Product Details

• Paperback: 576 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 1 edition (January 9, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321534468
• ISBN-13: 978-0321534460
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.9 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds

For developers / testers not new to the agile world this book can be the most depressive piece of art. It tells a story of a way of development you know is out there, but most not yet have reached.  Lisa Crispin and Janet Gregory share their experiences through personal stories and examples from others.

There are some questions the authors want to answer:

• As a tester, what is my role on an agile team?
• How do I transition from a traditional phased/gated development cycle to agile?
• How do we get testers engaged with the rest of the agile development team?
• What tools do I need?
• Who does what testing on an agile team?
• How can testing "keep up" with short iterations?
• How do we know if we're doing a good job of testing? How can we improve?
• What do testers do the first few days of an iteration, before any stories are done?
• None of our testing is automated. Where do we start, and how do we find time to do automation?

Did I get answers to all this? Yes I did! There's a way of thinking that I was never aware of as a developer. I can now look through the eyes of a tester and my design is driven by the phrase: "Ok, but how would I test this?" How would I present that I have done what I was told to? How can I be sure to create what the customer wants me to. Besides giving a throughout view upon the work of an agile tester we get to know the fundamental elements of SCRUM.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Product Details

• Paperback: 688 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (October 25, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596007124
• ISBN-13: 978-0596007126
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 8 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds

Editorial Reviews

Review

This is a gimmicky book that actually works for once. It is an intelligent and well thought-out discussion of Java design patterns, and if you dont know what a design pattern is then this is an excellent way to find out. It is also an interested discussion of object-oriented design. I found that the authors often anticipated my reaction to their initial explanations and asked the questions that I would have asked had it been a lecture. - Mike James, VSJ, April 2005

Product Description

You're not alone. At any given moment, somewhere in the world someone struggles with the same software design problems you have. You know you don't want to reinvent the wheel (or worse, a flat tire), so you look to Design Patterns--the lessons learned by those who've faced the same problems. With Design Patterns, you get to take advantage of the best practices and experience of others, so that you can spend your time on... something else. Something more challenging. Something more complex. Something more fun. You want to learn about the patterns that matter--why to use them, when to use them, how to use them (and when NOT to use them). But you don't just want to see how patterns look in a book, you want to know how they look "in the wild". In their native environment. In other words, in real world applications. You also want to learn how patterns are used in the Java API, and how to exploit Java's built-in pattern support in your own code. You want to learn the real OO design principles and why everything your boss told you about inheritance might be wrong (and what to do instead). You want to learn how those principles will help the next time you're up a creek without a design paddle pattern. Most importantly, you want to learn the "secret language" of Design Patterns so that you can hold your own with your co-worker (and impress cocktail party guests) when he casually mentions his stunningly clever use of Command, Facade, Proxy, and Factory in between sips of a martini. You'll easily counter with your deep understanding of why Singleton isn't as simple as it sounds, how the Factory is so often misunderstood, or on the real relationship between Decorator, Facade and Adapter. With Head First Design Patterns, you'll avoid the embarrassment of thinking Decorator is something from the "Trading Spaces" show. Best of all, in a way that won't put you to sleep! We think your time is too important (and too short) to spend it struggling with academic texts. If you've read a Head First book, you know what to expect - a visually-rich format designed for the way your brain works. Using the latest research in neurobiology, cognitive science, and learning theory, Head First Design Patterns will load patterns into your brain in a way that sticks. In a way that lets you put them to work immediately. In a way that makes you better at solving software design problems, and better at speaking the language of patterns with others on your team.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional (March 11, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321205685
• ISBN-13: 978-0321205681
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The concept of user stories has its roots as one of the main tenets of Extreme Programming. In simple terms, user stories represent an effective means of gathering requirements from the customer (roughly akin to use cases). This book describes user stories and demonstrates how they can be used to properly plan, manage, and test software development projects. The book highlights both successful and unsuccessful implementations of the concept, and provides sets of questions and exercises that drive home its main points. After absorbing the lessons in this book, readers will be able to introduce user stories in their organizations as an effective means of determining precisely what is required of a software application.

