Distributed Computing Books

This book concentrates on the design and philosophy behind SAP's R/3 system. As such, it has a more theoretical than practical focus, but it is well written and very useful to understanding how the system works. This is the English edition of a book originally published in German.

The book is very good if you are interested in the technology behind client server systems. The first half of the book deals with this. In the second half SAP is explained, the technology and the business applications. Altogether a good introduction for a technical oriented person into the world of client server technology, especially the SAP r3 client server approach and possibilties for business solutions.

This book was of enormous help to me in my certification pursuits. The only problem is that this book is always sold out because everyone wants a copy of it!

I hope there is more stock of this book and that the author writes another edition of this book as it is the only SAP book I could ever find that covers everything I needed.

Really terrific resource that is very highly recommended for anyone interested in getting certified in SAP R/3.

I am a certified Consultant with 5 years of experience in the field of SAP and I must say that this book is the most worthless material I have ever seen. And one word to the SAP contacts at the SAP Department, who are supposed to help you.

I know SAP in Walldorf quite good and they would never give out contact details in that form. Furthermore I hope that no one wants to humilate himself by getting in contact with SAP and refer to that garb. Book.

I am very disappointed about this book's presentation. The book is about SAP Certification, but nothing for the real SAP certification. All the questions have long-wasted english sentances. If this is the sample of SAP certification, then we need 1 week to complete the exam. It is USELESS MATERIAL.

Perhaps I paid too much expectation on this book. I thought it will give you a lot of simulated questions to simulate SAP certificate exam, but it turns out only to give you a brief explaination about SAP NOT for CERTIFICATION. I am very disappointed for this book. Besides, the answer for each question is far from the reality. That is to say, in the SAP certificate exam, NO ONE IS GOING TO WRITE 3 OR 4 LINES OF ENGLISH SENTENCES TO ANSWER EVEN A SIMPLE QUESTION. FOR WHAT? As most of people who are interested in SAP certificate exam know that SAP certificate exam have most questions in multiple choices. The SAP certificate exam is to test people's professional knowledge NOT to test the level of English writting.

This book claims to have certification tips and questions.Truth is it does not. I donated the book to a guy in a training session as he was planning to buy one. I am glad i got rid of the book. The guy to whom i donated passed the donation to another prospective buyer. The best source for certification questions would be sites like sapfans where you can get much more help for certification and FREE!!!

I purchased this book with the 70-029 exam in mind. Dislike other reviewers I didn't have any experience in Microsoft SQL Server, I was migrating from the AI/X DB2 world. This book is superficial in important aspects like index tunning and distributed queries. I finally had to adopt a different strategy based on sample tests and Microsoft Books On Line to pass the 70-029 with a less than satisfactory 755 mark.

It should have 4.5 stars. This book is great for learning everything you need to know for getting SQL Sever 7.0 up and running (and I mean running not walking). This book is a well structured course that takes you through all the way for implementing databases on SQL Server. The only con I found is that It promotes Client-server arquitecture and has no mention on n-tier system (except for the beginning where it's barely mentioned). But at the end this is a very good book for learning SQL 7 administration .

The explanations are easy enough to follow along. The SQL code works for the chapters I read. I'd recommend it especially at the Amazon used price.

Everything the other reviewers have said is true. Regardless, I looked for something better and came back to this book. Today I passed 70-029 and added an MCDBA to my MCSE. Be prepared to be tenacious with this material. It took me a year of catch-as-catch can study. This book should be your main study material with Transcender exams your proof of understanding. However, if you're just starting, go directly to SQL 2000 and skip SQL 7.0. From a job perspective, the best part of SQL is that it's in demand, and there aren't many people who can pass the exam.

