Drumbeat 2000 For Dummies?

As Macromedia have now announced how Drumbeat is going to evolve I understand the Teach Yourself book has been withdrawn. Having done the 'Getting Started' tutorial in Drumbeat and having read parts of the manual I was still unclear how the various Drumbeat concepts fit together - the contracts/activations/interactions. This book solved that quickly by walking me through sample applications, at first with the DataForm Wizard and then without. I did my first data-driven web application in a matter of hours!

Lesson 1. Drumbeat 2000 is NOT for Dummies. On the contrary, it is for tough guys. No weenies allowed. It is powerful, but commands respect. it works like nothing else, but you don't need nothing else to use it. Lesson 2. Tough guys need documentation too. They just don't read it. Unless they have to.Lesson 3. There are no other forms of documentation, just 60mbs of greek (the built-in doc.) Tough guys can read greek. But sometimes they like english too. This is english.Lesson 4. Whilst you are pulling your hair to become a Jedi DB2K Master, you will consider the 30 bucks to airfreight this to your door, the best deal since Anakin pulled that fast one. Lesson 5. Maybe you think you don't need this. Maybe you're a tough guy and a friggin genius too. Then go install SAP while me and the boys are getting down with DB 2000.

I'm about 320 pages into the book and I've learned a lot already. I've been able to learn about the more difficult concepts(for me) such as content tables and making queries. Also you have to consider for the price you get a great fast start to drumbeat.

As a new user of Drumbeat I welcome all the documentation I can find. This book does help to fill in some of the gaps in the documentation provided with the software. The book offers easy-to-follow examples and explains the Drumbeat components in a way that makes it easy to understand. Kudos to the authors.

I don't know if the book is perfect. I can't tell. I am one of the great unwashed that cannot write a pearl script. This book and this software (a complete trial version is included) consigns those possessing that knowledge to the great trash heaps of history; along with those possessing such other minutae as "Basic for the Commodore 64", who played 3rd base for the NY Mets in '61, how to calculate an integral, how to do square roots by hand, and well you get my drift. This is the herald of a new age, and you better climb on if you know what's good for you. So what if you can write all this crap by hand (HTML code, ASP code)? Who is going to pay you to do it, if I can do it in one 20th the time? Oh you probably still think Fortran is the way to write statistics programs.Now this book.... This book is the ONLY reference work for this masterpiece of a language. And a LANGUAGE it is. You can actually develop web based applications in it. The authors should be academically praised as this book represents true scholarship in bringing this great program/language to light. The references are consise, the examples are illuminating, it is a thorough treatment, and did I mention that it is the only reference out there?BTW, it does NOT read like one of the Dummies books. It must have been a labor of love. The CD is chocked with stuff even us uptodate folks might not have. How about; IE 5.0, Netscape 4.5, Acrobat 4.0, Paint shop pro 5.03, all kinds of other site examples, and documentation from the drumbeat site. Sure it's all out there if you've got the time and patience, but here it is on CD.OK... Platitudes aside. Why should you buy this book?1. It's shipping. 2. It allows you to do things that only nerds versed in MULITPLE arcane strategies can do. (Database, web design, cgi, active server pages, visual basic scripts.) 3. It cost $20 bucks. You'll feel guilty and probably have to write a review too! 4. Saves you the 4 hour download of the trial version. (What you WEREN'T going to download the trial version? Haven't you been listening?) 5. You know a good thing when you see one. 6. You understand that the first 4 reviewers are morons. 7. You ain't.Now go do it!