Distributed Computing Books

It was helpfull when stuck with prblem

This book takes the field experience of MCS and provides an overview of systems they have developed. Probably ideal for a people moving up to VLDB and Warehouse development projects. The book provides enough information to give the relevent information and foresight to make decisions when doing these types of developments. In summary a good practical overview of the development of SQL Server 7 solutions.

From a high level, this book definitely gives the reader strategic deployment advice. Unlike many other books, this one gives very realistic performance figures. Although this book does not go into details about all aspects of configuring SQL Server, it does give details where appropriate. This book and Delany's Inside SQL Server (an EXCELLENT in in-depth analysis of SQL Server mechanics) is definitely a one-two punch.

Most implementations of SQL Server will probably not need either of these books, but if your SQL Server is a big OLAP or OLTP server with many users/complicated queries, these two books will give you all you need to tune your implementation to its best performance possible.

However, I haven't found a book that discusses SQL Server's powerful yet very under-utilized replication features.

I was very disappointed with this book. My expectation of a book titled "...Notes from the Field" was that it would be jam packed with detailed information about how to use the software. In other words, the tricks of the trade and specific opinions (with details) about what works and what doesn't. For example, how to work around the nuances (or flaws) of the first release of OLAP Services.

What I found was a high level discussion about a wide range of topics, none of which seemed to be in depth or detailed enough to be useful. Too many topics were given a single paragraph or two. This may provide a starting point for further research, but is hardly enough to help someone through an implementation.

[A review of the 2nd edition.]
The authors give a mathematically sophisticated analysis of various modes of distributed computing. Where the distribution might refer to separate CPUs in a multiprocessor architecture, or perhaps to separate computers inside a LAN, or to computers scattered across the Internet.

We see that issues of latency and reliability can [and will] arise. Coordinating a task across the processors gives rise to amazing complexity. What if some processors crash? A consensus problem occurs. How to solve it is explained.

There are also impossibilities in task solving that might occur, and these need to be treated carefully. The narrative has suggestions on how to diagnose if such events happen. The reader will see that fault tolerance can be awkward to handle.

The treatment may be too mathematical for some readers. You need a strong background in maths; preferably including discrete maths.

This is a good book in the field of distributed computing, but it is very mathematically oriented. It concentrates on impossibility proofs and lower bound proofs. I advise people new to this material to read a more descriptive book before reading this one

I've struggled to read this text, since it contains many very recent results distilled into intelligently organized chapters. Unfortunately, even though this book is intended for a savvy audience, the text is often too detailed and technical, while important "big picture" intuition is never relayed. Frequent errors in the algorithms and proofs, ranging from simple subscript swaps to more subtle errors in logic to the (rarer) complete lack of logic make this a difficult book to recommend. In addition, the exercises are frequently too vague (sometimes meaningless) -- this book is definitely not recommended for class work.

I used this book for teaching an under-graduate primer course in distributed computing. The book is readable, coherent, well-structured and very efficient as a textbook. It strikes a good balance between the sea of details and the basic principles. I am familiar with the core of this book since it was a collection of lecture notes (alas, no longer available). It's a pity that some important topics have been omitted from the book version (e.g., Gallager, Humblett, Spira alg). There are some minor errors and imperfections in pseudocodes and exercise definitions which are a little bit annoying. That's why I'm giving this book four points and not five. Bottom line: I would recommend this book as a course textbook.

I have gone through this book and I did not like it. Look's
like Michi's book is the best so far.

This book is clearly a reference, and research material rather than a hands-on programming guide. While there are many code fragments to support the authors' explanation of concepts, and the largest single chapter is on CORBA programming there is no single project built throughout the book as is often the case in programming guides. I much prefer this approach of being a reference rather than building a project. For example, code or diagrams illustrate things such as SII, DII, DSI, IFR, Exceptions and Any, which gives a competent programmer enough to experiment with the various bits of CORBA. For implementation using BOA, some good diagrams show implementation option using the TIE approach, handy for Java, which has single inheritance. It would be useful though to have some code fragments of a POA implementation in this section.

The book has three parts. The first part covers the basic foundation concepts of distributed computing showing how different distributed technologies (eg RMI, DCOM, RPC) need to find solutions to the same issues.

