The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Online Business Major Keary

The opening part of Tony Stevenson's The Australian Guide to Online Business is entitled, "Does Your Business Need to be Online?". A good question. Not all businesses -especially small ones - will derive benefit from an online presence. The book assumes that it is a good, and there are certainly pressures on businesses to have at least a Web page.
 
Assuming that the reader is able to make a sound decision whether going online is likely to be effective, the opening part of the book provides a good overview of what is involved. The issue of cost, as the author points out, is not easy to quantify because there are so many variables. However, anyone - no matter how little they know about doing business online - should be able to appreciate the factors that have to be considered in going down that path.

The Guide is a good place for e-business novices to start. The reader is assumed to know basic computer operations (open programs, save files, and so on) and to have some familiarity with the Internet.
 
This book is not a manual to DIY business online. It is about the things newcomers need to know and the implications of the various options. Going online involves more than a simple decision, "Yes, I'll do that". Knowing where to start, which way to go, and what is involved is the key to success. Tony Stevenson takes the reader through the confusing e-business landscape, offering good advice and information that will enable readers, no matter how inexperienced, to assess their own requirements and to size up service providers.
 
A well-written text that introduces online business in plain language and at a very reasonable price.

Tony Stevenson: The Australian Guide to Online Business ISBN 1-74009-485-9 Published by Prentice Hall,  291 pp., RRP  $24.95 incl. GST

Learning Perl

A third edition of O'Reilly's classic, Learning Perl has just been released. The book was first published in 1993, but since then Perl has gone through a number of revisions. This edition catches up with version 5.6, but is not a simple update - the authors have rewritten the text in the light of their extensive (and successful) experience in teaching Perl. It represents a distillation of the things they found to work, and is flavoured with sufficient humour to make this an entertaining read. Of course, one has to have more than a passing interest in learning Perl, and an appreciation of programming is assumed.

The thing that struck me is the way in which concepts and technical usages are explained, and the rigourous way in which the authors' stick to their game plan: to help readers learn the essentials. There is more to Perl than is covered in this text, but to attempt to take novices into every nook and cranny of Perl would be overwhelming. This title is part of an O'Reilly 'library' of Perl texts; it provides the necessary introduction to a scripting language with a growing repertoire of applications.

The book covers scalar data, lists and arrays, subroutines, hashes, I/O basics, regular expressions, control structures, filehandles and file tests, directory operations, manipulating files and directories, process management, strings and sorting, simple databases, and advanced techniques. The discussion of regular expressions is especially detailed.
 
Throughout there are exercises that enable readers to test their knowledge; an appendix contains the answers. Illustrations are used sparingly, but effectively.

It is easy to learn just enough Perl for a particular purpose, but if you want to understand Perl this is where to start. Highly recommended.

Schwartz and Phoenix: Learning Perl 3/e ISBN 0-596-00132-0 Published by O'Reilly,  316 pp., RRP $99.95 incl. GST

Programming C#

What is C#? From O'Reilly's recently published Programming C#: "The C# language is disarmingly simple . [and] includes all the support for structured, component-based object-oriented programming that one expects of a modern language built on the shoulders of C++ and Java". One of its developers, Anders Hejlsberg, created Turbo Pascal and led the team that designed Borland Delphi. C# is designed to provide a high-performance language for .NET development.
 
An interesting point is that under .NET programs are not compiled in the conventional way, but into the Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL) and then executed by the Common Language Runtime (CLR). The implications of that are fully explained in the early part of the book. Even if you are not a programmer, but are interested in knowing how .NET works, the introductory chapters are well worth reading for the author's exceptionally lucid description.

Programmers have been hearing from Microsoft about C# for over a year as part of the promotion of the .NET platform. Now they (the programmers) have an authoritative resource that explains C# and provides a tutorial on its application in the context of .NET. The author says he expects "C# to become the development language of choice for Windows development, and one of the two most important languages (alongside Java) for Web development".
 
The book is in parts. Part 1, The C# Language, describes C# and its components. Part 2, Programming with C#, explores "the details of the .NET platform" and discusses the detail of how to program in C#. Part 3, C# and the .NET CLR explores the relationship between C# and CLR.

As with all O'Reilly programming texts, extensive use is made of annotated example code, and the writing is of the highest standard. The subject matter is technical and designed for those with a programming background, but non-programmers with an interest in Web technologies should find some interesting reading amongst the discussion of programming. The explanations of terms and concepts are particularly good.

Jesse Liberty: Programming C# ISBN 0-596-00117-7 Published by O'Reilly,  658 pp., RRP $165.00 incl. GST

XSLT

The eXtensible Stylesheet Language for Transformations (XSLT) is one of those applications that prove to have a significance well beyond the initial concept of the creators; Doug Tidwell, author of XSLT (the book, not the application) says, "XSLT has grown into one of the core technologies used by most developers processing XML", but reminds us that "XSLT is a tool, not a religion".
 
There is not room here to describe the history of XSL, XSL-FO, and XSLT. The important thing is that XSLT provides the means to convert documents in HTML or an XML format to any other XML format or HTML. Given that most wordprocessing, DTP, and office applications have a facility for exporting output to HTML format, the transformation capability of XSLT is very extensive. It can be used to combine documents from multiple sources, and can be used to create multiple-type target documents. The process involves the use of templates and a conversion processor (there are several - most freely available - to choose from).
 
The book's subtitle, Mastering XML Transformations, is a good description of this tutorial-cum-reference. It introduces XSLT, placing it in the context of the XML family, and then takes the reader through the intricacies of putting it to work. A powerful, complex tool, XSLT is by no means easy to master. This is the best text I have seen by way of both tutorial and reference.
 
The primary audience is "developers who want to learn XSLT to solve problems", but anyone with an interest in XML-based technologies in general, and their application to Web publishing in particular, should find this well worth reading.

Doug Tidwell: XSLT ISBN 0-596-00053-7 Published by O'Reilly,  460 pp., RRP $115.00 incl. GST

Other XSLT-related Titles

In O'Reilly's excellent Java series is Java & XML, which contains a chapter on transforming XML. As the title indicates, the book discusses XML applications in a Java context. The focus is on Web-based enterprise applications.

Oracle was an early adapter of XML technologies and another useful resource is Building Oracle XML Applications, a title in O'Reilly's Oracle series. The book discusses XSLT in depth. For Java developers a companion CD contains JDeveloper 3.1. An XSLT processor is available for download from the Oracle Web site.