Distributed Computing Books

While the book does a very good job of laying out options for building distributed environments, it falls far short in some critical areas. Neither directories, security, PKI, nor directory enabled networks (DEN) are adequately covered. As a matter of fact only security receives any coverage at all.

Security has 11 entries in the index, but none go beyond defining the role of security. There is no mention of how to implement security in a distributed environment.

Directories are not even listed in the index. Directories are crucial to the management and security of networks in a distributed environment. The directory enabled network (DEN) initiative is a standard interoperable approach that will be widely supported (if vendors are to be believed). DEN is absolutely necessary if distributed networks are to provide the reliability and security needed by enterprises.

Closely related to DEN is public key cryptography (PKI) which does not even show up in the index. Enterprises building extra-nets will need the security provided by the use of PKI.

These omissions cause me to give a low rating to an otherwise good book on distributed computing.

As someone who spent 24 years in "legacy" environments and who is now in the distributed world I found this book to be some of the most complete guides in print to making the transition.

What I really liked about this book is how the authors skillfully blended the descriptions of technologies in the distributed world with the methods and approach that characterize the "legacy" world. This is because distributed computing has a lot to offer from a technology point of view, but management of distributed systems lags behind the "legacy" world. My move was a lot like migrating from a predictable world of methods, processes and procedures to the wild west.

Some of the specific highlights were: very clear description of client/server systems and the underlying components. I personally gained a lot from the discussions on object technology, building distributed applications, and building extensible systems. The latter was especially useful to me because it exposed me to COM, Java and XML, and how these fit into the picture. Coming from a world where the standard buzzwords were CICS, JCL and the such I needed to fully understand the world in which I now work, and this book gave me an understanding of the technical underpinnings and their strengths and weaknesses.

Where this book blends the "legacy" and distributed worlds is in the chapters that deal with managing distributed systems. I gained two deep insights from this section: (1) managing distributed systems is a quantum leap in complexity from managing host-based systems, and (2) the processes and tools used to manage today's distributed systems have not reached the maturity of those that we used twenty years ago in the mainframe world. The authors did an excellent job of pointing out the challenges and realities of distributed systems management, and did a wonderful job of tying this to service level management using core business objectives as the bridge.

This book is truly a manager's guide that covers a lot of ground in technology and processes. It is too high-level for hand's-on technical folks who have worked in distributed environments, but is a wonderful source of information for people like myself who spent most of their career in mainframes and need to evolve into this wild environment called distributed computing. I enjoyed the book, gained a lot from it and recommend it to my former colleagues who are still in the "legacy" environment.

Chapter 7 of this book is excellent at covering the issues that are key to bridging the gap between IT and the Business Unit.

IT needs to measure "success" in terms of business-meaningful terms - this book (and chapter 7 in particular) helps redefine IT success and focus IT on the issues critical to business alignment in the coming years.

Ptak et al. have succeeded in cutting through the dark and mysterious world of information technology to present a thorough guide to all interested in the current state of enterprise computing. It is a practical and insightful work that will aid all in tackling these evolving and complex issues.

This book addresses the communication gap between business managers and technical IT managers. With minimal technical jargon it explains the issues and trends that IT wrestles with and tells in an understandable way how managers on both sides of the fence can more effectively work with and use their IT staff. It discusses the challenges of product selection without sounding preachy or being a vendor shell.

Derek Ball brings PB to developers in a comprehensive, straight-forward manner. The well-done organization, format, and figures make this guide worth reading from beginning to end. The Developer's Tips and appendices are truly useful tools and compliment the main text. Also, this guide's thorough index makes it an excellent reference. The only reason I didn't give it a ten is that it's weak on external DLL information, but then so is every other PB book I've found. Of the current PB books available this is, by far, the one I use most.

I found this to be an excellent book covering many intermediate and advanced topics. This book is definitely not for beginners unless you already have programming experience using Visual Basic, etc. The coverage of changes in PowerBuilder 6.0 with it's migration issue warnings is very helpful. I'm looking forward to using items mentioned in our applications. This will definitely be one of my well used books.

Derek Ball brings PB to developers in a comprehensive, straight-forward manner. The well-done organization, format, and figures make this guide worth reading from beginning to end. The Developer's Tips and appendices are truly useful tools and compliment the main text. Also, this guide's thorough index makes it an excellent reference. The only reason I didn't give it a ten is that it's weak on external DLL information, but then so is every other PB book I've found. Of the current PB books available this is, by far, the one I use most.

I read the version 5.0. It was an overview of PowerBuilder. Good for the managers but not good fro the programmers. The book was too shallow on PowerBuilder's strong features.