Parts 2 and 3 give an in-depth look at distributed systems and CORBA with much to study. The role of object adaptors is explained and the POA architecture is compared to the better-known BOA. This is well diagrammed, again some POA code would help. This is where the book becomes more than a programming book and a serious study of CORBA features, such as Naming Service, Trading Service, Event Service and Query Service. Additionally there is a detailed discussion of performance and consistency issues with a CORBA Caching implementation. This for me was the most interesting part of the book. Object caching in a distributed environment gives you much to think about, and clearly much thought has been put into the issues, such as scalability, cache consistency, object eviction etc. Other issues such as distributed transaction services including 2PC and 3PC are well covered.

Detailed discussion of CORBA services and distributed systems is not trivial reading, but rather for serious study. I notice that Douglas Schmidt has written the foreword. His name is well known to anyone that reads CORBA research material, which gives confidence to the quality of material.

In Summary, this is not a simple programming book. There is no downloadable code or CD and apart from some early OrbixWeb examples is not specific to any ORB implementation. It is a serious look at issues of distributed object systems with a heavy emphasis on CORBA and would be recommended for anyone interested in further study of distributed object systems. There are exercises at the end of each chapter, but there are no answers found in the book, it would be helpful to have them available in a later version of the book or on a web site.

I am pleased to find a book on distributed objects systems. this book has given me the needed information that i have been looking for in the field of transaction processing systems. it does cover CORBA to a great level given the reader the chance to see some solutions and the independency of programming languages. i believe it can be used as a text book in the field of Object-Oriented Design or programming where students can aplly either JAVA or C++.

The book is divided into three parts: Basics of CORBA, Advanced CORBA, and CORBA Services. Part one gives an intro to distributed systems and CORBA, including a bit of CORBA programming (in Java). Part two talks about object adapters, interoperability, and caching. Part three covers naming, trading, event, transaction, and query services.

Unfortunately, there is a lot to criticise about this book.

On the editorial side, you get a shocking job: it is plain that no copy editor or proof reader has ever been near this work. Spelling and grammatical errors abound, as well as inconsistent use of fonts; the index is put together without any great care.

The writing style is mostly poor. The prose is often stilted or redundant, uses obtuse phrasing, and is full of vague descriptions. Terms such as "usually", "in general", and "typically" are used liberally and, more often than not, are followed by descriptions that are imprecise or vague, leaving the reader wondering whether the authors properly understand what they are trying to explain. More seriously, in many places, the authors are unable to take the reader step by step through a topic. Often, the discussion veers off to something that is completely irrelevant, making it difficult for the reader to develop a clear mental picture of how things hang together. The presentation of IDL is intermingled with (poor) explanations of language mapping issues, leaving a tangled and incomplete mess.

The book doesn't describe a particular version of CORBA but appears to be largely based on the authors' experience with OrbixWeb. This means that much of the book talks about a now obsolete and proprietary BOA implementation. (Given that POA implementations have been available for more than two years, it is beyond me why anyone would publish a book based on the BOA in 2001.) The POA is covered as well, but in such confused language that it is difficult to understand what the POA is or how it really works. Little or no guidance is provided as to how to use the POA effectively for a given a set of implementation requirements.

Much of the material has been provided in more correct and accessible form elsewhere, and little in this book is original. Of great concern is the authors' apparent lack of knowledge of CORBA; the book contains many errors. Some choice examples:

- CORBA has no support for late binding.

- CORBA [...] supports the types "Any" (for fixed type length) and "DynAny" (for variable type length).

- IDL identifiers must be declared in lower cases. [sic]

- An example of nested declaration is found in the module CORBA: module org { module omg { module CORBA { /* ... */ }; }; };

- enum ParamMode { IN, OUT, INOUT };

All these statements are plainly incorrect; the book contains many more such mistakes.

The coverage of CORBA services is equally disappointing, with incomplete, sloppy, and superficial explanations that are hard to follow.

The book was written as a textbook for use at universities; I pity the students who will have to answer exam questions based on this material.

