Distributed

Micro$oft is famous for its ability to push out new development technologies. The reason behind this planned obsolesence is obvious, every time they come out with something new people will have to open their wallets to "keep up."

DCOM is just another disposable technology. As such, it was a complete failure; one that the marketing folks at M$ have tried to bury as quickly as possible under an avalanche of .NET hype.

DCOM was hard to port because, like COM, it is based on a binary standard (i.e. a standard that changes when you leave x86 and go to 64-bit RISC). Not only that, but DCOM doesn't support distributed transactions. Worst of all, DCOM is a very, very complicated technology to use. Three strikes... YOU'RE OUT!

The half-wit MBAs at Micro$oft realized their mistake and have abandoned DCOM, leaving it forever in the backwaters where the only record of its sorry existence are stupid books like this.

I have no idea why someone would want to buy this book. Folks, this is a dead technology. It is no more. It is an ex-techology. If you buy this book, you are lying to yourself. This book will sit an gather dust, unless you can find more productive uses for it...like burning it to stay warm.

As a note to A reader from LLNL, CA., yes this book covers DCOM (which is out of date),BUT it is primarily about building DISTRIBUTED applications using COM with Visual C++ 6.

I'm just about to start a five year iterative project for a client in Visual C++ 6 (believe me many, many clients who regard safety as paramount will wait quite a while yet before jumping to .Net), and as someone for whom Visual C++ is a second (or third) lanaguage, it's a great book.

I have read multiple books relating to COM/DCOM topics and I find that most of them tend to be very hard to follow/comprehend. Jim tends to re-emphasize his points so that you don't have to turn back the page to continue following along. In my mind I am asking a question and low and behold the answer is on the next line.

Jims video store n-tier example is excellent. Many books throw in many examples that tend to be non-related; therefore, confusing the reader. By using an expanded example throughout the book makes reading and comprehension simple.

I don't write many reviews (as a matter of fact none), but I felt that while I was online looking for other books written by Jim Maloney I would give him some aknowlegement for a book excellently written.

Congrats...

I just passed the 70-015 exam, after reading (only) this book. It has quite a lot of detail, despite the small size.

Most topis are well covered, but some are a little thin. COM is one of these, but after all it _is_ a huge topic, and even most COM-only books don't cover it that well. MTS, particularly security is not covered in enough detail. I had to guess on some MTS questions during the exam that I thought should have been mentioned in the book.

Overall, this book is quite comprehensive, I managed to write over 180(!) pages of notes from it. With it, and some help from the MSDN documentation (and, of course, some braindumps) you should be well prepared for the exam.

Good luck! :)

I don't know if this book is a good prep for the test. I haven't taken it. It is, however, a very good reference book. When I need to know how to do something, I constantly find myself turning to this book. It gives you a good level of detail in a very short space.

I recently passed both the Visual C++ 6 Desktop & Visual C++ 6 Distributed Exams in one month using Mr. Lacey's exam cram books. I can't tell you how impressed I am with the quality of the material he (and the team at Coriolis) put together for the cram guides. I purchased "study guides" from two other publishers that did not cover the material in 1/10th the depth that these "cram guides" covered the material.

I have to agree that the coverage of COM and Aggregation are about as good as you can can get. I have been recommending his coverage of COM to co-workers who are just beginning with COM and want a clear, consise overview of what COM is all about.

I found the material recommended in the "Need To Know More?" sections to be invaluable. I believe his recommendations to be the best material available on each topic.

For the Distributed exam I didn't even bother buying anything but the Coriolis cram guide for the exam and one of the database books recommened in the "Need To Know More?" recommendations.

I've probably read 30 computer-related technical books in the last 5 years. I've read four that I was actually impressed with--two of those four books are Mr. Lacey's. The books were useful, accurate and well-written.

Truly excellent!

I have to admit, this book contains an impressive overview of all the Windows DNA technologies. As a reminder, DNA has been there for years and was working under NT4. It has been revamped with trumpets with a new name, .Net, with all those new services. The authors do have this in mind and they will tell you where .Net will be improving features.

I would recommend this book to anybody that wants to know what is Windows DNA/.Net (beside thinking it's everything that Microsoft is providing for developers!). Of course, you cannot have all those technologies into one book and expect the best coverage on all of them. Having that in mind, the authors create an incredible reference for developers that wants to upgrade to a more scalable & distributed environment as well as to take leverage of the new technologies that came with Windows 2000 (for developers that is).

The only thing that I have to mention (and I did to Wrox) was that I personnaly believe that this book, though the readers needs to have professional knowledge of development, would be better inside the Beginning series since this book serves as an overview reference of all those technologies. Wrox will undoubtfully then release multiple Professional books that will go further in those new technologies (such as doing COM+ events or asynchronous components, having XML Business Objects, etc.).

As a bottom line, most of the authors wrote in a confident programming style and it is a very interesting book to go through. ... But I can't wait for the .Net one!

This book comes in handy as a great reference for utilizing these technologies in the real world. If you're looking for a book that you can sit down and read cover to cover to understand the basics, this is not it. If you're an experienced developer who wants to dive into the guts of the technologies, then this is for you.

