Distributed

I would highly recommend the book to any researcher who is
interested in experimenting with new ideas and probably contemplating the use of a-life methods.

What sets this book apart from other highly technical tomes on narrow topics is the fact that it's extremely well organized, is clearly written and has illustrations that closely support the concepts set forth. The algorithms provided epitomize elegance in coding and efficiency.

The book is organized into chapters that are aligned to a scheduling taxonomy as follows: Chapter 1 is the root, and discusses the classical scheduling problem and a general model of a scheduling system.

Deterministic scheduling in the Multiple Instruction Multiple Data (MIMD) family with precedence relations among tasks is the topics of chapters 2 through 6 and 10 through 13. Optimal algorithms are covered on chapters 2, 3 (without communication) and 4 (with communication). Chapters 5, 6 and 10-13 cover heuristics.

Chapter 7, again in the deterministic family, is devoted to single program multiple data (SPMD) scheduling, while non deterministic scheduling is covered in chapters 8 (static) and 9 (dynamic), with coverage of hybrid non deterministic algorithms given in chapters 8 and 10.

Scheduling with no precedence relations (i.e., allocation) is the topic of chapter 14.

This is one of the best books on scheduling that I've read. It goes much deeper than books on operating system design and is surprisingly better written than most I've read, including Comer's and Tanenbaum's popular works. If you want to understand the complexities of parallel scheduling I highly recommend spending the time and effort to track down a used copy of this book and use it as a starting point.

There is VERY little amount of sample code. Too much theory and the ideas keep floating around as the author tries to go into core detail and the VB programmer can not possibly visualize THAT much when COM is in fact a C++ thing at the bottom.

I cant say the book is horrible. It gives an impression of what interfaces are, how to program them with VB, but yet, fails to give enough real world examples to prove the interfaces are necessary.

Overall, I'd prefer not to have bought this book but another one with more examples, more about MTS programming.

On the other hand, I wouldnt say no to this book if it was 10$ or free :)

Eventhough i tried to read "inside COM" i found it hard for me because i am not a C++ programmer. I don't suggest "inside com" for a VB programmer.

The author explains COM programming in a very clear way. I found the book very easy to read and I rarely feel that way about computer books. I don't think this book is for total VB novices that have never created a COM component in VB. This book does not have many examples either. If you are looking for a strictly "how to" book, this is not for you. But, if Visual Basic is you're bread and butter this book is a must read. A little familiarity with C++ would also be helpful to get the most out of this book.