From the Back Cover

Agile requirements: discovering what your users really want. With this book, you will learn to:

• Flexible, quick and practical requirements that work

• Save time and develop better software that meets users' needs

• Gathering user stories -- even when you can't talk to users

• How user stories work, and how they differ from use cases, scenarios, and traditional requirements

• Leveraging user stories as part of planning, scheduling, estimating, and testing

• Ideal for Extreme Programming, Scrum, or any other agile methodology

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Thoroughly reviewed and eagerly anticipated by the agile community, User Stories Applied offers a requirements process that saves time, eliminates rework, and leads directly to better software. The best way to build software that meets users' needs is to begin with "user stories": simple, clear, brief descriptions of functionality that will be valuable to real users. In User Stories Applied, Mike Cohn provides you with a front-to-back blueprint for writing these user stories and weaving them into your development lifecycle. You'll learn what makes a great user story, and what makes a bad one. You'll discover practical ways to gather user stories, even when you can't speak with your users. Then, once you've compiled your user stories, Cohn shows how to organize them, prioritize them, and use them for planning, management, and testing.

• User role modeling: understanding what users have in common, and where they differ

• Gathering stories: user interviewing, questionnaires, observation, and workshops

• Working with managers, trainers, salespeople and other "proxies"

• Writing user stories for acceptance testing

• Using stories to prioritize, set schedules, and estimate release costs

• Includes end-of-chapter practice questions and exercises

User Stories Applied will be invaluable to every software developer, tester, analyst, and manager working with any agile method: XP, Scrum... or even your own home-grown approach.

Product Details

• Paperback: 528 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1st ed. 2005. Corr. 2nd printing edition (August 29, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590595084
• ISBN-13: 978-1590595084
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Pro PHP Security is one of the first books devoted solely to PHP security. It will serve as your complete guide for taking defensive and proactive security measures within your PHP applications. (And the methods discussed are compatible with PHP versions 3, 4, and 5.)

The knowledge you'll gain from this comprehensive guide will help you prevent attackers from potentially disrupting site operation or destroying data. And you'll learn about various security measures, for example, creating and deploying "captchas," validating e-mail, fending off SQL injection attacks, and preventing cross-site scripting attempts.

About the Author

Michael Southwell is a retired English professor who has been developing websites for more than 10 years in the small business, nonprofit, and educational areas, with special interest in problems of accessibility. He has authored and co-authored 8 books and numerous articles about writing, writing and computers, and writing education.

Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (May 8, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596529260
• ISBN-13: 978-0596529260
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 1 inches

Editorial Reviews

Book Description

Web services for the real world

Product Description

"Every developer working with the Web needs to read this book." -- David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of the Rails framework "RESTful Web Services finally provides a practical roadmap for constructing services that embrace the Web, instead of trying to route around it." -- Adam Trachtenberg, PHP author and EBay Web Services Evangelist You've built web sites that can be used by humans. But can you also build web sites that are usable by machines? That's where the future lies, and that's what RESTful Web Services shows you how to do. The World Wide Web is the most popular distributed application in history, and Web services and mashups have turned it into a powerful distributed computing platform. But today's web service technologies have lost sight of the simplicity that made the Web successful. They don't work like the Web, and they're missing out on its advantages. This book puts the "Web" back into web services. It shows how you can connect to the programmable web with the technologies you already use every day. The key is REST, the architectural style that drives the Web. This book:

