ACM Books

This is an excellent companion book into the world of software testing. What it does do is highlight analytical techniques in how to perform tests. I frown at some who gave this book bad reviews in that they didn't understand the precondition for this book:

1) This book does NOT teach the aspects of how to manage software testing or implement the procedures necessary to do so. This is a more detailed way of looking at things.

2) Buy a book that teaches you how to implement the procedures and deal with all aspects of the organization in making sure these procedures are scoped out. Then, use the techniques in this book to implement the procedures.

I find it extremely funny that the bad reviewers didn't see this - as they should know something about managing projects and communicating with users/management/programmers in a software test environment.

This book is an easy read, and gives the uninitiated like myself a good understanding of the basics behind softrware testing. Each chapter is short, well written, and to the point.

As a subject matter expert on a software team developing a specific application, I found that this book gave me the background and information that I needed to have discussions with the testing team as they developed test cases for the functional verification of the application.

The title of this excellent book is appropriate with respect to real world issues are addressed. It's unfortunate that the real world rarely reflects what's in this book, but that is offset by the good fortune that you can establish and manage a mature, effective test organization by following the well thought out advice that the author provides. Since other reviewers have highlighted many of this book's key strengths I am going to touch upon what I like most and why.

First, the author doesn't confine himself to testing in a vacuum - he gives a framework that recognizes the dependencies between and among other software engineering processes, such as configuration management, issue management and how testing fits within the development life cycle.

Second, the underlying themes are risk management, cost containment and metrics.

Chapters that I especially like are 1, the six essentials of software testing (in many respects this is the heart of the book and everything else is commentary), 5, critical choices: what, when and how to test (these are the eternal questions of software testing - the answers given are on the mark), and 10, testing tasks, deliverables and chronology (a deliverables-based approach is the only viable way to plan and estimate realistically in my opinion).

While the above are my personal favorites, that does not diminish the value of the rest of the book. They merely reflect parts of this book that most influenced me. I cannot recommend this book highly enough - it's realistic, covers all of the important issues, and if you're like me you'll find yourself reaching for it when you have an issue to resolve or want to borrow a best practice.

I manage a large development group for a Fortune 100 company; this group includes hundreds of testers. This is the first, and only, book I found that outlines the basic, core principles of software testing as they should be applied in a fast moving, ever-changing environment such as ours. I've made this book mandatory for every one of our testers and every development and test manager in my organization.

Simple. Practical. Readily available thought frameworks for software testing. I consider this book to be a fundamental building block in testing community; not because it is high-end clean-room software engineering, but because it makes sense to the general person trying to understand, improve and apply. As with any facet of evolving software, this book is nicely complimented by reading some of Cem Kaner's works, in particular Testing Computer Sofware .. as well as.. look at James Whittaker's books and moving on from there by complimenting it with Glenford Myers historical work on testing .. but if you're simply looking for a clue .. start here and move to Kaner thereafter.

Here is what I appreciated about Kit's book the most ... he diligently worked to talk to me where I am.

This no non-sense approach makes a book that you can hand off to a green bean tester to introduce them to concepts, education, practices .. what works, what may not work, etc. You don't need to be a 10yr sw/test vet to understand and use his assertions and facts in your world. That, in my mind, makes the book purchase worth the cost.

For example, discussing "..the quality of the test process determines the success of the test effort..". Seems obvious doesn't it? Now explain it to someone in such a way that they understand what behaviors they need to change/include to get from "nowhere" to "somewhere". Kit does it.

Buy the book. When I recommend books to green bean testers, or testers with experience but no industry exposure, this is one of books I put on the "must purchase" list for them.

I ordered this for a 10 week course and it was shipped immediately. The book was in great condition.

If you're new to testing this book gives a basic insight into the processes. I would read this book after reading "Software Testing Techniques: Finding the Defects that Matter " by Scott Loveland.

A well structured, compressed and to the point book that addresses all I've dreamt to establish for a well defined test process, multi-facet process improvment, and practical maturity model assessment. Thank you Tim.

