I recently received two recent Wrox books.
- Professional Microsoft Search - Sharepoint 2007 and Search Server 2008
(Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0470279338/heme0f)
- Professional SharePoint 2007 Design
(Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/047028580X/heme0f)
One major difference between them is that the first deals ONLY with Search. The second on the other hand extends the boundaries of what is "Design" way past anything I would consider to be design and is in fact for me more of a mixed bag of interesting but isolated chapters on a wide range of topics.
Let's start with the first book. It's the first one I have seen on Search (and there is also the MS Press book "Inside the Index and Search engines" which I haven't seen) so it's perhaps fooolhardy to say that if you are at all interested in Search you should buy this one, but I'll say it anyway because it covers everything and more that I could think of.
(Even though the single Search chapter in the Design book had lots of stuff that I couldn't find in the Search book - which I've read all of just over half the chapters but have scanned the rest to look for just that information)
There's really only one thing that jars when reading the book and that is that there were three different people involved in writing it - and it shows. Very roughly speaking there are parts of the book that are at helicopter level (written by Microsoft non-Search specialist is my guess); then there are the parts of the book that think that everything in the product is wonderful (written by Microsoft Search specialist ?) and then there are the chapters and parts of chapters that go into details of real use of the product and are not afraid to say that things don't work as you would expect (written by the one writer who doesn't work for Microsoft is my solid guess).
There's one lovely part where it tells you that there is a "slight complication" that you don't get any search results at all if your site isn't using Kerberos. I spent hours wondering whether this was the non-Microsoft guy being sarcastic or the MS Search guy trying to justify a poor design decision ...
There's also sometimes a curious order to some of the chapters which i imagine is caused by slotting in the work of two or more authors into the same chapter.
So, for instance, the chapter on Federation Search has towards the middle a section with very complicated stuff that is followed by the simplest of all things (clicking on Modify a (Search) Web Part and changing the default values). In any normal, logical order, that very easy section would surely have come very early on in the chapter not right at the end.
But these are minor flaws. I learnt a lot by reading the chapters I have read so far and although I wouldn't give it 5 stars at Amazon, it would be worth a clear 4 and a bit.
Now on to the Design book.
Here you have the impression that they (in this case the four authors) didn't really know half of the time what they were supposed to be writing about. The foreword for instance was written by Heather Solomon and she seemed to think that this was a book about SharePoint Designer.
Well there are a few chapters on SharePoint Designer that's true but there are also chapters on standard MOSS functionality; on Search (see above - that's a really good chapter btw) and on Accessibility for what Microsoft define as the "physically challenged".
There's also an early chapter on designing your SharePoint site by using a very expensive Adobe Product (Photoshop).
This seems completely mad if you want to sell a lot of copies of a book as most people will not have this Adobe product and will certainly not feel like buying it in order to do the design. Yet the use of this product is even listed on the back cover and although at the start of the chapter there's mention that you can also use other cheaper (or free) products to do the same kind of thing, all they seem to use is that expensive product.
At the moment therefore I'm at a loss as to who ought to buy this book. Should people who want the SPD content buy it instead of a book dedicated to SPD (Hardly)? Should people specialising in Search buy it for the one Search chapter (actually the answer is probably yes, but that answer applies only to serious search specialists)? Should people wanting to know about Accessibility for the physically challenged buy it for that single chapter (imo, No)? Should people wanting information on standard MOSS functionality buy it for those chapters when there are so many other MOSS books out there both for developers and non-developers (I doubt it) ?
In other words whereas the Search book is a slam dunk buy if you want lots of Search information, with this one you'd better look at the Design book closely in a bookshop and decide if enough of it is about things you are interested in. If I were buying, I'd only buy this as a third or fourth (or fifth or sixth or ...) to add to my other more specific books.
P.S. The Amazon web site shows at present four 5 star reviews and one three star one. So far without giving it enough time, I'm inclined to side with the three star reviewer who seems to have expected what Heather Solomon indicated in her foreword, but what she got was - as i've tried to indicate above - something else.
My own Amazon review will have to wait until I've given the book as a lot more time. The Photoshop chapter alone ensures that it won't be getting 5 stars but 4 is still possible if the quality of the other chapters matches the quality of the Search chapter - despite the lack of real focus of the book as a whole.