The SQL exams are designed for experienced users. For those, like myself, without experience, be prepared to spend a little more time than the other exams getting ready for this one. Based on all of the information I gathered, including the exam itself, I agree with the general sentiments,"It is a hard exam, not due to the difficult level of questions, but from the lack of information available." I used Sybex, Microsoft Press, Exam Cram, and Readiness Review, along with the transcender software. While I passed, on the first try, it highlighted the deficiencies of the study guides. Recommendation: The Books OnLine on the Trial SQL CD-ROM and / or the "Inside SQL" by Microsoft Press (title may be a little off...) came through as strong candidates to help you get your MCDBA. As a DB novice the Microsoft Readiness Review was helpful in understanding the logic behind choosing say clustered vs. non clustered indexes; and using entity relationships with normalization to improve performance. RE: SQL Admin, however, I found the Microsoft Press dual titles on SQL Admin and SQL Design to be very useful; after the Admin exam unfortunately... Hopefully, this may be of some benefit for you. Best of luck!

This book still gives comprehensive understanding about core functionality of R/3 FI/CO module. The version does not matter because no matter which version you use, you can still figure out the changes and you can always find the screens and tabs since the transaction code has not changed. I would like to translate it in Japanese, too (may need some addition about local setting though).
It would be great if it covers a little more about Group chart of account, consolidation unit ('trading partner', still valid for SEM-BCS), FI-AA fixed asset module, and eventually New G/L which was added to FI/CO recently. CO-PC Product Costing, too. May become too thick in that case...

I bought this book years ago and still important in my day by day, I strongly recommend this boot, for beginers and also guys with large experience.

Eventhough its R3 config, it is a very good guide for all the configuration, it has the functionalities in layman terms and could get you out of trouble on those "let me try to land your business case on the system and do some testing" or "let me check about it" swings with your customer or PM. ;-) also works great as a self defense weapon.

PS: Does not tell you how to build the Origamy phoenix in the cover. :-S

I started using this book after buying almost an year.It started helping me immensely in a new project with merger of company codes and using Business Area reporting. It would be of great help if the book is updated with the current ECC versions. Perhaps a bit of explanations on the Asset Accounting will add some punch to the existing strength.

This book may not cover all the topics in FICO but keeping in mind that there is no other product in the market which explains the functionality of FI and CO modules, one has to agree that this is the best book available on this subject.
I am not sure if the authors added any new material to this one in the last 2 years, but as far as my knowledge, this book did not cover "Asset accounting", "Profitability analysis" and "Product costing". But, for anybody who is planning to know the basic functionalities of these modules this is the best book to start with.
The screenshots do not matter a lot as no matter which version you are on , you can still figure out the changes and you can always find the screens and tabs as the transaction codes haven't changed.
It would be great if this book is revised and if the authors can explain the new general ledger structure released in ECC 6.0. There is not much stuff out there on this topic.

It is a good guide to begin a good SAP performance.

It's difficult to keep up with all the changes,impact, and new tools that Netweaver technology is requiring for configuring and maintaining the environments. I think that this book has merit in that it stick with some of the aspects and tasks that have not changed as much, and gives an update to some of the older information. For the $$ it is a good book.

This book provides no real usable knowledge about SAP. There is absolutely no information on some areas, such as CATT's. And the areas that have some meat have only bologna.

One of my long standing complaints about computer software books is that they so often eliminate the first forty pages or so that explain just what this software is and what is supposed to do. This book (at 606 pages it's a lot more than forty pages) is essentially the front end description that explains what SAP ERP is and what it si supposed to do.

The subtitle of the book is 'Essential Skills for SAP Technical Consultants.' It appears to be aimed at the individual who is trying to decide what SAP can do for them. It's much less concerned with the detail of how to do it.

I found this to be of great help, as SAP is a huge software system. It has perhaps a thousand components (does anyone really know) from various vendors that can be tied together to handle most ERP problems. If you're going to use SAP, just which of all these components are you going to pull together to solve your particular set of problems.

After you know what you're trying to do, then there are other books and manuals that will give you the details about how to do it. So if at this point you are wondering just what is the difference between SAP R/3, and mySAP.com, and SAP Web Application Server, and SAP NetWeaver, this is the place to start. All in all, it's good to see such a book. I hope this is a trend getting started and that we can see other books coming on other big software packages that's more aimed at what can be done.