This is a SAP 101 book. Paragraphs on things that should take chapters if you are looking for any kind of detail. While there are no real good books on SAP, there are better ones than this for your money.

Although this book was written for IT/IS professionals who will be tasked with post-implementation support of SAP R/3, the information in this book applies to any enterprise application. I am making this statement based on experience in launching and supporting a wireless telecommunications billing system, which is a completely different application than R/3. The point is most of the information contained in this book is solid and addresses service delivery and support for enterprise applications that work.

Some key strengths of this book include: (1) a clear view applications delivery milestones of R/3 before it is ready to be released into production. This is provided in Parts II and III and shows what production support personnel needs to be aware of while the development and implementation is in progress. I especially liked the chapters on stabilizing the application and preparing for hand-off into production. Also, the chapter on building a support domain was filled with excellent information that embodies best practices in service support. (2) Part IV, Supporting the live environment, is specific to SAP R/3, but can be used as a model for support processes for any ERP system (Baan, PeopleSoft, etc.) because the major production support issues are addressed. The best chapters in this section cover job scheduling (often overlooked, but can wreak havoc with meeting service level objectives), transaction and performance support and disaster recovery planning (another support area that is too often overlooked).

If you are tasked with supporting SAP R/3 this book is essential. Other audiences for this book include: project managers who need to plan the cutover of R/3 into the production environment, help desk management, release managers and business systems analysts who bridge the IT/IS and user domains. If you are a consultant who works with any ERP package this book will provide you with a wealth of useful information to which you can apply to whichever application(s) you support. Finally, this book will also prove useful to any support organization that is tasked with service delivery and support of enterprise applications for which a third-party book is not available. I certainly could have used this book when I was supporting a wireless billing application.

Highly recommended to the audience cited above and 5 stars for clear writing and information that is valuable beyond the scope of the book.

Having been through two SAP implementations and supported the FI/CO modules for two years I found this book on the mark. Of particular interest is the presentation of a dynamic support group that continuously evaluates it's role through the life cycle of SAP. This is not a book that one would give to your technical support group (not enought details). It is perfect for the application manager who must support the business processes of SAP.

Prince does a good job of outlining and detailing the thought process that has to be gone through as the SAP home team ( those who will be responsible when the system fails) gets ready to "go live" with SAP. The first section talks about the "help desk" issues and are well stated and certainly worth preparing for. The inclusion of Chapter 5 " Supporting the Evaluation and Start Up Phase " seemed a little out of place to me but the points presented in that chapter had to be done somewhere. The post-production support process has many elements to it and those who have been suckled by the SAP consultant would do well to consider the thinking and steps they must go through to be the IT system owner again. The book touches on training but does not point out how the training team can be an essential element to getting a help desk off the ground. Prince also has a good chapter on testing which can also be tied to training and the post production support ( Help Desk) activity. The chapter on handoff puts meat behind the oft quoted but too freqently practised activity of transfering the knowledge base from the SAP consultants to the home team. I recomend this book to whoever finds himself/herself thinking about supporting the SAP R/3 system.

A book about XML and distributed systems, published during 2002, and no discussion about XML Web services?? Makes me wonder how old the content is. I am an experienced architect and developer on different platforms and I found this book completely useless.

The author obviously is a creative and intelligent person and his work presents several fantastic ideas and concepts. However, his writing style is almost stream-of-consciousness. The nuggets of true value in this book must be gleaned from excessively wordy paragraphs and multiple tangents to explain trivialities. The result is that beginners will likely get lost or confused, while the experienced reader will get bored. I would love to see a second edition of this book wherein the content has been edited by an experienced technical editor to clean up the verbiage and make the book more concise and clear.

I am in consultancy field from past several years and got my hands on this book last week. It's good. I agree that this is a lasting work, with collection of ideas for applying XML to everything (well almost). I have also done lots of XML work and usually go through almost all the books on the subject, but this one has some extra value. I liked the explaination, which serves both for beginners and advanced modelers. I am also an architect for several systems and was quite impressed with the model presentation. Another important and good thing is that this book does not insist that you know lot about customary UML knowledge. The schematics are simple and easy to grasp for anyone.
You can have this book even on the road, and I promise it would add value to whatever you know about this subject. I would suggest to buy this book for sure.

