Distributed

This book is an excellent place to start creating Delphi components. If you are new to component creation (like I was) and need an intelligent place to start, this is the book that will best serve your needs. Some of the material is a bit difficult to understand (due to lack of depth), but careful study of the techniques will prove useful. I would recommend this book to anyone new or slightly seasoned to component creation, but I must admit that I outgrew it in about 4-5 months. Some of the "meatier" details are not there for advanced component building. For example, I had a difficult time figuring out how to surface the properties of "sub-components." The book makes only a slight reference to the subject and is not very clear about what is happening. As it happens, it is a very simple task, but I wish the book had helped me to better understand it. Overall I liked this book. It moved me from being dependent on other programmers' custom components and allowed me to start making Delphi work according to my specific needs

Konopka has done a good job of getting into the finer aspects of component development, and provides some useful additions to your VCL component library

Good coverage of most beginning to advanced component creation topics. Falls short in discussing advanced data-aware component creation (grids, treeviews, etc.). Does not discuss in depth design time interfaces. Overall, a good reference for component creation.

This book provides a practical method to apply the Unified Modeling Language (UML) to design concurrent and distributed software for large systems. While many books have been published to explain the details of the UML notation, this book provides a method, COMET, to approach software design through application of a practical subset of the UML notation. The book contains numerous, extensive case studies and provides pragmatic, useful guidelines to identify distributed subsystems and concurrent tasks from a UML analysis model. The approach described represents a unique and valualbe contribution by the author of this text. Finally, because this book is intended mainly as a text for software design courses, I consulted with a few students who have used this book in a graduate-level software engineering course. All of the students were favorably impressed with the content, clarity, practicality, and detail contained in the book.

Prior to the publication of this text, a software design course based on UML could only be taught using a UML text together with a separate software design text. In this text book, Dr. Gomaa has integrated material from UML and software design in such a form that a software design course can now be taught with this text alone.

This book is an excellent source of information for software engineers designing concurrent and real-time systems using the object-oriented paradigm. Hassan's COMET method tackles the hard issues of concurrency, real-time constraints, and distributed systems with a comprehensive, straight-forward approach that is easy to understand and conforms to the UML standard. The text is also enhanced with an excellent selection of examples from different application domains. The book is structured in such a way as to be useful to both the novice (as a guidebook) and to the expert (as a reference). This book spends more time on my desk than on my bookshelf.

I am using it as a textbook for a course on object-oriented development of real-time and distributed applications. I found that the author did an excellent job at merging the OO techniques and UML on one hand with the concurrency/distribution issues on the other hand. The book presents clear helpful guidelines for the developers of real-time and distributed systems. One of the features I liked the most is the fact that a number of well chosen examples, from an elevator control system to an e-commerce system, are completely worked out in the book. How better to learn than by following relevant, clearly explained examples!

The book is OK for exam preparation. The exam has plenty questions on managing, securing and troubleshooting BizTalk server, and the book covers most of these questions. Also there is a reasonable amount of questions realted to development of custom components. Read the book twice, and you will pass the exam.
However... This book will have no added value if you want to learn BizTalk, or if you want to get familiar with the more advanced options like signing, reliable messaging and clustering. The real-world stuff you will need when working as a BizTalk designer or engineer, is not in this book.
Conclusion: only buy this book if you want to pass the exam!

Precised. Easy to follow. The subjects are very well organized. Reviews (Questions-Answers) at the end of each chapter are great for testing yourself on the subject.... Highly recommended for an exam prep. With some hands-on experience on a Biztalk Server, I used this book to coach myself, in less than a week, for the examination and passed it. Great as a quick reference for troubleshooting a Biztalk application too.

Some things to keep in mind -
1) BizTalk is not a toy - it is an enterprise tool - so of course you will need enterprise level hw/sw requirements to set it up and use it
2) Don't judge the quality of the book based on the requirements of the software
3) Please re-write your review to cover the book, not your issues with using the software

This book assumes you have worked with all previous versions of Powerbuilder. Not for developers new to Powerbuilder.

...but then again, there aren't that many references for this subject out there. This book is very good with filling in the gaps of knowledge that you might already have. I believe it is not a beginners book, it assumes prior knowledge and experience. I passed the Sybase PowerBuilder Associate certification test with this book alone. My interview skills got better. I highly recommend this book for PB developers!!!

This book is excellent as a reference book, 5 stars. As a learning edition is just good, 4 stars. If you are a novice, read this book after reading a Derek Ball Powerbuilder books.

With this book i've entered client/server programming and i can say i've learned a lot. The reason i gave 3 stars is, 1) this book is quite old and only describes delphi 2 and 1 2) it does not give a lot about servers other than interbase 3) the Author is not a delphi expert (he is clipper orianted) so i think the delphi code is not perfect. and... 4) the cd-rom given with the book is rather useless.. it has 5 chapter's code (total 18 chaps.) and you have to edit some of the code in order to make them work..

