Finance-Software

If you are looking for a clearly written, step-by-step lesson on how to get going with TradeStation EasyLanguage, this is not your book. I bought it for that reason, but found TradeStation's own "Becoming Fluent in EasyLanguage" far superior. Get this book if you want 200 pages of examples of trading strategies that worked for their authors.
"200 pages?" you say. Yes, about half of the book is dedicated to the title subject. Another 200 pages of "stuff" was inexplicably tacked on. A stock option course, interviews with traders, and appendices from EasyLanguage online reference. The book is so poorly edited that it refers to Appendix A as a function list, but the appendix is actually a much less useful list of syntax errors. Typos throughout.

The systems are very good.
You will of course need to tune them, but I am generally very impressed.
The prose is also very good, and I have much better insight about how to design systems like this.

The only downside is that the code fragments in the book
1) are not available for download on the web, which is just silly in this day and age;
2) are very poorly edited; they contain syntax errors and obvious bugs.

So poor technical editing, but great content.

"Building Winning Trading Systems With TradeStation" is brand new and probably the best 'Intro to EasyLanguage' currently available other than the manuals TradeStation itself offers. The title suggests it is a strategy book, but the 'strategy' section is only about 50 pages of a 375 page book. The rest of the text is a good intro to TradeStation, EasyLanguage and trading, including tips on debugging, performance reports, StopLoss exits and other somewhat obscure topics.

Other EasyLanguage guides are somewhat dated (though, I still find them interesting). Check out "Ask Mr. EasyLanguage" and "Using Easy Language" if you want to comparison shop.

Much of the book can be found elsewhere, particularly the online TradeStation manuals. 90 pages of appendix comes straight from the online 'EasyLanguage Reference Guide' (a pdf file). What is unique about the book is the 'system development' perspective. The online guides offer little or no help developing trading systems.

The CD contains the code described in the book. The code could have been put on 2 floppy disks, but I guess a CD is cheaper and saves space.

Table of Contents:
1. Fundamentals (What is EasyLanguage?) pg 1-29
2. EasyLanguage Program Structure pg 30-38
3. Program Control Structures (if-then-else) pg 39-51
4. TradeStation Analysis Techniques pg 52-75
5. System Performance pg 77-108
6. Trading Strategies pg 109-156
7. Debugging pg 157-166
8. Research topics pg 168-193
9. Percent Change Charts (Jan Arps) pg 194-200
10. Options pg 201-227
11. Interviews with EasyLanguage Developers pg 228-276
12. Appendix pg 283-380
13. Index pg 381-389

A Data Warehouse and CRM consultant I was finally expecting the industry reference that would present the role of the Data Warehousing in CRM in clear terms and with authority.

In many sense, this is the right book : it provides a broad and knowledgeable overview of the various CRM tools and architecture and how they interact.

The problem is that it goes slightly beyond by replacing Data Warehouse by the "Corporate Information Factory" (CIF) Inmon and Inhoff framework which is anything but cristal clear because it adds the Operational Data Store in the picture without answering the real question : why an ODS rather than process automation through EAI ? The book has a whole chapter on the ODS subject but you do not find a real answer to the "do I need one ?" question

If you have to do a project after, you might want to read "Designing a Data Warehouse : Supporting Customer Relationship Management" by Chris Todman, very similar title but more data modeling and project oriented.

Dr. Imhoff, with this book has provided a roadmap for turning your information technology infrastructure into an invaluable toolkit for providing customer-focused applications for your company. If your company follows the guidelines provided within this text the results can be a fully integrated, single version of the truth; view of your customer base, which of course is the basis for successful Customer Relationship Management. The emphasis on integration, quality and detail data is vital, if your company is to provide the much sought after one-to-one customer relationship, which in today's volatile business environment has become a necessity. If you read only one book on CRM, be sure this text is your "bible" for building the customer centric enterprise.