I recommend this book a chapter at a time (after reading the first 2 review chapters), in order to learn how to implement a technology (like MTS, MSMQ, etc) in the real world.

Windows DNA is an platform and methodology for Enterprise development. It is taking all of what Microsoft offers for industry : server software (SQL Server, Biztalk), development software (Visual Studio) and productivity software (Office, Viso) and making them tightly inter operatable to produce scaleable solutions that can be development very rapidly.

This book covers Microsoft DNA and does so very well. If you have been following the evolution of Microsoft's Enterprise development methodology and related technologies (MTS, COM, etc..) then you should flip though this one before buying to make sure it offers enough new information for your investment. Do this especially if you already have the Wrox title: Professional MTS/MSMQ and you have a good book on ASP or Visual Basic.

If however you are a beginner/intermediate level Visual Basic, ASP or VC++ developer and you want to expand you knowledge from how to build small-to mid-sized client-server or desktop applications to building scalable Enterprise solutions then this book is for you.

Working on real example projects with SQL Server sounded like a great way to learn the application, so I really anticipated this book to be better than it turned out to be. The projects would be more fruitful if they were easier to follow. For one thing, the instructions never tell you when they're just giving you some background and when you should actually be following along with some "examples". You might be reading about the script to create a database (with them never once telling you to run the script) then you discover, several pages later, that you really needed to run that script in order to continue with what they're talking about. What's also frustrating is its tendency to go into step-by-step detail about some of the most basic things that most people know how to do, yet when it comes to the more expert implementation it just sort of breezes through like you should already be familiar with how this is done. Also, for a book that should do more with hands-on productions, it launches into too many filler pages of background information that we could get elsewhere.

I tend to agree with others about the examples in the text book. One minute you are reading along about the subject and you never know that you should be actually performing what you were reading. It is not as clear as I have seen in other hands-on books. The book is okay and I am not disappointed that I bought it. I am a novice SQL 7 user and the book has helped me out. As for the errors, I have not been able to find an errata for the book. However, with the errors I have found, I have been able to correct them myself after strong determination.

I used two of the Projects immediately.

As a new user of SQL, my understanding has been greatly enhanced by reviewing the theory and then seeing it applied in a project.

I hope other authors follow the format of this book.

Some people like Tanenbaum's writing style. Other people find his work tedious and boring.

I belong to the latter group.

Most of the book is just waffle... he explains neither the general principles nor the implementation specifics in great detail, but instead spends 10 pages explaining the obvious, follows that with a page with good technical information, then a page of insightful commentary, but then continues again with another 10 pages of pointless chatter.

Some chapters provide practical information, but it is clearly aimed at the university student -- and has all the excitement of a monotonous lecturer.

If you're after a to-the-point summary, try something else.

I acquired this book after reading Tanenbaum's excellent "Modern Operating Systems, 2nd ed." While I enjoyed that book, I couldn't finish "Distributed Systems: Principles and Paradigms." Those without a programming background and a serious need to learn distributed design principles won't finish either.

"Distributed Systems" doesn't engage the reader as "Modern Operating Systems" does. While important topics like communication, processes, naming, synchronization, etc. are given full chapter coverage, discussion within some chapters fall short. For example, why introduce the concept of "little" and "big endian" on pages 74 and 75, but not adequately explain what those terms mean?

My favorite aspects of "Distributed Systems" were the chapter summaries. I could almost have had my interests satisfied by reading these concise descriptions of key computing ideas. If you don't need this book in the classroom, you'll probably be happy reading the summaries, too.

Chapters 1 through 4 are a great introduction to Distributed Systems, in the case you have had less than optimal training on the subject in the past - I read these chapters at the beginning of a recent Distributed Systems graduate course since this was the situation I was in. Chapters 5 through 7, which were the main concentration in the course, are also the heart of the text: Synchronization, Consistency and Replication, and Fault Tolerance. The authors write very well, and the diagrams are among the best I have seen, especially if you think visually like me. In my opinion, some of the explanations are drawn out a bit much, or worded in a strange way, but this does not take away from the text's substance. What does subtract from my high opinion of the book is the cover art, which makes it look like a book one would read in grade school. At least one professor in the graduate school I am attending is not interested in using the text for his DS courses for that very reason.

This is a good book for someone who does not know anything about storage and wants to get a clue. But if you are an expert this is not the book for you. I found the book lacking in many areas. The book only establishes the boundaries of managing data storage.

Toigo's grasp of the storage industry's current players and technology is strong and thoughtful. He walks up from techniques in managing disks to strategic initiatives by major vendors, which is not something many people can do well enough to write it all down. Nice job.
I was put off by the title. I suspect many readers like me wanted some killer techniques. I didn't like the thin "techniques" section that came down to, for example, a single high-level diagram per problem domain, and a checklist of generic questions.
The impressive bibliographies that end each chapter suggest what the book is really about. The author has steeped himself in the industry literature, conducted a variety of interviews, and taken some useful field trips into data centers. He's learned from the work, and a lot of that learning makes it to print with credible insight and analysis.
Still, this book only establishes the boundaries of managing data storage. It sometimes offers a thorough outline in place of a penetrating answer. For people starting in this area, this book is a fine one-stop resource. For people who have heard Project Managers authoritatively get all sorts of "trivial" details wrong in technical sales meetings, this book will sound familiar.