Very pratical book. It helped conducting a self assessment and generate a lot of ideas. I recommend it for any software test origanization that needs a little improvement.

This book provides a coherent process improvement approach for software testing. It provides a model that supports the assessment of strengths and weaknesses of an existing software testing process and an approach for developing and implementing remedial action to rectify the weaknesses. As such this book is not useful to organizations that have not achieved a mature and stable testing process because the model will not apply. If you are seeking a book that will get your processes stable you will find "Systematic Software Testing" by Rick D. Craig and Stefan P. Jaskiel a better place to start.

However, if your processes are stable this book is among the best because it stays focused on improving the testing process and does so in the same manner that SEI's CMM does for software development. In fact, the TPI approach in this book is cross-referenced to the CMM, which gives you an approach that can be viewed as a testing maturity model that aligns nicely with the CMM (including the newer CMMI). This is one of the strong points of the book and TPI.

Another thing to know about this book is that it's written more like a specification than a narrative. Some readers may find this difficult, but if you are involved in mapping the TPI key process areas to the CMM (or SPICE, Bootstrap or PSM), you'll appreciate the format. Also, the book views TPI as a subset of software process improvement, and software process improvement as a subset of TQM. While the authors focus on the software testing process, they do not isolate it from the bigger picture. This allows you to view then entire quality process as a coherent whole when you're assessing the software testing process and developing improvement strategies.

I personally think this book adds considerably to the software testing body of knowledge, and that the approach the authors give is both practical and sensible. If you work in an organization that has a stable testing process or is at CMM level 2 or above this book is essential reading.

Is a very good introduction in Information Retrieval from a modern perspective.The book approaches the field in a rigorous and complete way from a computer-science perspective.

I used this book as a textbook in a course on information storage and retrieval that I took a few years back, and it is still my favorite book on the subject. It explains the concepts clearly yet has all of the necessary mathematical and algorithmic details needed to work with the subject matter.
Chapter one just acts as a guide to the rest of the book. The book is basically divided into four parts: text IR, human-computer interfacing for IR, multimedia IR, and applications of IR. The part on text IR is best for beginners trying to learn the overall subject of IR, and consists of chapters 2 through 9. Chapter 2 is a long and important chapter that introduces fundamental concepts in IR and lays foundations for later chapters. Models for "ranking" documents based on queries are presented, including the boolean, vector, probabilistic, and fuzzy models. Chapter 3 is far less technical than chapter 2 and focuses on evaluation of IR models. Chapter 4 is an introduction to query languages, which are necessary for the elegant presentation of complex queries. Chapter 5 deals with query operations, which is the transformation of queries from simple keywords into weighted sets of terms and also includes user feedback. As in previous chapters, there is quite a bit of mathematics involved. Chapter 6 is devoted to text languages such as HTML and SGML since the user might refer to the structure of a document in his/her query, and that structure must be defined somewhere. Chapter 7 is about operations on documents themselves for the purpose of simplifying them for quick search. Thus, it is important as a time saver to eliminate common words such as "the" and also to reduce words to their grammatical roots. The potentially large size of document collections requires special indexing techniques for efficient retrieval. This is the subject of Chapter 8. Query processing can be further accelerated by using the parallel and distributed IR techniques discussed in Chapter 9, which concludes the book's discussion of text IR.
Chapter 10 is a stand-alone chapter on HCI for IR that discusses the design of user interfaces that assist the user in forming a query and current approaches for visualization of large data sets.
Multimedia IR is discussed in chapters 11 and 12. Models and query languages for office and medical information systems are discussed in Chapter 11. Efficient indexing and searching of multimedia objects is discussed in Chapter 12.
The final three chapters of the book are about the applications of IR. There is a chapter each about searching the web, bibliographic systems, and digital libraries.
The chapter on text languages is starting to show its age, as are the chapters on IR applications at the end of the book. The chapters on algorithms, and particularly the algorithmic portions of the chapters on text IR cause this book to remain a worthwhile read. There is quite a bit of mathematics used in this book, and probability theory in particular. Thus, the reader should already be familiar with probability theory and the basics of pattern recognition to get the most from this book.

