Distributed Computing Books

I have been developing applicaitons for a number of year now with Access 97 and have many books I have used. This book has become my most recommended. I have found many books on Access to be either too basic or too advanced for me. This book talks about basic concepts and then adds enough advanced information that almost anyone could learn something from it. The concepts are explained in a very understandable way. I wish I had bought this years ago!

Client/Server Programming for Access 97 is a must have for anyone who develops serious applications in Access 97. It contains clear, practical guidelines to create and polish client/server applications using Access 97. I recommend this book to both novices and experts since it impossible to believe that there will not be something of value for anyone who reads it. It can be read cover to cover or used as a reference. As a footnote, I must also add that the paper quality is unusually good and the layouts completely avoid descriptions on one page and diagrams on the other.

I just finished the book and I loved it! It does a very nice job of covering the entire topic in enough depth to provide real answers, while leaving plenty of room for exploration. I'll be downloading some of the examples soon. I particularly liked the "Paired-Pages" arrangement where the right page summarizes and supplements the material presented on the left. It delivers the concepts in convenient bite-size pieces with immediate, built-in reinforcement. It will get my highest recommendation. It now takes it's place on my shelf alongside the other Access "Bible", the Sybex Access97 Developer's Handbook.

Being the broad-scope work that it is, this book has hit the bulls-eye in terms of coverage. While there have been other books on IAs recently, this one covers all aspects of IAs.

Doing so, it has more positives than negatives; but of course this depends on whether you want an overview of the field, or an Intelligent Agent (IA) in "C" programming reference manual. It is more of the former than the latter.

It does cover a lot of ground and gives one a detailed taste for what artificial intelligence(AI), and IA's (Intelligent Agents) created from AI technologies are, and more importantly, what they *could* be. That is, if all the suggestions in this book were followed, we might soon have really 'intelligent' software emerging from various quarters (like the Internet or Intranets).

It concentrates on explaining the essentials of the cognitive and computer sciences that are relevant to IA design and creation, especially the considerations that seem to have contributed to 'intelligence' in the natural world (like our brains). I liked all the various definitions of intelligence!

It goes into the details of various architectural approaches to designing systems of interacting, or collaborating components. I found the material on the necessity of common agent languages (that is, languages in which the agents speak to each other) to be particularly enlightening.

Also especially useful was all the information about autonomy, agent mobility, standards that agents can make use of (like IIOP), and what languages and environments might be particularly suited to IA implementation. There were a couple of subjects that seem, in retrospect, out of place (like OpenDoc). But given that the coverage is about certain architectural and implementation concepts of those subjects that were important to IAs, and that it was only a few pages, this was a minor issue with me.

The book explains, at a surface level, the common soft-computing technologies like ANNs, genetic computing and fuzzy logi! c, as well as more traditional approaches like expert systems. It gives examples of real software that you can buy and use to incorporate these techniques into agents. For example, the book provides a good synopsis of Cyc, which can be used by agents to incorporate 'common sense' reasoning capabilities.

I did not expect it, so I was not surprised that this was not a programming manual. There are a couple of other books on IAs that concentrate on particular kinds of relatively simple agents in particular languages. Yet, to be honest, in lieu of lots of specific code and examples of actual agents, it provides a lot of pointers to other researchers' works in companies and academic settings.

This book is much more than what has appeared on the market thus far. Its breadth is actually pretty amazing considering its length of around 400 pages. I would recommend it to anyone who wanted to either gain a good grounding in intelligent agent design and development issues, or to expand one's purview of how intelligence could be enabled within today's and tomorrow's distributed computer systems.

For those of you interested in reading a little history, some present implementations and the possibilities the future holds...this book is for you. If you require a more design-oriented book you might look elsewhere. I absolutely loved this book!!