If I had to recommend one book on CRM this would be it. This is, by far, the best book I have read that ties together the business and technology aspects of CRM. It does this in a meaty kind of way that leaves you satisfied but not stuffed. True, this is not a book that technologists are going to use to learn how to do dimensional modeling or build an ODS. It's also not a book that is filled with anecdotes and strategic discussions about the value of customer loyalty and retention. What it does do though, is show how the technology is related to the business, and vice versa, with a good amount of detail. If you just read the technology or business specific books there is a tendancy to see the trees and miss the forest. This book shows just the right amount of both. I particularly appreciate the fact that this is a pretty dense book content-wise. Every chapter has something of value and is related to the subject of the book. There are an appropriate amount of illuminating illustrations and the filler (endless appendixes, references, project plans, case studies, off subject topics, etc.) that is far to commonplace, is kept to a minimum. Executives, Managers and Project Leaders from both inside and outside of I/T would do well to start their education here before embarking on any CRM-type projects.

This book as become my day-to-day bible to managing a professional service division within our product-oriented company. If you have your objectives and strategy clear, this book will help you getting organized with the tactics.

This book is "just what the doctor ordered" for anyone trying to develop a Professional Services(PS) organization that is aligned with other functional groups and the overall mission of a product company. It also should be required reading for any leader moving for the first time from a stand-alone PS company to head up a PS organization within a product company.
I found it to provide easy to read, practical guidance on what the components of the PS organization should be, what the mission and profitability drivers should be, key organizational interfaces and how it should be measured.
Also, this book was reviewed, chapter by chapter, by all PS leaders as well as other functional leaders within the company, to develop a "lessons learned" document as part of a services strategic planning process. Invaluable assistance!

I bought the book because I needed to startup a software engineering group within our established PS organization. The book provided very good insight in how a PS organization should run within a Product Company. It provide good food for thought in understanding the difference between a standalone PS organization and one attached to a Product Company. The content opened some eyes within our organization and reset some expectations. The book also validated some of the processes and focus of the existing PS organization. If you are starting up a PS organization from the ground up I recommend this book. If you have a PS organization already in place, within a product company, I also recommend this book to validate your current focus.

I have read all of Robert Wysocki's books and this is by far his best. He's written a book that every Project Manager--rookie or seasoned pro--needs to read in order to improve his projects' success rates. As a PM with over 15 years of experience, I've had my share of projects derail or blow up and in many cases, poor alignment of the project team to the project was a significant cause. This book shows how to assemble the ideal team based on thinking styles and personality types for any given project. The chapters that covered problem solving and conflict management were especially insightful.

A great concept for a book. However, I was disappointed. I had hoped to find something that would address the issues faced in building a double entry accounting system in Access.

Instead I found something that missed the mark in terms of Access -- Access 97 Power Programming, Access Bible, and the VBA books by Getz et al. hit this mark much better -- and missed the mark in terms of accounting -- no discussion of how to integrate a chart of accounts, the authors dismissed the need for double-entry bookings and never developed it, and then the book only addressed a couple of the accounting cycles.

I awarded two stars because the book would have been a good book if I were just learning what a table was in a relational database and I had an avid interest in accounting and only wanted to get a feel for what the other book written by these two authors by almost the same title was like.

However, I do applaud the attempt for someone with an accounting background to write a book that might help others better understand accounting and apply it using an application that is so readily avaliable.

I found this book to be very practically oriented and extremely helpful for me to understand new trends in budgeting, but most of all to help me plan for the purchase and implementation of a new budgeting software in our corporation. It helped us find qualified vendors, and the attached RFP (which also was downloadable as a Word file from the publisher's Web-site) literally saved us thousands of dollars by eliminating the need to write an RFP from scratch. I also found the various report examples, contract examples and the sample project plan very useful. Overall, this was the only book I have found on modern budgeting and budgeting software, and I was pleasantly surprised how helpful it has been to us.