This is an excellent book for those interested in getting an overview of IR. The book summarizes all the important milestones of IR up to 1999 (There are 852 references in the bibliography!). The writing is concise yet eloquent. The authors try to cover as much ground as possible, providing a gold-mine of information comparing the pros and cons of the various types of implementation. However, I believe that due to the breadth of the techniques covered, some of the explanations for the algorithms were rather brief and not very illuminating. But no worries, there are ample references to point you back to the writings of the orignal authors so you can get right back on track.

This book covers most of the basics but is far from being up to date in technology. The student would be better off looking at the TREC website and reading papers submitted by participants.

Modern Information Retrieval is a textbook for computer science undergraduate and graduate courses and a reference book for IR practitioners.

The book structure consists of a Preface, Acknowledgements, Biographies, fifteen chapters, Appendix, Glossary, References and Index. The first part of the book is authored or co-authored and addresses query and text operations, retrieval and indexing. The second part consists of special topics authored by leading researchers in their fields. This part focuses on architecture, multimedia IR, bibliographical systems and digital libraries.

The Glossary section of this book consists of 18 pages and defines important technical terms used in IR. The References section consists of 45 pages of significant IR work. The Index section consists of 13 pages, which enhances the book usability. Each chapter ends with a Trends and Research Issues and a Bibliographic Discussion section.

The best features of the book are its cohesive presentation and organization. The use of a common nomenclature and notation helps students and readers to assimilate key concepts and with "connecting the dots" across chapters. The text is reinforced by a mirrored Web site with several resources, errata page and teaching material. In Chapter 1, the authors even "go the extra mile" with teachers and suggest how chapters could be used with different undergraduate and graduate courses. All this makes the book a great educational resource for students and teachers.

This book is recommended for computer science courses at the undergraduate and graduate level. It is also recommended for technical libraries and as a primary reference for IR practitioners.

The book theoritically explains testing in great detail.It would have been an awesome book if it had a software part to it.Lack of software makes the learning experience incomplete but still the book is worth the money.

Hi
This book deals with various issues of Automation such
as basic concepts, impelementation details. It has various
case studies also. A must for those who are considering
for testing automation.
It should have more coverage for data driven automation.
[Niteen]

Anyone who claims to be a Principle or Senior Software QA Engineer, or a QA Automation Engineer, but has never read or used this book should be convicted of professional malpractice.

Absolutely the best current reference book on why and how to analyze, architect, design and construct verification and validation vehicles that dramatically improve the probability of software defect detection - both manually and through later automation. Said vehicles can be easily audited and inspected to improve positive and negative software behavior coverage and equivalence classes. But most important, this great book describes how intelligently devised manual vehicles can be used to automatically drive future software builds and release regression assessments (to achieve automated regression testing).

Describes everything that the software test tool vendors refuse to tell buyers, but what every software QA professional must know (in spite of the vendors).

This book is simply a breath of fresh air.

It is a virtual bible to positive and negative software behavior verification and validation. My only displeasure is that the authors choose to continue to use obsolete terminology: specifically testing. Software testing is not what this book is about. This book is about how to create and achieve highly effective software behavior verification and validation.

Software QA professionals must clearly move way beyond ad hoc testing, because the need today is far greater than ancient testing paradigms. The need is for intelligently designed, architected, constructed frameworks that enable software behavior and performance verification and validation, whether performed manually, automatically, or through agents such as monkeys and oracles.

I found this book to be a solid roundup of good practices within automated software testing.

It doesn't provide any startling new techniques, but makes a good job of explaining the common pitfalls that are usually encountered when trying to automate testcases, and provides good advice for how to get the best out of commercial tools such as the one available from julianjones.com.

The writing style can be a bit dry, and there are times when the thought of reading 500 pages can be a bit daunting.

All things considered, highly recommended.

I bought this book because I was new to software quality assurance, yet placed in charge of an automated testing effort. This book clearly encapsulates years of experience -- you can almost feel the pain the authors must have experienced as they learned these lessons the hard way! I have already avoided making a number of mistakes.