Intelligente Agenten sind längst nicht mehr nur ein Thema für abgedrehte Software-Entwickler. Microsoft ist in den Markt der Agent Software Produkte eingestiegen und die Regale der Buchhandlungen füllen sich mit Abhandlungen zu diesem Themenkomplex. Inhalt: Michael Kapnik und Jay Johnson beschreiben in Ihrem Buch die Architektur, Technologie und Anwendungen für Intelligente Agenten in ver-teilten Umgebungen. Die Autoren thematisieren nahezu alle Aspekte dieser Technologie. Künstliche Intelligenz in Experten Systemen, Fuzzy Logik, Objektorien-tierung und Architekturen von Agenten bilden den ersten Teil des Buches. Der Vergleich na-türlicher und künstlicher Intelligenz beschäftigt sich mit der Frage, ob Computer die Natur des Gehirns nachbilden können. Die Industriestan-dards CORBA, OpenDoc, OLE/ActiveX und DCE werden als Basis für die Infrastruktur intelli-genter Agenten kurz erleutert. Für Tools und Entwicklungsumgebungen geben die Autoren neben der theoretischen Beschreibung auch einen Marktüberblick über verfügbare Produkte und weiterführende Literatur zu den Tei-laspekten. Im Anschluß werden Design- und Sicher-heitspekte beschrieben. Dies umfaßt die Bereiche Anforderungsanalyse, Plattform, Umgebung und Paradigmen für verteilte Um-gebungen, Client/Server und Mobilität. Daneben werden Methoden zur Fehlerbe-handlung, digitale Signaturen und Konfigurationen durch die Endanwender dar-gestellt. Nachdem die Grundlagen für die Entwicklung der Agenten gelegt sind, beschäftigt sich das Kapitel "Developing Intelligent Agents NOW" mit Sprachen und Entwicklungsumgebungen, wie Java, Smalltalk und Telescript. Die Einsatzgebiete intelligenter Agenten sind vielfältig. Viele Anwender setzen sie bereits in Standard-Office-Produkten oder E-Mail-Anwendungen ein. Daneben unterstützen in-telligente Agenten ihre Anwender im Netzwerk-Management, bei der Suche im WWW, bei der Filterung von Daten, beim Kommunikations-management und vielen anderen Bereichen. Der Ausblick in die Zukunft intelligenter Agen-ten bi! ldet den Abschluß des Buches. Neben weiteren Anwendungsgebieten für Agenten in Datenbanken, im Netzwerkmanagement, in Suchmaschinen und im Privatbereich wird auch auf mögliche Gefahren durch spionierende oder destruktiv agierende Agenten hingewie-sen. Beurteilung: Sätze, wie "Mein Computer fühlt sich alleine, weil ich es bin" zeigen, daß es sich nicht um eine theoretische Abhandlung über die Agen-ten-Technologie handelt. Immer wieder stellen die Autoren einen praktischen Bezug her oder wagen einen Blick in die Zukunft. Es gibt je-doch auch Kapitel, die nicht so leicht zu lesen sind. Dies ergibt sich aus der Komplexität der behandelten Themen. Denn die Entwicklung intelligenter Agenten in verteilten Umgebungen ist nicht trivial. Das Buch liefert das "Handwerkszeug" für die Entwicklung verteilter Systeme mit Hilfe intelli-genter Agenten. Es schneidet alle relevanten Themen an, ohne dabei zu theoretisch zu wer-den. Aufgrund des Umfangs der behandelten Themen sind die einzelnen Technologien nicht erschöpfend dargestellt. Wer detaillierte In-formationen benötigt, kann jedoch auf weiterführende Literatur, auf die in dem Buch hingewiesen wird, zurückgreifen.

Very detailed and well explained topics. Tom Barnaby shows MS distributed programing in a deeply manner.
I think that an architecture chapter or advices about MS distributed architecture would be useful. Anyway, an excellent book.

I have been working with .Net Remoting for a couple months and this book has more detailed information in it, than I could find anywhere. Not only did it help reinforce the fundamentals of remoting, it explores many advanced topics and gives easy to follow examples. The approach is practical and direct even with difficult topics. This book saved me hours of time by explaining in depth delegates and remote callbacks. I highly suggest this book for anyone working with remoting, web services or other distributed programming topics.

Also, the code used in the examples can be downloaded from the book's website in C# or VB.NET.

When I first started reading this book, I thought "Oh no - 3 chapters of intro and a large appendix". I naturally skipped over the intro and started reading what I thought was the first Real chapter. I kept finding interesting references back to an intro chapter "Introduction to .Net Remoting". I finally read this chapter and was pleasantly surprised to find a clear and comprehensive explanation of channels and contexts. The "This is .Net" intro chapter had a great explanation of versioning in .Net. So I'd recommend reading this book from the beginning - or at least start with chapter 2.

The rest of the book allowed me to complete a moderately size distributed project in a lot less time that I thought it would. There is also a great chapter on using transactions under Component Services. I was also able the complete my last MCAD certification test (VB XML) based mainly on what I got out of this book.

This book has no fluff and is packed with a lot of key concepts and practical code samples. The only downside was the brief coverage and dismissal of Web Services. The Appendix turned out to be coverage of ADO.Net written by Andrew Troelsen. I didn't read this chapter because I was already up to speed on ADO.Net. But having read a couple of Troelsen's other books, my guess is that it's pretty good.