This has good high level explanations of many data storage techniques and technologies, but lacks in the low level blood and guts. I was hoping to see a few more charts or formulas or tables. Then again, it does list where to find white papers that it refers to at the end of each chapter, which is a nice thing.

If you find yourself navigating the online bible (SQL Books Online) to figure something out then you are better off buying something else. I was dissapointed that no value was added beyond what you can get from the online books.

I found this book to be an OK reference. However, the author has mistakes in the treatment of RAID levels for DASD. Nice high level view of queuing theory and the basics of using histograms for analysis.

I wish all books were written this well.

Great job.

I can't add much to the other reviews they are pretty accurate. I do want to point out that the online portion of this book no longer exists and that the publisher nor Amazon points this out when they sell you the book. Instead you are directed to the SAMS online learning site which of course does not include material ffor this book. I would not purchase it on principle because I felt that I was decieved as to what I was purchasing.

It has 13 chapters with approximately 6 Lessons in each chapter. The first 7 chapters deal with properly designing a database (and some server stuff). There is much more to it than you think, and believe me, everyone needs to learn how, it's much more than just creating a table and some querys. The last 6 chapters deal with Publishing your database on the web using Visual Basic 5.0.

In addition, each lesson has a quiz at the end of it (and the answers in the back) to help you grasp the concept of each lesson. Also, at the end of each lesson there are excersises to complete that will help you apply the information from the lesson.

All in all, it's about how you learn. I think his book does a good job of walking you through each lesson and showing you how to develop a web database. I think this book would make a very good College textbook.

In general, the authors did a great job of covering win-cgi, DAO, Visual Basic, Access and Website web server. I was able to set up all the examples and make them work and got a good dose of building and querying Access db. The organization and presentation of material is in the top 5% of development books that I have read.

My take-away from this book is that VB/win-cgi is not the most elegant way to webify a database. The win-cgi/CGI32.BAS framework is a real strange kluge. I found myself constructing a flow diagram to put it all into perspective so I could follow the process from start to finish. This would have been nice to have in the book.

I have worked with ASP/ADO at the low end and Sapphire Web at the hi end, and from a cost/benefit point of view, believe there are better ways to go for NT web development. I make this assumption on the sheer complexity of the win-cgi/CGI32.BAS framework and question its performance, scaleability and extensibility. For a low volume, non-mission critical application, its probably okay.

That said, you may want to consider investing your time looking at M/S Interdev, VB6.0, Java tools, ColdFusion or some of the other web/db technologies on the market. Proprietary issues asside, I think that ADO is an elegant solution for the money. It comes down to how much you can afford to buy vs how much time you are willing to invest in development and maintenance.

I've been programming with ABAP/4 for over 4 years, and was hoping the book would contain a much more complete list of transactions, and what they do. I can list the transactions myself, and download them to a file, and the list would be complete. One I very frequently use is SE10, which I'm surprised wasn't mentioned. I frequently use SE75 when working with SapScript. Similarly, I can download the ABAP commands myself if all I need is a list. The explanation for the command 'PROVIDE', for example, is a perfect example of a non-explanation.

Even as a newcomer to ABAP, I am finding this text very helpful. None of my rackfull of "How-To" books makes any sense as a reference, and I find the online help hopelessly verbose and unfocused. I've even spent a few minutes actually reading the book... and liking it. Barrett's style is just right. In addition to the commands, there are many concise explanations of obscure SAP terms that I have found very helpful in deciphering the gibberish the old hands speak to each other. I will admit to being extremely old; let's just say "Pre-ScoobyDoo". Nevertheless, I submit that even you whippersnappers don't know a language until you have a well-thumbed hard copy command reference. This one is quite good.

This book stays right by my PC. It's an excellent quick source for command syntax structure. I crack this book open more often than any other SAP book I have. Anyone new to ABAP needs this book. One comment about another review here: This book didn't promise to be an SAP Transaction Code guide, so don't complain about not being one. This book is exactly what it says it is and nothing more. I don't need another 3 inch thick book on everything ABAP. I need a command reference I can drop in my computer bag and take it with me.

This was a very disappointing book. I only got through the first 3 chapters before I gave up on it. There were numerous typographical and grammatical errors that made it almost impossible to read. I finally started reading "Windows 2000 DNS" by Roger Abell, etc. by New Riders publishers and found it to be exactly what I wanted.

Take the above reviews with a grain of salt. They are reproduced almost verbatim on other bookseller's sites. I believe that they have been written by friends of the authors, and do not reflect the actual content of the book.

When I saw the review before this, I wasn't sure I should buy this book, but am glad I went ahead and read it. I'm not sure whether the first few reviews were written by friends or not, but they are on target. This is a great DNS book, and is very helpful for understanding, installing, and maintaining DNS. I would have liked for the RFCs listed to be provided on a CD, and would have liked the text to be a bit larger, but other than that, this book rocks!