The authors organized the material effectively and wrote it in a way that promotes skimming and scanning. By reading the first few sentences of a section, you will know whether you are interested in the section. If you're not interested, skip to the next section. The authors even occasionally tell you what sections you can skip should that material not apply to your situation.

These skimming and scanning aids are important because the text itself is frequently unexciting and cumbersome. There's not much to do about the former -- nuts and bolts are hard to make exciting. I hope, however, that the authors will consider a good edit for more vigorous writing should they update this book for a second edition.

Beyond Chaos is a collection of 45 chapters by different authors with about 8 pages per chapter on average. So you can pick this book and read a few chapters whenever you have time. Even though the book is a collection of chapters by different authors, they are organized in a very logical manner and the flow from one chapter to another is very natural. Most of the software project managers have to deliver quality product under time pressure by making use of effective project and process management and leadership skills. It covers each of these aspects so it makes a nice complete set.

Beyond Chaos can be very useful asset for any project manager especially those working in smaller or newer software companies where they need to manage the process and development in parallel while working under time pressures. It helps them to understand common issues and how to resolve them without having to learn them the hard way. If you are a seasoned professional you will find the short highlighted notes in every chapter a very useful reference.

There are six parts in this book. The first part contains essays on how to work and deal with different stake holders above and below in the hierarchy. This part covers important aspects of project management. I felt that some more space should have been given to this important subject in the book.

The second part deals with project management. Chapter 7 "Primer On Project Management" is one of the best in the entire book. It covers some of the most important issues in project management such as
- Importance of separating the process from daily project management.
- Keeping all stake holders in sync on the definition of quality and priorities
- Prioritizing real customer requirements rather than nice features which product should have.

Chapter 16 "Avoiding The Iceberg" is another very interesting writing. It describes various signs of trouble that you can easily identify and then it goes on describing their possible cause and solution.

Remainder of the book deals with leadership, managing under pressure, quality, processes and practices to meet constantly changing environment. I was delighted to see a chapter on delivering quality under tight timelines as I am currently in this situation myself and this reading has provided me a different perspective to deal with it.

Beyond Chaos covers many topics in the software project management area. You are likely to benefit by at least some of the topics. As you read this book, you will be able to relate to many situations described in this book and find out if you took the right decisions under those situations as described in this very practical book.

This book, consisting of short essays, had been sitting on my bookshelf for a long time. Finally, I picked it up when my summer vacation started and I actually felt sorry I hadn't done it earlier. Constantine and others present their thoughts about common problems in software development organizations and some methods to tackle these issues with. I keep nodding and sighing while reading the problem descriptions and keep on nodding as the authors proceed to how they have successfully solved the problems before. Good stuff!

Having been in the software development business for many years, I have experienced most of the situations that are described in this instructive series of essays. The writers of the articles in the book and the editor, Larry Constantine, are all long time practitioners in the field and bring share deep experience level with entertaining case studies and solid advice. Although some of the ideas are somewhat idealistic (programmers forming an international software guild to enforce standards), others are practical and immediately useful. Even if, for you, some of the articles are "preaching to the choir", they may give you a different way to explain something you may already be doing, or help with additional justification for using an approach that many managers of the "ready, fire, aim" school of management don't see the need for. This not to say that this is one of those "heavy methodology" books; it isn't.

It is disheartening when you see organizations make the same mistakes over and over. Readers of this book may be able to use some of the techniques described to keep their particular organization out of trouble. This book is an excellent and readable contribution to software development and software development management.

Having been in the software development business for many years, I have experienced most of the situations that are described in this instructive series of essays. The writers of the articles in the book and the editor, Larry Constantine, are all long time practitioners in the field and bring share deep experience level with entertaining case studies and solid advice. Although some of the ideas are somewhat idealistic (programmers forming an international software guild to enforce standards), others are practical and immediately useful. Even if, for you, some of the articles are "preaching to the choir", they may give you a different way to explain something you may already be doing, or help with additional justification for using an approach that many managers of the "ready, fire, aim" school of management don't see the need for. This not to say that this is one of those "heavy methodology" books; it isn't.

