Regina Obe has just announced that PostGIS in Action book website launched. It is http://postgis.us
postgis dot us
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Tag Archives: book
Talking about data races
My countryman Bartosz Milewski – the author of one of the best C++ introductory books – the C++ In Action posted video with very interesting talk about Ownership Systems against Data Races (video is here).
Interestingly, Bartosz proposes to understand the battle with data races as a discipline-driven programming that helps, mostly C+ programmers, to avoid all this horrible pitfalls. Moreover, Bartosz presents programmers with a well-designed methodology based on types system as a tool that may guard programs against injury from data races problem and with success.
Basically (and not surprisingly) Bartosz recommends think first, act later kind of approach based on detailed analysis of what might be causing data races in your program, on identification of potential sources of data race problems. This approach is a contrary to spending hours searching for data races conditions using debugger.
The data race problem is a complex subject, but – in my opinion – Bartosz explains it in a very accessible step-by-step form. Three words summary of Bartosz’ lecture and the presented methodology is: sharing + mutability + no synchronisation = data race
Spatial Relations for Dummies
My friend Jo asked on GEOS mailing list for approachable explanation of spatial relations and Dale Lutz from Safe Software suggested something I’ve not came across myself before and what (in generalised form) I’d consider as a great idea for…a book really :-)
PostGIS In Action
It really must be very hot and fresh news, so the virtual devil spirit of social networking hasn’t fished it out yet and also Google (check this if you haven’t heard yet about this local family company) lists less than 15 pages.
PostGIS provides over 300 spatial operators, spatial functions, spatial data types and spatial indexing enhancements. If you add to the mix the complimentary features that PostgreSQL and other PostgreSQL related projects provide, then you’ve got one jam-packed powerhouse at your disposal well suited for hardcore work as well as a valuable training tool for spatial concepts.
Three words: PostGIS In Action. The first book about PostGIS spatial database being written by Regina O. Obe and Leo S. Hsu with release planned for the beginning of 2010. First chapter of the book has been published and is freely available as PDF file through the Manning Early Access Program. Chapter two and three are also available for MAEP subscribers.
Next to the early access, another cool thing about the way Manning Publications release their books is possibility to comment chapters and discuss with authors directly through Manning Sandbox forums. There is no exception for the PostGIS in Action :-)
Update 2009-05-08T23:08:21+00:00: The book official announcement has been posted on postgis-devel and postgresqlonline.com.
I’m looking forward to grab the book!
Pierre, check the TOC for chapter thirteen. Cool, isn’t it?
C++ Concurrency in Action
By the beginning of the year 2009, new must-read book for C++ hackers is rolling around. Anthony Williams is writing book titled: C++ Concurrency in Action (ISBN: 1933988770):
I will be covering all aspects of multithreaded programming with the new C++0x standard, from the details of the new C++0x memory model and atomic operations to managing threads and designing parallel algorithms and thread-safe containers. The book will also feature a complete reference to the C++0x Standard Thread Library.
from Anthony’s blog
Since June, Anthony’s book is available through Manning Early Access Program. The final release is planned on February 2009.
In the meantime, Anthony has published an article Simpler Multithreading in C++0x introducing multithreading support and thread library as a new feature in the C++0x standard.
Extended STL
The Extended STL is a new C++ book written by Matthew Wilson. The first volume Collections and Iterators will be available in June 2007. Second volume Algorithms, Functions and Exotic Matter been also planned but it is still very much up in the air. The book will discuss:
principles and practices of STL extension, many of which are used in the implementation of the STLSoft libraries
The first Matt Wilson’s book – The Imperfect C++ – presented C++ language programming in a very practical way. This book has two faces. It is a C++ introductory book and it also presents various C++ weaknesses and their solutions at the same time. The Extended STL will be a kind of continuation and focus on the Standard Template Library. According to my understanding, Matt will try to present programmers with solutions of how to use C++ techniques and STL concepts with existing code bases and technologies, for instance how to use STL collections with COM objects.
Certainly, the range of topics will be much wider. As presented in the TOC, most of must-understand concepts will be presented there, like RAII, constraints and contract programming, and much more.
I think the new book will also be a perfect completion to Nicolai M. Josuttis’ The C++ Standard Library – A Tutorial and Reference.
New edition of ATL Internals book
Every programmer using ATL and WTL knows that ATL Internals is a must-read book providing comprehensive background information about ATL.
ATL is my favourite library to use as a base for Windows development. It helps to solve wide variety of problems, on both sides: client and server, especially strongly simplifies creation of COM components. ATL-based binaries are very small and robust. ATL is also an underlaying layer for WTL which is a GUI toolkit, light-weight and modern alternative to MFC.