• Emphasizes the power of basic Web technologies -- the HTTP application protocol, the URI naming standard, and the XML markup language
• Introduces the Resource-Oriented Architecture (ROA), a common-sense set of rules for designing RESTful web services
• Shows how a RESTful design is simpler, more versatile, and more scalable than a design based on Remote Procedure Calls (RPC)
• Includes real-world examples of RESTful web services, like Amazon's Simple Storage Service and the Atom Publishing Protocol
• Discusses web service clients for popular programming languages
• Shows how to implement RESTful services in three popular frameworks -- Ruby on Rails, Restlet (for Java), and Django (for Python)
• Focuses on practical issues: how to design and implement RESTful web services and clients

This is the first book that applies the REST design philosophy to real web services. It sets down the best practices you need to make your design a success, and the techniques you need to turn your design into working code. You can harness the power of the Web for programmable applications: you just have to work with the Web instead of against it. This book shows you how.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 487 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 2nd ed. edition (December 20, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590599098
• ISBN-13: 978-1590599099
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Backed by a tireless development community, PHP has been a model of language evolution over its 10+ year history. Borne from a contract developer’s pet project, these days you’ll find PHP powering many of the world’s largest web sites, including Yahoo!, Digg, EA Games, and Lycos. PHP Objects, Patterns, and Practice, Second Edition shows you how to meld the power of PHP with the sound enterprise development techniques embraced by professional programmers. Going well beyond the basics of object–oriented development, you’ll learn about advanced topics such as working with static methods and properties, abstract classes, interfaces, design patterns, exception handling, and more. You’ll also be exposed to key tools such as PEAR, CVS, Phing, and phpDocumentor.

What you’ll learn

• Write solid, maintainable code by embracing object–oriented techniques and design patterns.
• Create detailed, versatile documentation using the powerful phpDocumentor automated documentation system.
• Gain new flexibility during the development process by managing your code within a CVS repository and using the Phing build system.
• Capitalize upon the quality code of others by using the PEAR package management solution.

Who is this book for?

PHP developers seeking to embrace sound development techniques such as object–orientation, design patterns, testing, and documentation

About the Author

Matt Zandstra has worked as a Web programmer, consultant and writer for a decade. He has been an object evangelist for most of that time. Matt is the author of SAMS Teach Yourself PHP in 24 Hours (three editions), and contributed to DHTML Unleashed. He has written articles for Linux Magazine and Zend.com. Matt works primarily with PHP, Perl and Java, building online applications. He is an engineer at Yahoo! in London. Matt lives in Brighton with his wife Louise, and two children, Holly and Jake. Because it has been so long since he has had any spare time he only distantly recollects that he runs regularly to offset the effects of his liking for pubs and cafes, and for sitting around reading and writing fiction. Learn more on Matt's website, getInstance.

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Apress; XXII, 265 p. edition (August 27, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1430218339
• ISBN-13: 978-1430218333
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Git is the version control system developed by Linus Torvalds for Linux kernel development. It took the open source world by storm since its inception in 2005, and is used by small development shops and giants like Google, Red Hat, and IBM, and of course many open source projects.

• A book by Git experts to turn you into a Git expert
• Introduces the world of distributed version control
• Shows how to build a Git development workflow

What you’ll learn

• Use Git as a programmer or a project leader.
• Become a fluent Git user.
• Use distributed features of Git to the full.
• Acquire the ability to insert Git in the development workflow.
• Migrate programming projects from other SCMs to Git.
• Learn how to extend Git.

Who is this book for?

This book is for all open source developers: you are bound to encounter it somewhere in the course of your working life. Proprietary software developers will appreciate Git’s enormous scalability, since it is used for the Linux project, which comprises thousands of developers and testers.

About the Apress Pro Series

The Apress Pro series books are practical, professional tutorials to keep you on and moving up the professional ladder. You have gotten the job, now you need to hone your skills in these tough competitive times. The Apress Pro series expands your skills and expertise in exactly the areas you need. Master the content of a Pro book, and you will always be able to get the job done in a professional development project. Written by experts in their field, Pro series books from Apress give you the hard–won solutions to problems you will face in your professional programming career.