It is disheartening when you see organizations make the same mistakes over and over. Readers of this book may be able to use some of the techniques described to keep their particular organization out of trouble. This book is an excellent and readable contribution to software development and software development management.

I bought this book when I was promoted to team leader 6 months ago. This is a great collection of wisdom for the new manager, especially Chapter 7 - First Things First: A Project Manager's Primer. As this chapter says from the start, most people are promoted without much if any training. This is a good starting point. The close of the book - Chapter 45 - was also one of the highlights. This is Constantine's advice to new leaders and those who wish to become leaders. He makes a nice distinction between pure management, to which he claims to have nothing new to add, and leading software development.

The book is broken down into 6 areas (It's About People, Project Management, Under Pressue, Quality Required, Processes and Practices, and Leadership and Teamwork) each containing about 8 chapters. You may think that is a lot of ground to cover in a book, and it is. The chapters in Quality Required didn't seem to be as relavent to their area as the others did. Quality means a lot of different things to a lot of different people so this is difficult no doubt. I found the firt two and last two areas of the book to be the most helpful.

This may seem contradictory to the above paragraph, but I felt the book was too long. Compared to other books such as "The Manager Pool" and "Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering", this book is hard to finish in short bursts. Five pages was about tops for a chapter in the other books while it was typically the minimum for this book. That doesn't make Beyond Chaos a bad book. As I've said it has great information. Just don't expect to breeze through the information.

I'll readily admit at first I was 'lost' in the first two chapters, lost in the thought I really didn't need to know the intricate workings of the US tax system or of how a cooker was intended to operate. But stopping and reflecting on the thought that this is a book to introduce you to testing and the relevancy of it becomes clear.

For experienced testers or test managers the bulk of the material may already be known, but consider the extensive references and the very useful appendices, then this book provides not only a good grounding for the test team but also a valuable reference book for experienced testers and managers.

Is it useful or just theory? I'd hazard a guess that marked improvement in test effectiveness would be achieved just by applying "2.3.2 Test categories" as a form of checklist. Add in the rest of the books contents and we have an essential book that's sitting well along others such as Whittaker/Thompson's How To series.

This text focuses on test planning and test design. It is loaded with examples and is very practical. Well written and organized with a very useful appendix of test design templates.

It is impossible to perform effective software testing without an enormous amount of organization. To develop this required level of organization, you must plan, plan and plan. Before that can happen, you must preplan to organize the development of the plan. This is done by using descriptive tools such as state diagrams, spreadsheets and matrices. Using such tools to manage software testing is a complex act, and the main point of this book is showing you how to use them.
As a mathematician, I was delighted to see the section on reducing test cases, where the authors describe how to break the feature set down into equivalence classes. In mathematics, an equivalence class is the group of all values that behave the same when operated on. Therefore, in software testing, the examination of one case will be testing all others in the equivalence class. However, this is not as easy as it may appear at first. Two different features may behave the same for one input, but react quite differently when accepting a different one.
Testing the two main areas of modern software, object-oriented software and web applications, is covered. Many of the difficulties of performing tests that are reasonably complete are examined in detail. For example, the many possibilities as a consequence of the keys that can be pressed to enter data into a textbox are examined. Unusual possibilities such as function keys, control characters, and backspace/delete are put forward as possibilities to consider. While they may not be a concern, such keystrokes should be considered and eliminated or dealt with whenever data is to be entered.
The mathematical laws of combinatorics prevents us from ever examining anything more than a small subset of all possible ways our software can be used. Our only hope is to test a "meaningful subset" of those possibilities, which is a set that we can test in our time window that covers the largest number of most likely scenarios. The information in this book will help you two ways. It will help you increase your efficiency so that you can cover more options and also show you many of the options that are more likely and those which are equivalent to the highest number of scenarios of use.

Finally! A book that answers the real questions about testing: how to write and manage test plans.

