Leisure Lines - Books

All I Really Need to Know in Business I Learned at Microsoft

expert. Microsoft has been a phenomenally successful business over the past 20 years or so. Now, Julie Bick, a former manager at Microsoft, has written a book which claims to contain "insider strategies to help you succeed".

The book is divided into five main sections covering: running a business, doing a good job, being a good boss, communicating, and managing your career. Each is divided into short lessons of one or two pages. So, for example, the section on being a good boss has chapters entitled "Communicate the Strategy", "Give your Team Time" and "Give your Team a Hill to Climb".

Most of the chapters are illustrated by little anecdotes showing how to do it the Microsoft way. Some are a little nauseating, but there are plenty of good ideas too, like this one: "At Microsoft, marketeers and salespeople are expected to be able to convincingly explain the positioning and benefits of their product in 30 seconds. This is called the elevator test - that is , if you found yourself in an elevator with the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and wanted to sell him or her on your product, could you do it in the time of the elevator ride?"

The fact that all the anecdotes revolve around Microsoft makes the book more compelling. Unfortunately, attempts at humour tend to be of the smug, west-coast variety in which Microsofties major. But it does the job for anyone who's interested in business and wants to do it better.

Ben Tisdall

Inside Relational Databases

For the past four years, Mark Whitehorn has written the Hands On Databases column in PCW. For the last couple he's also been working on his book, Inside Relational Databases. Some of the material in the book has appeared in Mark's column over the years, albeit in a slightly different format.

All the examples used are based on Microsoft Access and included on the CD accompanying the book.

But the book is more than just another souped-up Access manual. It takes the trouble to explain things from more or less first principles. It starts naturally enough with "the father of relational databases", Dr Edgar (Ted) Codd, and his famous rules, and moves on to explain main concepts like tables, forms, queries and reports by using practical examples. As the book progresses, more complex topics are tackled, moving towards creating multi-table, multi-user databases. The result is a book that packs in lots of information but manages to remain readable. Or as readable as a book about databases ever can be.

Ben Tisdall

PCW DETAILS

All I Really Need to Know in Business I Learned at Microsoft

Author Julie Bick

Publisher Simon & Schuster

Price #9.99

ISBN 0-684-82124-9

Inside Relational Databases

Author Mark Whitehorn & Bill Marklyn

Publisher Springer Verlag

Price See p320 for the special PCW offer price

ISBN 3-540-76092-X.