise of SharePoint but also on the way information workers are working with IT and their habits. Excellent examples can be taken to put in front the business value or the benefits of the platform. Finally, I think this book is a good starter for talking about SharePoint governance.

Title : SharePoint 2007 User's Guide: Learning Microsoft's Collaboration and Productivity Platform

Author : Seth Bates, Tony Smith

Summary :
This book described the different functionality of SharePoint 2007 from a users and power users point of view. Therefore, this book is not technical and is not showing any code.
First, the notion of sites, lists and document libraries are described with a lot of screenshots. Then, the book is going through workflows, policies and the different way of page personalization, finishing by two case studies or solutions solving document management and project collaboration in few steps.

Review :
Definitely, this book is not for techies or advanced users. Nevertheless, as the book is really user oriented, you can learn some functionalities that are less exposed or used but nevertheless very useful. It means that if people know already SharePoint or working with the product on a daily basis, it can be read quickly.
The two solutions presented at the end of the book are very good examples of how to address typical collaboration problems quickly and providing a high value without going into an expensive development project.

Title : Foundations of BizTalk Server 2006

Author : Daniel Woolston

Summary :
BizTalk Server 2006 was until last year, the latest version of the middleware product from Microsoft. Since, the new version, BizTalk Server 2009, has been released. Despite BizTalk Server 2006 is not the first or second version of the product, it really needs documentation on how to use and develop on this platform as it is absolutely difficult or impossible to start on such product like this.
The book is structured around the different component or pieces of BizTalk : Messaging, Schemas, Maps, Ports, Orchestrations. It covers all the aspects of the product even tackling the application deployment.
It is full of useful screenshots and the explanations are clear enough even if you don't have the software at hand.

Review :
Working with BizTalk since couple of years, I found the book quite basic. Ok, the title contains "Foundations", so don't expect advanced explanation but rather take it as a first look at BizTalk. A good example is to read it before an intermediate or advanced training. At the end, it gives an excellent overview of what can be done and how can specific problems can be solved with BizTalk Server 2006. Another good point is that it is not a big pad to read and can be absorbed in a week-end :-)

Summary :
F# is a new language that is coming in the pipe of Microsoft for the Visual Studio platform. It aims to tackle the functional programming paradigm eventhough it is possible to use the imperative or object oriented programming.
Robert Pickering starts his book by explaining the basics of F#, how to get and how to use the tools. Then, the book describes the F# syntax to be used in the three language paradigm, functional programming, imperative programming and finally object oriented programming. Among other things, the notion of type inference is presented. Once the syntax is presented, the book describes the way to develop web, windows or even WPF applications using the .NET framework. Data access is also addressed using the current technologies available, such as ADO.NET or LINQ. Then, a quick look at DSLs, compilation and code generation is given, presenting the lex and yacc tools coming with the language. Finally, a full chapter is dedicated to the interoperability between .NET and F#, because even if F# is based on the CLI, the language introduces several types that are not available in the other .NET languages (C# or VB.NET).

Review :
Discovering a new language is really interesting and with F#, it is the occasion to see a new paragigm, functional programming. In really short, with F#, everything is a value, even a function. It means that you can use a function as a function parameter. The concept of type inference is also very attracting. The book is very easy to understand and a lot of little examples are explained in details, making the reading very fast. The first half of the book is dedicated to the language itself. The second half is more on using the .NET framework and I would say that it is the less interesting of the book. Indeed, during the first part, you have came across various examples using types and classes of the framework and user interface development being web or windows, or data access meaning that the second part does not bring a lot a information. Once you know these topics from the .NET documentation or from another book and once you have read how to access the .NET BCL from F#, then this part is pretty straightforward and not really useful. Moreover, the examples used to depict the topics are more explaining how to use the BCL classes than the language itself. Nevertheless, the last parts discussing the interoperability and the possibility of generating DSLs are more interesting.
My final words are that it is a very intersting book if you want to see another land (functional programming). Unfortunately, on my bookshelf, I also have "Expert F#" that I just opened to see what is inside and I saw that it takes the explanations and descriptions of the language from the beginning. If I had knew that before, maybe I would have bought this one instead. So, if the goal is just to scratch the surface of F#, "Foundations of F#" is the best suited, otherwise, if the goal is to go really deeper in the topic, then prefer "Expert F#" (a review of that one will be posted).