I had despaired of finding a good book that reflected the real work testers do, which is analyzing, strategizing and writing. Indeed, the act of testing is only the tip of the iceberg of the testing process and this book shows how to do what testers do, and do it the right way.

What makes this book so special is the way Louise Tamres shows the big picture in the introductory chapter, then leads you through the process of creating and refining test outlines that are used to develop test cases. This is the most confusing part of testing for anyone who has been thrust into that role, and is made more confusing because many companies don't have standards. The few times I have had to function as a test analyst there was no agreed upon approach, and it was like the blind leading the blind. This book will prevent that from ever happening again because it clearly shows what needs to be done and how. I like the way that simple test management tools like spreadsheets are used, because a lot of books on the subject cite very expensive test tools that are outside the budget of small companies. This makes the book realistic and practical. I also like the way each chapter is summarized, and the cases and examples are used to make the information real to the reader.

While the book shows how to develop the plans and test cases it also shows basic test techniques, including testing various software environments (web, object-oriented, performance and load, and end-to-end). These are like a compass to the new tester because they give a direction. I also like the way that associated activities, such as project and configuration management are included because these, too, are things that the new tester needs to be aware of.

If you're new to testing get this book and keep it nearby. If you are experienced, you'll still learn a lot from the book.

Introducing Software Testing is a good treatment of many techniques that have been successfully used by testers over the years. This book has a good philosophy behind it that says requirements and processes are important in testing. However, the book presents the information in a way that people in organizations that may not have firmly defined requirements or processes can still easily apply the techniques described in the book.

There was a lot for me to like about this book. First, there is a wide coverage of test and test-related topics. There are many topics in software testing - just go to a testing conference to see some of the possibilities. Tamres does a good job in covering the major topics in a way that leaves the reader with an understanding of what's needed for software testing. Second, the book is appropriate for testers at all levels. Although the title is "Introducing Software Testing," I would not dismiss it too quickly as being a book just for beginners. I have been a full-time tester and trainer in testing for 14 years and still learned valuable things from this book. Third, there is adequate detail. I never left any topic asking "why?" or "how?". The level of detail is a good balance between readability and having enough detail to explain the topics. For every topic, there are multiple examples of how to apply the techniques described in the book. These examples show realistic ways the techniques would be applied in an actual project. Finally, the book is based on proven and practical techniques. The techniques shown in the book are the same ones that testers have been using for many years, but having them in one book is a great thing. The techniques are easy to understand and apply. I'm all for creative and new techniques for testing, but for foundational approaches that have been proven to work and to scale for large projects, I like to keep firmly grounded in good practices.

I can highly recommend this book to anyone in testing, whether you are the poor soul that has been assigned to test your company's latest project and know nothing about testing, or if you are a test manager looking for a resource to build your team's skills. This book covers the major topics in testing in a way that promotes process-driven and requirements-based project structures, but the techniques can be used in any project environment. This is a must-have book for your technical bookshelf.

I was assigned to read and use this book for a Methods class at CMU. Jackson did a good job of selling the concept of problem frames to me. They seem like a good way to model a system, properly abstracting the problem into distinct interacting segments. It produces diagrams which are helpful as a general architectural overview and are generally largely understandable by non-technical customers. The concept has potential.

Unfortunately, the book does not live up to the concept. The main flaw in the book is found the first time that you need to look up a concept in a prior chapter. Jackson tends to mention a given concept, or a given definition, only once in the book and he uses no way of setting off the concepts and definitions from the rest of the text on the page. Further exacerbating the problem, he makes the cardinal error of software engineers, using common words as his terminology, and redefining them for his purposes. Not only does this mean that his terms don't stand out from the text, but this also means that the reader will be forced to puzzle out whether Jackson is referring to "machine" as a term within his framework, or simply referring to the dictionary definition of a machine.

It's not all bad. Jackson does have a friendly conversational style to his writing that turned me on to the concept while reading the chapters the first time. Unfortunately, the reread entirely turned me off.