This book explores the monumental task of supporting today's heterogeneous distributed computer systems. The new methodology introduced in the book is based on accountability and automation and has been key to effecting spectacular improvements in both support quality and personnel productivity at Lehman Brothers. The production of this seminal text involved a team-oriented approach. Written with colleagues from leading investment, industry, and academic institutions such as Salomon Brothers, Sun Microsystems and MIT, the work's subject reflects its team-oriented authorship. The book's uniqueness lies in its lucid treatment of a subject which is inherently behind-the-scenes. In a brilliant foreword, Kevin McGilloway, CIO of Lehman Brothers, articulates the fundamental reality of systems support where "no news is good news", and yet no modern trading can be conducted without the computer. In what he describes as the "change culture" of Wall Street, where profit depends on market dynamics, computer systems must enable traders to capitalize on the continuous evolution of markets. This dynamic marketplace tolerates nothing less than zero downtime. The book shows how to meet the ultimate challenge of balancing change with perfect availability of the computer/communications infrastructure.

Tired of continued turnover of skilled systems personnel? Confused by the haphazard introduction of new technologies, such as Windows NT? In this new extraordinary book you can learn both the practical skills and cultural context needed to deal with growing complexity of systems support in a rapidly evolving marketplace. Specific to distributed computing systems, this first-of-its-kind idea book divulges knowledge accumulated over years of practical experience in the arena of performance, availability and cost reduction. Like a modern-day Frederick W. Taylor, Lirov believes that systems support can be rigorously quantified and improved through disciplined planning and execution. He pulled together a team of experts first to elevate systems support at Lehman Brothers to the best service on Wall Street, and then to share t he acquired grasp of this tremendously difficult subject with the readers. Abandoning the traditional approach of focusing on a single support discipline, Lirov paints a panoramic view of an all-inclusive support process. In his lucid foreword to the book, Kevin McGilloway, CIO at Lehman Brothers, emphasizes the criticality of matching technical solutions with cultural change. The topics span the entire gamut of support disciplines encompassing all aspects of systems, database, and batch administration, including contributions from experts at such leading edge institutions as He wlett-Packard and Cray. The ideas, described in comprehensive detail, transcend the Intranet and apply to systems management on the Internet. These ideas also encompass multiple systems platforms, especially, UNIX and Windows NT. The book's only drawback is that it stops short of offering more detail on cross-platform systems management. With dozens of practical examples, this is an advanced level text, geared towards IT managers, systems and database administrators, and graduate students. If you are in the trenches, battling to manage distributed systems of unprecedented complexity, this book can save your career -- and your sanity.

I first reviewed this book three and a half years ago. It is time for an updated review to reaffirm this book's value nearly four years after it was first published.

First, since this book was published there have only been two (that I know of) books that address the topic of mission critical systems management: Blueprints for High Availability: Designing Resilient Distributed Systems and High Avaliability: Design, Techniques and Processes.

Second, after reading the other two books this one continues to have a solid place - it fills in gaps of the other two.

Third, Mission Critical Systems Management contains the best approach to service level management from among the three books in this category.

The key strengths of this book are its straightforward approach to designing, deploying and maintaining highly available systems on a 24x7 basis. The author chronicles his own approach to doing this, which lends authority and credibility to the book. The service level agreement format provided in the book continues to be one of the best I have come across. And the approach itself is sound.

There are no discernable weaknesses. Three and a half years ago I gave this book 4 stars because it cited specific products. I am giving it 5 stars today because in retrospect this complaint is irrelevant. What counts is the fact that a technology book written nearly four years ago is as valid and valuable today as when it was first written.

Bottom line: Mission Critical Systems Management contains a good balance of process and technical detail, and provides a clear path to achieving 24x7 operations. It fills the gaps of, and augments, the two other books on the subject: High Avaliability: Design, Techniques and Processes (process-oriented) and Blueprints for High Availability: Designing Resilient Distributed Systems (technology-oriented).

If you haven't read this book because of its age, read it and marvel at how timeless the contents are. If you read it when it first came out, re-read it and discover how prescient the author was when he sat down to write it.

This book helped med get hands-on-experience with Jini.

I say no more. Enjoy it!

It is a VERY good book on Jini. This is my FIRST jini book. I am a jini newbie. This book has answered lot of my questions on Jini and has guided me, step by step, to develop my first Jini project. I realize this book isn't complete ... but as a software developer, I need a book which can guide me to write effective & good code AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. I like it a lot ... really.

Buy it

This book covers the following topics nicely:

1. JINI lookup service 2. Entry Objects 3. Service Registration 4. Discovery Management 5. Interesting Jini Examples

I think this book provides good insight to the JINI technologies. I recommend this book.

I really liked this book. It was very informative. Although published by HP Press, the book talks extensively about other Unix platforms as well as NT. The book is probably one year old by now, but I still recommend it. The authors cover almost every hardware option you can think of. A must read for any IT person planning an SAP Implementation.

I highly recommend this book to companies that are going to start an SAP project. The book provides the foundation to design and build a solid technical infrastructure for SAP. Moreover, it is easy to read, covers every aspect, and is plenty of examples.