The content of the book was good. Overall I am pleased with it. The one flaw I have with the book is the number of errors in it. These errors range from spelling errors to grammatical errors to mislabeling of figures (charts) to errors in some of the coding examples. I would have expected the book to have been edited a little better than it was. I would have recommended the book but the publishers need to do a better job editing future editions.

This is a good reference/resource book.
Amazon is always great to deal with as well.

The only problem I had was that it was shipped unwrapped, in an open box, no packing, so the corners of the book were damaged. Unusal for Amazon.

I want to see detail in book power builder 9

If you are an advanced PB programmer you will not find much here unless you have been stuck in versions 6.5 (or maybe even 7 but less so) and earlier. The authors give a reasonable overview of the new IDE and source control integration. There is also discussion of the newer features such as Powerbuilder Native Interface, XML datawindows, command line deployment, and error handling. Over 200 pages are devoted to database connectivity which may be of interest if you support multiple platforms.

Aside from some minor factual errors and the occasional typo, the information and examples are concise and to the point (although many leave out even rudimentary error checking which is vital in any 'real' application).

I bought the book since there haven't been any 'real' PB books since version 7 and this one details the new IDE.

Authors

The 2 main authors of this book are Bruce Armstrong and Millard F. Brown III. If you are readers of the PBDJ magazine you will probably be familiar with these names. Both have also been involved with previous PowerBuilder book releases, are members of TeamSybase and have presented at user conferences around the world. Other contributing authors include a list of well known PowerBuilder experts such as Dave Fish, Bill Green, John Olsen, Roy Kiesler et al. The credentials of all the authors and co-authors of this book read like a Who's Who in PowerBuilder.

Book Overview

There are numerous books now available on PowerBuilder - this one does not aim to compete with these but to plug the gap in contents covered. PowerBuilder 9 - Advanced Client/Server Development zeroes in on some of the new features in this version including PBNI (native interface), XML datawindows, reworking of the source control interface, improved IDE and automated application builds using OrcaScript. Other subjects covered include PFC, an in-depth look at database connectivity, advanced coding and DW techniques, 3rd party tools and OLE.

Target Audience

The user level of this book is Intermediate - Advanced. The back cover states that this book is aimed at developers who know and use PowerBuilder and are looking to maximize their productivity. I would say that about half of the book succeeds in its aim, covering familiar subjects such as datawindows but with more detail and giving a few tips and techniques; covering new PB9 subjects and giving some useful productivity tips on the IDE for example. The remainder of the book serves as a point of reference such as the 200 pages on database connectivity which would be very useful for users developing for multiple database platforms.

Content

I would split the book into 3 main areas - an advanced look at existing features; an introduction to new PB9 features and a database connectivity reference.

The advanced look at existing features didn't uncover anything new for me but would serve as a useful reminder to someone who hasn't used PowerBuilder for a while. There are some good real life clear examples with supporting code and a few undocumented and therefore unsupported techniques.

The chapters on the new PB9 features would have been better if they had been more detailed. For example the chapter on XML datawindows assumes you know XML which is fair enough but it is a short and not very detailed chapter. In fact the PowerBuilder user guide provided with the product is much more detailed and useful than the chapter in this book. No tips or techniques are given in the chapter either. The chapter on the IDE and source control integration is useful especially if you are coming from PowerBuilder 7 and haven't used PowerBuilder 8.

The section on Database Connectivity is a useful reference point if you are developing for multiple database platforms but doesn't fit very well into the title of PowerBuilder 9 - Advanced Client Server Development. It does give a good amount of detail on an area that has previously not been covered particularly well in the past.

Writing Style

The writing style of the chapters vary because of the number of different authors. In general most of the chapters are written in a clear and concise manner with some good realistic examples. However some are a little too brief especially some of the new subjects areas such as XML Datawindows and OrcaScript. There is not enough detail and clear examples given for these new features.

Conclusion

If you haven't used PowerBuilder for a while or you are still using a version prior to Version 8 then you will find some useful information in this book, likewise if you are developing for multiple database platforms then the Database section will be very beneficial. I believe the book is more aimed at the intermediate level of knowledge rather than the advanced. Personally I wouldn't buy this book for myself because I wouldn't get enough new material from it that is not covered in the PowerBuilder User Guide.

Karen.baker@seabass.co.uk (www.seabass.co.uk)

This is one of the best books PowerBuilder client-server programming books that I have ever read and is probably one of the most well-received books for PowerBuilder yet. Every person I know, who own these books, experienced or not, find it a
very handy reference.