This is an excellent book. Michael Jackson resolves a number of major problems by drawing a distinction between the description of the problem domain and the description of the solution domain. This is needed because current object-oriented techniques (based on UML, for example) tend to be solution-oriented in the early stages of the software development lifecycle. This mindset can lead to maintainability problems later. Another 'gem' is that Jackson develops a scheme for decomposing a problem into simpler subproblems. This 'divide and conquer' approach has been known to mathematicians for hundreds of years. Structured analysis methods use similar techniques but they have seemingly been forgotten (or never learned?) by the OO community where the objects are there 'just for the picking' (to quote Bertrand Meyer). This reviewer now realises that life is not so simple. I have benefited from Jackson's problem frames and have applied them as a 'front-end' to UML in order to structure medium and large systems. In particular, viewing a specific application (such as a home heating system, ATM ...) as an instance of a more general category is very useful as it allows us to gain insights into the current problem. I have specialised the frames to discover domain categories for process control, manufacture, MIS, access control and tracking. This book could trigger a number of developments. For example, discovering and documenting structural and behavioural patterns in this phase of the software development lifecycle could would be a good idea. In particular, looking at requirements as goals instead of jumping directly into the over-hyped use cases seems like a good idea as well. To this end, it might be worth looking at a number of methods that are mentioned in the book, for example KAOS.

This is a seminal book on software requirements analysis. Its 300 odd pages makes it very handy and "carryable". I have just finished reading the book and started implementing Michael Jackson's ideas into a software project. The benefits have just started showing up.

Oddly, enough I did not find too many other resources on the same topic in the web.

Short and sweet: this book is about structuring and analyzing problems, not about solutions. In fact, from the beginning the author discusses the difficulty of focusing on problems and the tendency to jump to a solution before the problem is completely understood.

The structured approach that Mr. Jackson provides starts with bounding the problem and drilling down into subproblems, called problem frames. I like his approach to bounding problems because it shows how to identify and isolate the problem and place it into its proper context. This forces you to focus on the problem and not drift off into a premature solution. I also like how he breaks down problems into manageable chunks by placing subproblems into domains through the use of projections (where subproblem domains overlap) and partitions (where associated phenomena are isolated). This allows you to see the whole problem in its magnificent splendor, which is the first step towards tackling each of its parts.

As Mr. Jackson's approach evolves you will find patterns emerging. If you are a proponent of design patterns you will appreciate how he breaks problems into classes and five basic frames. This is a powerful concept because as you gain experience using problem frames you will be able to quickly classify problems and approach them in a consistent, repeatable manner. This part of the book greatly influenced my way of thinking about problems, and the material is reinforced by examples given in subsequent chapters, as well as chapters devoted to variant and composite frames.

This book is ostensibly about problem frames and methods as they relate to software development. However, the approach given in the book has much wider applications. I was able to relate it to physical devices, processes and procedures. Moreover, Mr. Jackson's approach itself can be decomposed into a collection of useful tools and techniques that, taken individually, will prove invaluable in requirements analysis, design and related endeavors. I am giving it 5 stars only because I cannot give it more.

The academic community is slowly getting interested in the problem frames approach. The first conference workshop on problem frames was held in Edinburgh, Scotland on May 14, 2004.

There are a few online resources: see...

http://www.ferg.org/pfa/index.html

Steven Miller writes a sort of "choose your own adventure" book about information technology complete with alternative endings based on how well society deals with the issues and decisions encountered along the information superhighway. If you choose to use the National Information Infrastructure (NII) to benefit the market economy, turn to page19, if you choose to use the NII to promote a true democracy, turn to page 377, etc. Miller is, of course, not neutral in his opinion of what the focus of NII development ought to be.

"With information technologies, we can either move forward by "repaving the cowpaths," and simply develop quicker, more intensive ways of continuing current social realities; or we can use it to branch off in radically different directions that allow us to realize some of our most cherished values." Steven Miller (397)

These "cherished values" include a revitalized democracy and an active citizenship fueled by an informed, involved, connected, and strong community. Lest you mistake this upbeat optimism for the Pollyanna (the market will balance all in its infinite wisdom) approach touted by many cyber-enthusiasts, Miller acknowledges the need for some government regulation and makes a pretty good case for the notion that "deregulation" is not possible. The choice is either explicit regulation with citizen input, or complex, covert regulation based on grants, subsidies, and tax breaks brokered through corporate -government alliances that actually discourage citizen participation (pp. 74-79).