This edition appears to be about 1/3 the size of previous editions; and refers to a fairly old version of SAP... even though this was released in Dec 2005.
There is a great many things missing here. SPAM... I guess you do not need that any more.
Perhaps the publishers wanted a book for managers.

Anyway, if you are considering this, get the 2nd edition... or buy one of the many that are used, as I expect there will be many BASIS admins selling this back the day after they purchase it.
Sorry... I was hoping for an updated version of Edition 2.

Hi

This is to the authors of this book:
Since I bought this book a few months ago and it is a good book for version 6.1

However, with 7.0 available...could you tell about your plans for an upgrade chapter/electronic chapters for those of us who actually need to catch up on 7.0 ?

If a book becomes obsolete (may be not the right word here - but meaning a book deals with older technology) this quickly....would you support your readers?

Thanks
Ravi

If you prefer print version of the online documentation here it is. Unfortunately, not much content in addition to that online component. Provides a solid introduction to weblogic and j2ee, although does not go into depth in any particular topic.

This book is certainly good. Very detailed. And it is cool.
But mind you this for Weblogic 7.0. and NOT 8.1.

And another thing is that the errata is not available for this book anywhere and there are some mistakes in the text/code.

If you are new to WebLogic and/or are somewhat mystified by J2EE buy this book. It's a great resource and it is totally worth the money. It helps you get up and running quickly without getting too bogged down in all the BEA documentation. I found the overview of the J2EE technologies very enriching and the demonstration of WebLogic's value proposition and capabilities easy to digest. It also has some very helpful and practical suggestions for working out some thorny issues with WebLogic server such as class loaders, deployment etc. I'm constantly referring to it. The author has really done his homework and has done a valuable service to the WebLogic developer community by writing this book. When I had a question regarding some portions of the text I emailed the author and he responded within hours! He not only helped answer my question but also pointed me in the right direction where I could do additional research. It's nice to see someone stand by their work like that.

like so many computer books, this is about 4 pounds of stuffing: w2k screen shots, very simple j2ee code examples, &c. if you want to learn EJB, get a real EJB book like Monson-Haefel (0-596-00226-2). for weblogic, stick to online docs.

It is a good book as a reference, but not advisable as a tutorial.

This book is a great primer for those who have some general programming knowlege, and who are self starters. I have gone through three other similar books, and found this to be the most useful. It will get you started, but you will quickly yearn for more meat and examples, which can be found in the next book in the series.

Though it does say introduction to ABAP I guess I was expecting more, for instance the book dosn't even review the ABAP editor until a three page appendix in the back of the book. Many pages of the book are wasted repeating program code but never really reviewing what is going on. There never really is a mention of how to manipulate tables in this book so if you need to work with anything other then internal tables (who doesn't) you'll have to find the information elsewhere.

Like every other book for ABAP beginners, this one only covers version 3.x of SAP. We're installing 4.6b, so I'm not sure how much it will help. If you have the 3.x version of SAP, it's not a bad book.

I attended the ABAP academy and received certification. Prior to the academy I read this book. I found it to be better than nothing but other students found the ABAP Objects book to be more current. The ABAP Object book also provides a demo R3 system. This allows the student to practice at home and be more creative. Win 2000 and MS SQL 2000 are required for the demo version. Go with ABAP Objects.

Amazon delivered the book in the exact same condition as advertised. It came on time as well. I am happy

This book is good for walking you through the basics. It is weak at providing insights into the product. A section on trouble shooting would be helpful.

I recommend this book because the author distinguishes multidimensional concepts and the OLAP tool.

Gab.

I will say this breifly:

1. You are not going to learn more from this book than from the books on line included with sql server 2000.
2. The fact that the example of writing a cube from Excel didn't work makes me feel complete frustration. It was the reason why i bought this book.

However the book is not bad if you are new to olap technics. It is a good introduction.

(...)