I am a chief architect in consultancy business. I have probably read all XML books released so far and closely looked at all of them. But there wasn't any book on design and modeling. This book is definite go for beginners and experienced architects. It explains the concepts and basics of systems modeling, from XML point-of-view. Good job by the author, as he had explained the core concepts of using XML. This book does not have much of code, but I guess there are enough books on coding aspect. This book deals primarily with application of XML to systems. The chapter on open-system is outstanding and is the part I liked most. I also teach part time and have suggested this book for XML reference and tutorial. The good thing about this book is that it tries to create ideas of applying technology and does not play with toolkits and programming. I believe coding and system architect belong to two different domains. The book also shows some case studies of interest, which are supported by interfaces - good!! I would definitely suggest to buy this book, a good one!!!! :-)

Any one who bought this book: CD on the book is working? I mean if we can install and then create a database and run a 4gl program? thanks

If you read the "ReadMe" file that accompanies the disk, you will see directions to the Informix site where you will get the license to install the engine software.

I wanted to say how much your book (Informix on NT) helped me out last week in my installation at a large US Government facility.

After years of doing Unix installs, I started out with only basic experience using Informix on NT. But with your book as my guide, I was able to confidently do a professional install on NT.

In addition to the install, with your guidance, I was able to configure and use On-BAR for the first time.

Also, I used your book as a basis for overall Informix

admin training. I am sure your book will be THE technical resource there for years to come.

Anyway, thanks again for providing such a great technical resource. Your interview at the end with Gary Kelley was fascinating.

This book combines all the necessary elements, remoting, coding to interfaces, reusable code, to create a real world enterprise level application. The book takes difficult topics and applies them to the Northwind database which all developers are familiar with. This book is by no means a book for beginners. However, if you have a good understanding of Object Oriented application design then you should be okay. I took off one star because I felt there should be a little more background information on remoting to make using the sample application less frustrating. However, the author replied within a few hours and helped me troubleshoot my issue. All in all, a great, well-thought out book.

Wow!

Thank you Mr.Levinson. Finally, a programming text that is easy to understand and relevant to modern application development.

This book is my new bible. I highly recommend it to anyone interested and capable of this level of programming.

I especially appreciated the examples, which were not only easy to implement, but presented a logical step-wise approach to the client/server model under .Net.

Where is the big picture? It would have been nice if the Author would have mentioned what the sample application is supposed to do rather than just use a 'here, type this code in' approach. I can only assume he passed the 70-300 certification exam because it certainly does not show in his writing. I understood this book only because I have already written client/server applications myself. Woe to the reader who tries to use this book as a tutorial.

While I am sure that the book is excellent, it is for C programmers only. The code examples seem to be comprehensive, however, I was expecting them to be in Visual Basic. No where in any of the book description did it mention that this book required a knowledge of C. While it may be a great book, it is not what I can use. Sorry.

First came a theoretical explanation then very detailed code. There are a lot of references to more detailed information on similar topics if the reader chooses to go off on a tangent on his own. This book has been a great springboard for me. The author does a great job of covering the art writing LDAP and ADSI clients separately and then bringing them together for a very nice compare and contrast.

This is a really good soup-to-nuts introduction to directory services under Microsoft. There is tons of sample code in this book, which I find very helpful. The language is C, with a MS flavor to it. There is an amazing amount of detail in this book, and the author takes great care to explain some difficult concepts. Definitely pick this one up if you are doing MS directory development.

This book is NOT for a network administrator, but it is a must-have for anybody who deploys and supports SBS installations. Covers just about everything except how to install and configuure RRAS to replace RAS. Apart from that it gives you a solid fundation on which to build your SBS expertise. Note Microsoft posted an errata on their Web site.

I purchased this book to be used as a reference book. I already had our SBS up and running (and even if I didn't, I don't think this book would have helped too much). The book goes on and on about the features of Small Business Server and how easy it is for the administrator to set up and maintain (the book does this for at least a hundred pages). I believe knowing about all of the features are important, but the book lacks in not showing the reader how to troubleshoot and inplement most of them. Some of the features that I was trying to implement were advanced but not out of the ordinary. This book didn't halp me at all.