I recommend all the PowerBuilder developers to invest in this book. It's really cheap for the quality of it's contents.

Another bad book on Web Services. I bought this book as well as Professional XML Web Services, and both are terrible. If you are a developer, then this book doesn't even go into any detail about how Web Services work.
It gives you examples using GLUE which is useless and will fade into complete and utter obscurity. Of course, GLUE is completely incompatible with all the other real SOAP implementations, so if you get this book, you will need to go out and search for a better book, like I'm going to have to right now.

This book is a perfect introduction. It's that simple. Graham Glass, by the way, runs TME a company that is about to build a next-generation computing environment called GAIA which is a peer-to-peer system. Take a peek at themindelectric.com.

Graham is a master when it comes to OO technologies and Graham can convey these technologies clearly. This book covers may aspect of developing the next generation architecture and provides the framework in which to design them. An outstanding book for those who want the 'meat' behind these services. I've read ALL of the books around Web Services (including the .NET) and this is my 'reference' towards building these new technologies...

Graham Glass obviously has a talent for making complex material simple and easy to digest. This is evident in both the web services toolkit his company has released, called GLUE, and in this book, which provides a comprehensive, very hands-on, easy-to-read, look at web services.

This book covers a wide range of material, from the basics of what web services are and how they fit in the evolutionary path of distributed computing, to advanced topics such as WSDL and UDDI, Java to XML schema mapping, interoperability, and so on. Glass keeps the reader engaged in a hands-on way with a lot of example source code througout the book. The book utilizes the Java-based GLUE toolkit, which is provided on a bundled CD-ROM, to power most of the examples that illustrate the concepts. There is also a chapter on building and consuming web services with .NET and with Weblogic, a J2EE app server.

To bring it all together, there is a chapter that uses a B2B purchasing scenario to illustrate how J2EE(Weblogic), .NET, and GLUE can work together. This chapter is nice because it really gives the reader a sense of how web services really enable cross-platform interoperability, while sticking to a very pragmatic, real-world situation.

Finally, Glass provides an interesting, thought-provoking look at the P2P world and its intersection with the world of web services.

Glass' writing style is entertaining and his personal voice certainly comes through quite clearly. Overall, a very nice balance between educating the user on abstract concepts and keeping the reader busy with examples. Highly recommended.

GLUE, Graham's brainchild, is the number one web services
API for Java.

Many people can talk about web services, but only some
can create what is needed from the ground up.

Several other have tried, like Apache, or IBM, but they
don't even come close to his clarity of vision and the
ease of use that comes from this.

Heed his words.

I thought this book was very imformative and helped me understand how I could use my mobile phone in other ways. Certainly the wireless companies do not come anywhere close to properly educating people about other uses for the phone then calling. Thank you.

I have always been intrigued with text messaging, but now I actually understand how it all works. This is an excellent book to learn a lot about wireless networks and all of the nuances of this new type of communications.

Texting is very much demystified for me. I can't wait to try all of the different types of services and capabilities that there is out there.

Well worth the money.

I was disappointed that this book included practically nothing on the actual SMSC handshaking and protocols, nor about actual SMS, EMS, or MMS specifications, etc.. The book seems geared very much towards management types who are trying to decide whether or not to implement mobile messaging in their business strategy. The history of SMS and case studies of successful text messaging business implementations get focus. It is not a practical reference for an actual developer and provides next to nothing in technical information.

This book was written in a hurry to catch the SMS wave and it stinks from it. Many chapters were written by different people with different styles of writing, some more eloquent than others. Consequenty it makes for bad reading.

It contains numerous inaccuracies and extensive reptition. Clearly nobody did a proper job editing this book in its entirety to create a common style of writing or at a minium, technical and commercial accuracy. Donald J. Longueuil did himself a disservice by putting his name to this.

Each of the authors has their own bias (based upon who they work for) and this comes out clearly in the book. Thiis book esentially becomes a series of sales pitches, rather than a truely independant overview of the SMS/EMS/MMS market.

All in all very disappointing and a complete waste of money.

It also contains a great deal of useful information on mobile payment services.

This is an excellent book. I was reluctant to even look at this book, since the word "beginner" was in the title, but given that there are few BizTalk books out there, I gave it a shot. I was very impressed by the depth of content, going much deeper and with much more explanation than the MS docs. If you're a newbie (or even intermediate) to BizTalk, definitely consider this book. It will help you not only to get started up and running, but it will give you a solid foundation as well.

This book provides a great introduction to BizTalk. The author puts the software into its proper context, provides a solid introduction to its architecture, and gives just enough "how-to" to get started.