I recently bought this book and have read about 7 chapters. The book is useful to get hands-on experience on how the Analysis Manager works. How can you use it to make basic cubes, dimensions etc. Also, there is a couple of chapters on MDX and the MDX sample application that comes with Analysis Services. In general I found the book useful because it made me familiar with the UI of Analysis Manager, but reading the book was hard. True to its name "Step by Step" the book focuses on "How to do things" (like click here , click there, heres the screen shot you should expect to see) without explaining in ANY detail about why you are doing what you are doing. There is no gradual build-up of concepts. If a chapter says it will take you 2.5 hours to complete, it will take that much time because of the step-by-step nature. I personally find this approach hard to follow. I would have liked if the book devoted a few pages in the beginnign of the chapter explaining the concepts and then went on to show you how to do this with the analysis manager.

Passed yesterday. Hardest exam I ever took - period. Well done Coriolis, thanks.

This text does an excellent job covering the topics included in the exam. Many of the end-of-chapter practice questions were nearly identical to the (pre-adaptive) exam. Also, the structure of all the practice questions are identical to the exam. I also liked how the text regularly alerted the reader to test related distinctions.

On the down side, it contains a number of mistyped text and technical nomenclature. For example, MB appears in a few places when GB was clearly intended based upon the surrounding context. The frequency of such typos left me worrying about other unrecognized mistakes I could not contextually infer. Better editing is needed. Unfortunately, the Coriolis web site refused my connection when I attempted to check for corrections and addendums to the text.

Nevertheless, I learned a great deal from the text and am quite pleased overall. Unlike that ruinous study guide by Stephen Bigelow, this text is worth of its title as an exam study guide.

This is an excellent study guide for the exam. I passed, but what a test. Beleive everything you hear about it being hard.

Passed on first try Friday but just barely. Used only this book and truly read it from cover to cover. Also used some transcender sample questions and another Certification Bible CD for quizzing. The actual exam was harder than any practice questions I used. CompTIA's wordings were inverted and they actually test for thorough working knowledge rather than making sure I memorized any questions. All the info needed is contained in this fine prep book but a complete understanding of what I read was mandatory. Before studying this or the Server+ Certification Bible, I highly recommend, as I did, reading the real Bible. Then you'll have everything needed to pass the exam!

Having taken over 14 certification exams I can say that I have never seen one as odd as the Server+. Fortunately I passed and for that I was grateful. I really didnt want to take it again.

I was impressed with the Server+ Exam Prep and felt that it prepared me very well for the test. The content is spot on and I agree with the Amazon review that it is written by a couple of knowledgable techs. The casual style works well and the occassional joke reminds you that you can have laugh about certian aspects of IT at the same time as taking it seriously.

One last observation that has nothing to do with the book - Why do CompTIA have to charge so much for the exams? $190 for an exam from a not-for-profit organization seems steep. Just my 2 cents.

There is not a whole lot of information in this book. Even when the author is trying to present some information, it is not done in a clear and understandable way. Really disappointed.

Oh..My book is split into two piece

This book was my primary learning tool for Exchange. Redmond obviously knows this product. Unlike MCSE certification books (two of which I also read for exam prep), his is truly a real-world best practice authority (instead of limited to Microsoft's perspective). It's like having an experienced mentor on the subject. I believe it could have been written more concisely (especially the first half), and the index at the end is way too brief--otherwise five stars.

This was precisely the type of book I was looking for. Having been an Exchange admin for a while, I was searching for a book that goes into detail about the actual mechanics of Exchange. I knew the basic 'how to's' of administration, I wanted to know the 'why's'.

It really goes into a great deal of detail, and it might not be the best book for a new admin (all the required information is there, but there is so much data it may overwhelm) but combined with a basic admin book, it's really worth the investment (even for someone starting out).

I wish I'd had the book 2 years ago!

By now most IT pros know Exchange 5.5 is a vast product. The implications are a "New World Order" for IT. Benefit from Tony's rich experience (he came from Exchange-implementation-award-winning DEC when Compaq bought them, like I did, too). Understand this book is exactly what it says and what you need to do foremost: PLAN! Other books were better at helping me earn by MCSE with Exchange elective. It's the definitive bible for Exchange implementations. I've seen it on more CIO and IT managers' desks than any other single publication.