I have read many text books in my days. I felt that this book was the worst purchase I have made in a long time. This book wouldn't be that bad if the reader was never going to set up the server, but wanted to know what the server could do.

This book is a must for IT professionals that have to implement SBS. It will help you especially if you need to modify SBS for your specific implementation, such as changing the default IP addresses, setting up routers, etc.

When you click on the book it says "From Experts" and with SAP demo CD in the previous page. I ordered the book and what I got is SAP R/3 implementation with ASAP. "An essential guide to System Architects, Admins, and Tech. consulants. Based on Release 4.0, Featuring Free Demo Exam Similar to CTC Exam". This is the cover of the book I received. So it may be a good book for IT Managers, etc. To a functional consultant, this is almost useless. On the technical side it almost looks like the SAP R/3 System Administration book from SYBEX with ASAP procedures.

This is a high-level view of an R/3 ASAP implementation. It is too light for detailed planning, but does cover the implementation process sufficiently for project managers and implementation team members new to the SAP R/3 environment.

Strengths: The author does an excellent job of explaining the R/3 environment and the ASAP implementation approach. Each chapter contains useful advice, and the way the information is presented will make the development of a work breakdown structure and project plan a fairly straightforward task. It is clearly written and well illustrated, and provides complete coverage of the implementation, albeit at a high level. I like the fact that post implementation requirements are addressed, which is something that is unfortunately not considered until too late in a project.

Weaknesses: This book begs for checklists, an example work breakdown structure and end-to-end project plan. I did not like the superficial way security planning was addressed - the information provided in the chapter devoted to that topic is so generic as to be useless. Since the book is aimed at guiding architects, administrators and technical members of the implementation project team the accompanying CD ROM lent no value to the book because sample test questions for SAP certification have nothing to do with an ASAP implementation. The CD ROM's storage could have been put to much better use had checklists, project plan templates and other ASAP deliverables been provided instead.

Overall this book is not as valuable to its intended audience as it is for project planners and managers. It can be used as a valuable reference for developing an RFI or RFP for an ASAP implementation. It can also be effectively used as a training guide to prepare an IS/IT department for an implementation because it does give a complete picture of what needs to be done, and to an extent, why. It merits 3.5 stars in my opinion, but I'll give it the benefit of 4 instead of 3, which are my only rating choices.

I got this book based on a recommendation of an associate who liked the way it laid out the implementation of a complex software suite. I am not a SAP R/3 specialist, but am an IS/IT consultant who develops and implements service level management solutions and also manages projects of the complexity and scope of an R/3 implementation. Moreover, I have been providing consulting services to a company that does specialize in R/3 integration, so reading this book became important for a number of professional reasons.

Things I most like: the book is an easy read and is laid out in a sequence that allows you to fully understand the issues and factors, and tasks and deliverables required to implement R/3 using SAP's ASAP approach. I loved the clear illustrations and the sequencing of tasks. I had no problem understanding this book even though I had never implemented (or even supported R/3). I saw numerous parallels between the R/3 implementation requirements and those of past projects in which I had participated. When I was in the mainframe world a book this complete and clearly laid out would have been worth its weight in gold. In fact, the clarity and information contained in the book is much better than anything I have read or used in *any* environment.

I found none of the major shortcomings pointed out by previous reviewers. I think the book addresses security in the detail called for because this implementation aspect is tailored to each enterprise and no single book can possibly cover it in detail. I also found the information presented on two levels: one for technical staff and the other for business process owners, both groups will be playing a big role in any implementation. Perhaps if the business and technical information were segmented in the book it would be more accessible to both groups; however, it would also break the flow of the book. I personally like it the way it is. I do agree that the CD ROM contains material that has nothing top do with the book's topic.

Overall, I learned a lot about SAP R/3 ASAP implementation and general issues and factors for any large-scale application implementation from this book. The author did an excellent job of structuring the book to correspond to project phases and stages, and the well designed illustrations greatly aided the text. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is going to be involved in an R/3 ASAP implementation, or who needs a good model for planning the implementation of any complex enterprise application suite. It earns 5 stars from my point of view.