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Rating: 
Summary: Excellent college text book
Review: As an adjunct professor of systems and database design, I use Hoffer's text in my master's level courses. It covers a huge breadth of topics in sufficient detail to give students a basic understanding, even if we completely skip the large numbers of case histories. I'm particularly pleased with its illustrations and the manner in which it handles the zillions of disparate diagramming methods available for system design. I'm happy enough with it as a classroom text that I use it as a reference for my day-job as a computer consultant. Strongly reccomended.
Rating:
Summary: not cheap, but worth-to-buy book.
Review: I just finished a system analysis & design course with this text book. A through-semester project was also done. Actually, I had a chance to compare severals book on System Analysis & Design. My bottom line for this book is that this book is the one currently most worth to buy. Its throughful and easy-to-understand explanation for each SDLC step, how it's applied in real business situation and all possible tools for each step, such as CASE, JAD, DFDs, E-R diagrams (Flankly, i think ER diagrams of this book need more improvement..) and so on. All are really good to catch out clear concept to understand 'what is the system analysis & design' and 'how it works'. If you want to buy a book delivering clear concepts of system analysis and design and how it works in real business situation. I recommend this book. But, If you want very specific, in-dept or new-kids-on-the-block kind of topics for System analysis & design, I don't recommend.
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Summary: A Surprise
Review: I was just reading some of the other reviews and was surprised to discover this text is also used for Master's level classes. I'm pursuing my BSIS through distance learning, and this book was used for a recent class. Although I sometimes struggle with reading texts because they are not as exciting as the nearest fiction book, this was surprisingly easy to make it through. I didn't get lost in long paragraphs and obscure explanations. It gets a great big thumbs up from me!
Rating: 
Summary: Core Fundamentals Explained in Depth
Review: Jeffrey Hoffer put together a strong book with his co-authors. I have not only used this text in the class room, but have had Hoffer as a professor. Let me be the first to say that this man knows his stuff. Beyond that, this book was amazing, it has covered anything in the systems analysis and design stages that I have seen and used in the real world. Unfortunatly his focus during codeing programs, is on CASE rather than modelers (Which is becomming a stronger trend in more innovative, fast-paced markets).
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty Good
Review: This is a good book as these things go. It's not an easy read, for reasons I'm not all that sure why, but it's chock full of decent stuff. The chapters on logical & physical database design in particular make a hard slog out of what many already know intuitively. There's the wiff of big IS departments about this book - an environment which has largely had its day. Real systems development just doesn't work as methodically or logically as presented here. I was, however, impressed with how the author would admit real-world reasons for why the presented theories don't always happen. Its biggest problem is its size. A condensed version could take the most salient points and be half the size of this tome, and the rest could be put in another add-on book. It would be much easier to read physically, and probably seem less intimidating. The index is pretty ordinary. If they ever do a 4th edition, this is one area that needs work. Terms like "Physical Context Diagram", "intelligent key" are dropped in the text, but not indexed. Actually, "intelligent key' is never even explained.
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