Reading this book first will give you what you need to approach more in-depth material, e.g. Microsoft Press's BizTalk Server 2000 Documented.

If you are looking for a beginners book on BizTalk that will take you through lessons on how to use BizTalk Server 2000, this isn't the book. The first few chapters are on EDI and SOAP. The discussion on SOAP is scatter brained and it takes too long to get into the Basics of BizTalk. When it does get into the basics there just isn't enough there. I have seen better guides to using BizTalk.

Up front, I should state that I have been working w/BizTalk for the last six months. To say that the documentation currently available on BizTalk is lacking is an understatement. What I particularly like about this book is the fact that several chapters are devoted to the architectural underpinnings of BizTalk (for example, the author describes the way that servers are broken out and what the different databases contain, down to the objects in the databases). He also clearly explains the various concepts within BizTalk such as ports, messaging ports etc. All in all, this book is the best one currently available if you are interested in the architectural and development aspects of BizTalk and don't want to plough through the 1500-page Microsoft tome.

This book has done a great job in providing solid foundation to Oracle Web Application Server 3 with practical code examples. This is a great reading for all the developers who want to lead the emerging NC market and N-tier application development.

This book provides a good introduction to OWAS 3.0 and explains how to configure and use the product in a very clear and concise manner. It even goes beyond the introductory level and explains in great detail how to use PL/SQL cartridge which is in my opinion the single most useful part of OWAS 3.0.It was the first book available on the market and after spending an afternoon with the book, I was able to install OWAS 3.0.2 on my company's SUN UE3000 and port the application written in PL/SQL for WebServer 2.1. I can only wholeheartedly recommend the book.

Mladen Gogala

1/3 the book is wasted with printed code listing!! If you are going to bother listing the code at least include some comments with it. The examples did not include any installation instructions so if you want to use it to learn, it is almost impossible. You might as well already be an Oracle Application Server expert.

What a life saver! A must-have for anyone learning App Server. Far more useful than Oracle Press' offerings, this book got me inside the architecture and up and running with a minimum of fluff, (something I really appreciate in these days of 2,000+ page books on basic HTML) and has been extraordinarily helpful in getting my project off the ground.

The books provides bug warnings, work-arounds, example applications (with documented source listings & explanations), pitfalls to avoid, overall great insight, and all source on CD-ROM.

I read Oracle's on-line docs and the Oracle App Server Handbook (which is good, but it's best as a package/procedure reference, as far as teaching, it's awful), both of which were essentially useless for getting a decent education about the product.

I recommend this book as necessary equipment to anyone who has anything to do with App Server 3.

The reason I purchased this book was a review I read in the IEEE Software journal, that recommended highly this book as a technical book that even steps the reader through an example implementation GRID service. Well, the first part of the book is the usual "GRID vision" hand-waving how GRID-based computing will realize the concept of "utility computing" where you turn on the switch, and presto, all the computing cycles you were starving for, are there, running your scientific or engineering code or whatever...
The book unfortunately is not well-written. Far too often, sentences are not syntactically correct, obfuscating the authors' intents. The book is definitely not suited as a technical reference, because by reading it there is no way you can implement a GRID "HelloWorld" service. And even when you read Sotomayor's tutorial on GRID services, that actually does guide you through your first GRID service using Java WS-Core, all you've done is figure out how to implement Web-services running on GT4. No mention of distributed computing, how to take advantage of parallelism inherent in a computation etc. etc.
So, overall, the book serves mostly as a layman's (or manager's) introduction into what GRID-computing wishes it will eventually be.

Grid computing is extensively described here as a means of providing high powered utility computing on demand. Currently, its potential is mostly unrealised. Many companies and universities have different grid implementations, as described by the authors. The universities' main motivation is to dragoon enough computing resources for hard research problems. While in the commercial sector, computer companies like IBM want to sell on demand access as a means of entering a hopefully vast new market.

The grid approaches in the book collectively can be contrasted with p2p computing. Grid systems tend to use more diverse and powerful hardware and relatively small number of users. Think of this as the high end, while p2p is low end (e.g. the SETI desktop application). The book describes the vast amount of effort that has gone into devising grid standards and the various toolkits, most notably Globus.

A potential problem which may occur to the reader of this book is the sheer complexity of the grid approach. Its proponents argue that this is necessary complexity. But perhaps a p2p methodology might be easier to understand and use.

An analogy is with the X.400 and X.500 email and directory standards. While these are used by some companies, many have not done so. Due to the complexity and slowness. Too heavyweight. The danger for grid computing is meeting a similar fate. It may end up occupying a small high value niche, but no more.