I am an experienced SAP technical consultant and wish this book were available some years ago. On common problem I have seen is that companies don't understand, from the infrastructure point of view, what an SAP project involves. The objective of this book is to make them aware of what they don't know (and could hurt them) at the right time, which is before the project actually starts.

I wish that I had this book when we started our SAP project. This book will help anyone who is thinking about installing or upgrading SAP. It helps explain how SAP software will use the hardware. And how all of the pieces fit together. Even though this book is by HP press it stays true to the theme. They do try and "sell" HP hardware or solutions every once in awhile, but for the most part this book is generic in vendor. You won't go wrong with reading this book or just having it for reference the next time you have to upgrade your hardware or if you are having response problems and need to know how to evaluate your hardware. We have been an SAP customer for six years and have grown up with SAP in the US (started at version 2.1 and have just completed our 4.6 upgrade!).

'Zero Configuration Networking: The Definitive Guide' by Daniel Steinberg is a great network resource book for any and all administrators, developers, and/or tinkerers!! Packed to the brim with networking goodness, this is a wonderful book for anyone that wants to learn to network things smarter, better, and faster than ever before!! Written in classic O'Reilly fashion with ~220 pages of solid content, this is a nice buy for all interested parties :^)

***** RECOMMENDED

Stuart Cheshire and Daniel H. Steinberg's Zero Configuration Networking: The Definitive Guide tells how to integrate hardware and software with no configuration files in between - and no error messages. Zeroconf is a standard for building self-configuring applications, from LANs to printer files and file-sharing software: Zero Configuration Networking tells how to put it all together with easy implementation. Three 'Hacks' titles provide options for working with networks, images and programs.

Are you a curious user or software developer or hardware developer? If you are, then this book is for you! Authors Daniel Steinberg and Stuart Cheshire, have done an outstanding job of writing a book that provides an in-depth look at the components of Zeroconf technology and a survey of programming APIs that will allow you to Zeroconf-enable your product.

Steinberg and Stuart Cheshire, begin by giving you a quick overview of the various components that make up Zeroconf. Then, the authors discuss link-local addressing. Next, they provide a description of multicast DNS. The authors then provide you with a description of DNS Service Discovery. They continue by introducing the concepts of DNS Service Discovery and focus on how it applies to discovering services on the local link using Multicast DNS. Then, the authors introduce the dns-sd command line toll that lets you experiment with Zeroconf service advertising and discovery before you actually write your first line of Zeroconf.code. Next, they introduce you to the C API for advertising and browsing for services. The authors then explain the Java API, which lets you write portable cross-platform programs that will run on any supported platform that ha Java and Zeroconf installed. They continue by describing two of the Bonjour APIs that are specific to Mac OS X: CFNet-Services and Cocoa's NSNetServices. Finally, they outline the Zeroconf support appearing in some unexpected languages like Ruby and Python.

This most excellent book shows you how you can, with very little effort, make your devices a lot easier to use. More importantly, this book explains how you can add the benefits of TCP/IP networking to your products without having to sacrifice ease of use.

The book helped me to understand when I should use which BackOffice product and where. The scenarios at the begining of each chapter provide examples of how BackOffice can addressmany of the challenges faced in systems integration and administration.

This book is a excellent survey of the Microsoft BackOffice technologies, and the business environment in which they are implemented. This book is a must read for those in business or technology roles that are trying to determine the best infrastructure for their business solutions. If you are looking for how to add a mailbox to Exchange Server this is not the book for you, but if you are trying to understand the business issues and benefits of deploying BackOffice then you have found a unique book that should be listed with "Business" books in addition to "Computer" books.

I have been doing SQA and related engineering for almost twenty years and have not seen many books that actually get into the "nuts and bolts" of software testing as well as this one does. Mosley takes great pains to insure that whether you are a newcomer to SQA or a seasoned pro, something is here for you. I recently moved from a strictly software testing environment to a Client-Server environment and used this book extensively to "get up to speed" with the new internet testing concepts presented in this publication. Very practical examples, clear explanations and a thorough knowledge of the topic. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who is new to the field and any one needs ideas on how to put a test environment together that really produces immediate results. I have worked on many software engineering projects over the past twenty years and wished many times for a book like this, now its here.

Of all the sofware testing books I've read, Mosley's stands out as the easiest to read, and contains real-world tangible examples that can be put to use immediatley. His Test Plan outlines are excellent and are built from IEEE standards. Lots of useful information and minimum test philosophy. Like many client-server books, the focus is primarily e-commerce, but the test approaches can be applied to any multi-user GUI application.

This is a textbook for my class. As i can learn nothing from the Prof, this book helps me out a lot!

It is good book to keep as reference. Excellent for people who are starting/interested/working on client server projects.

But why it is out of print?