Miller then illustrates the joys and pitfalls of government regulation of infrastructure through a brief history of past models, e.g. trains, telephones, highways, and cable. He describes a variety of government agencies, private industry, and non-profit organizations trying to shape the NII, and manages to provide enough detail to frame the debate without forcing you to reach for the No-Doze. We are offered interesting proposals for "universal service," "electronic democracy," and an "Internet community," and, at the same time, asked to examine less attractive subjects such as invasion of privacy, intellectual property issues, and the underbelly of the NII policy making process. Okay, so its not quite the cliff-hanger you might have expected from my opening line, but it is a well written, thought-provoking book that offers a straight forward account of NII issues. And Steven Miller pulls it off while keeping the jargon to a minimum (bless his heart).

Lot's of food for thought.

Addresses the right issues

As we all know, there are more books out there about the Internet than we'll ever have time to read. This is an entertaining and educational narrative of why understanding the "information superhighway" and the policies guiding it is so imperative to our current and future implementation of its tools. I also enjoyed the historical context in which he placed current policymaking. An excellent book for those wanting to better understand communications policy.

This book was my first real introduction to the area of computer security. In it, Neumann set down a complete set of the problems that were appearing in the (mis)use of computers. Published in 1995, it was certainly an eye opener to the dangers of being lax in the use of computers. It was a bit scary when I read it, although at the time, I was optimistic that the danger could be managed.
However, my position since then has changed in the negative sense. In rereading this book, it is clear that the dangers are the same and are greater in both breadth and depth. This book was written before the explosive growth of the Internet has turned nearly every computer into a potential node in an evil botnet. Also, the use of computers in the management of the modern world has dramatically expanded, increasing the possible ways in which danger can make an appearance.
In looking through the risks, there is not a single one that has disappeared rather than increased in the level of the danger. Some examples are e-mail spoofs, insider misuse of data, denial of service attacks, threats to privacy, viruses and other malware, security vulnerabilities, computer errors in election results and financial fraud. And so it goes. If you are interested in looking back and seeing how little has changed in terms of the risks inherent with computer use, then read this book. It was and remains the original "canary in the coal" mine concerning the dangers that universal use of computers will generate.

Neumann, founder and moderator of the Internet Risk Forum, is the pope of the legitimate computer risks community. This is the bible.

This book is manages to be entertaining while discussing an important subject. The author's experience as a moderator of the risks forum provided him with authoritative knowledge, which is put to good use. The reading can light at times when the subject is catatrophic. Nevertheless, once you read this book, you'll understand that it's us - humans - that are at the center of all problems.

This book is incredibly dense and content-rich. It features "from the horse's mouth" articles from some of the top minds in interactive entertainment. Two years after its publication, it's still cutting edge. It provides excellent groundwork for software designers, virtual reality designers or anyone working in the theme park industry. I teach interacive design at the University level throughout the world and I always recommend this book as a "must read" for my students.

This is an excellent overview of all of the areas where simulation and virtual reality are penetrating our culture. The authors of each chapter focus on entertainment and defense. Though I read the book searching for background material on military simulation, I was fascinated by the use of simulation technologies in entertainment. Each author presented a very different application. Many thanks to Clark Dodsworth for pulling all of this material together.

Clark Dodsworth has made an enormous contribution to this subject by combining chapters from all the big thinkers in this industry.

Some chapters did not appeal, others enthralled me and as I hilited gems along the way through this book I realised that my own concepts of perception and communication were evolving. It was nice to find support and to be challenged as well in the many contributions of this book.

Dodsworth insight and experience helps to stitch all of the contributions and any loose ends together.

Digital Illusions provides many benefits to any reader who has an interest in this industry. I found the investment of my time worthwhile.