The writing style is too wordy and reiterates too often. It would be better to have less repetition and more useful summaries at the end of each chapter.

There are several references to IBM's leadership in grid computing, which seems unnecessary. Furthermore, there is no mention of the Plan 9 operating system which solved many of the problems that Globus is attempting to solve.

It starts to get technical around chapter 5. So if you already know you want something resembling a grid, start there.

The authors have written a fine book on the potential, execution and practicality of Grid or Utility Computing. It is large ( 400 pages ) and well written book, technically accurate and blends well with other industry strategies such as on demand and Autonomic Computing. The chapters on open standards are particularly strong, well thought out and presented. The book is designed well and book production, diagrams, layout is nothing short of highest quality - in short, excellent.

The prospect of true utility computing is within reach and technically feasible. The authors bring together best deployment practices, practical guidance on integrating existing resources, and applicable case studies. This book goes a long way to assisting that projection and should become a classic standard in the field.

Full kudos~! - and a doff of the hat to both authors.

I found the exposition in parts of this book quite poor. The prose is often pretty cryptic, there were some typographical errors that led me down detours while I tried to work through the details, so it took a lot of work (for me at least) to figure out some of the steps. The fact that a lot of the examples are of "toy" problems doesn't help see how the framework developed could be used for anything.

This is one of those books that should say "Some assembly required" on the cover.

I still think this is an important book, and that it deserves considerably more influence in academic philosophy, especially in the literature on causal process theories (developments of the work of Reichenbach and Salmon) and relations between theories in philosophy of science.

This isn't easy, and it's not obvious what it's useful for, but it's still very good. I'm not sure what the theoretical computer scientists make of it.

Impressive formalization of information flow via mathematics and logic, but in the end it's not clear if this subject holds any practical value. For, in practice, the model of information flow always requires a priori working models of the phenomena under consideration before the principles of information flow can be put to use. For example, consider currency fluctuations as information about some nation's economy. You can model this using Barwise's scheme, but doing so doesn't bring anything to one's understanding that we didn't already have from economics. No real clarification on what information is, either (although there's a lengthy discussion of this at the outset). Requires a fairly good working knowledge of set theory and basic formal logic. Poorly edited.

There's a lot of informal discussion at the beginning about what information "really is", but very little in terms of innovative content. The book contains a good formal approach that expands on earlier work in the same field, but it hangs on too many ill-fitting concepts as the "Xerox principle" and the notion that knowledge can be quantified. The book also completely ignores the ontological perspective which other researchers have addressed for over a decade.

A mathematical basis for Keith Devlin's book "InfoSense: Turning Information into Knowledge." Buy them both!

The book is OK for exam preparation. The exam has plenty questions on managing, securing and troubleshooting BizTalk server, and the book covers most of these questions. Also there is a reasonable amount of questions realted to development of custom components. Read the book twice, and you will pass the exam.
However... This book will have no added value if you want to learn BizTalk, or if you want to get familiar with the more advanced options like signing, reliable messaging and clustering. The real-world stuff you will need when working as a BizTalk designer or engineer, is not in this book.
Conclusion: only buy this book if you want to pass the exam!

Some things to keep in mind -
1) BizTalk is not a toy - it is an enterprise tool - so of course you will need enterprise level hw/sw requirements to set it up and use it
2) Don't judge the quality of the book based on the requirements of the software
3) Please re-write your review to cover the book, not your issues with using the software

Precised. Easy to follow. The subjects are very well organized. Reviews (Questions-Answers) at the end of each chapter are great for testing yourself on the subject.... Highly recommended for an exam prep. With some hands-on experience on a Biztalk Server, I used this book to coach myself, in less than a week, for the examination and passed it. Great as a quick reference for troubleshooting a Biztalk application too.

This book is very detailed and I like it a lot, but in order for it to be truly effective, you need to be able to set up BizTalk Server 2000 and play with it along with the book. However, in order to do this, you need, according to the book:

(A) One computer running Windows 2000 Server (pref Adv Server if you want to do more of the robust features) on which you would install SQL Server 2000
(B) Another computer running Win 2K Server (or Adv Server again) on which you would install BizTalk Server 2000
(C) A Win 2K domain with ADS to connect to, so you'll probably need another computer running Win 2K server with DHCP, DNS, ADS installed
(D) Ideally, another computer to use as your workstation
(E) If you want to do any Clustering or Network Load Balancing (NLB), you'll need even more machines

So, just keep in mind what you're getting into. BizTalk is a great tool and very powerful and, as I stated before, the book is extrememly useful, but the hardware required to go along with the examples is a bit daunting.