I bought this book becuse it was the only delphi c/s book i could find.. (another written by Ken Henderson for delphi 3 was out of stock)

I can say you can either try out this book or buy a specific book for your target platform (oracle etc.) and when you finish it find some other source to learn about delphi's components. and you become a c/s hero :)

Joseph D. Booth does a pretty good job explaining the fundamentals of database designing, most of which i'd already knew, but i wish i had this book when i was learning them. he explains normalization in 4 pages, the no'nonsense way.

he's very objective when talking about database servers.

the only thing i didn't like is that it is based on delphi 2, so he misses to explain some components like decision cubes.

other than that he covers quite well the rest (and more used)of the components, describing every single property and method.

Delphi Client/Server Developer's Guide by Joseph D. Boot

If you are a Microsoft shop, this book is *not* for you. The book devotes only one thin chapter to Microsoft technologies, and that chapter is completely dated. I guess I should have figured as much, given that the book was published in 1997. Things have changed a lot with SQL Server 7.0, Office 2000, and Internet Explorer 5.0. A book just like this, except specific to the Microsoft platform and up-to-date, would be invaluable to me, but I'm sending this book back. For Microsoft shops, I recommend Kimball's books and "SQL Server 7 Data Warehousing" by Corey, Abbey, Abramson, Barnes, Taub and Venkitachalam. The latter is the only book I've found that tells you how to use today's Microsoft technologies to implement a data warehouse. It doesn't have quite as much as I'd like that is specific to intranet development, but it's the best book that I've found. Tony Rogers

Rick Tanler's "Intranet Data Warehouse" is well targeted for data warehousing professionals like me: stockpilers of expertise in the DW back-end issues that, up to now, have been critical success factors. We've been procrastinating dealing with the inevitable (and frightening) issues about making the these information services digestible to hundreds/thousands "real" people: casual computer users and other non-technical folks who have absolutely no interest in learning to use specialized OLAP or data mining tools. How can these services be packaged in a way that is gets managers to use them, and how can we as designers and architects engineer systems that address these requirements for extremes of ease of use and mass utilization?

Tanler suggests that its now time to address these issues head on. He introduces the concept of an Intranet Data Warehouse (a concept that has since been widely embraced by the BI community) and has written what many may consider to be the benchmark standard and high level blueprint for the Enterprise Information Portal (EIP).

I'd wholeheartedly recommend this book for data warehousing professionals seeking a view over the horizon to the age of mass utilization of BI tools , and those brave enough to begin to consider the technical implications of providing BI to Everyman.

"The Intranet Data Warehouse" might lead you to believe that this book focuses solely on data warehousing in relation to the web - don't be misled by that title - this book is packed with information covering the full spectrum of issues you want to read about.

Rich covers DW theory, implementation, and practice. The vision he articulates of a corporate "information factory" is perceptive of where DW'ing truly adds business value.

There is also an accessible but thorough discussion of architecture issues, platform pros and cons, and the leading DBMS choices in the market today. There is a particulary good section on the strengths and weaknesses of Red Brick Warehouse, and the special functions it brings to decision support databases.

Best of all, Rich carries forward his vision into a well-defined path to implementation, focused largely on the "big" issues you run into in real-world applications.

Last, he does a terrific job of explaining how to get all that information OUT and make intelligent business use of it.

If you are a Kimball, Inmon, or Hackney book owner, this is an excellent addition to that collection.

Steven Tracy October 1998

I have mixed feelings about this book. On the one hand it excels in terms of content, tackling the more complex issues of .NET remoting including the creation of custom channel sinks; on the other hand it is severely let down by its poor presentation.

The book doesn't come with a CD, although viewing the code in its entirity is essential to understanding the issues presented in this book. Fortunately the code is available for download from the net.

The authors often fail to provide a substantial overview of the particular topics discussed in this book and present pieces of code in a piecemeal fashion which has no relevance until you reach the end of the chapter and are able to piece it all together.

This is a good book, but if you are new to the topic of .NET remoting, as I was, then prepare to dip into MSDN and spend time reviewing the code, in order to get a true understanding of this topic.

As owner of some 20 MS Press books, I'd like to congratulate the authors on doing a particularly good job with this one.

The only exposure I had previously to the Remoting part of the Framework was the little resource I could find on-line at MSDN [either way too over-the-head for a first timer, or pretty useless] and a few "tutorials" which, on the whole, had been pieced together by people who knew only a little more than me.

Having said that, it would suit someone who has some experience in Remoting, too.

I agree with a previous reviewer that it does fall into the trap, as a lot of technical books do, of displaying a code snippet, half of which is 100% in context with accompanying text and the other half of which is approximately 0% in context - only making sense once you've read a few more pages.

Will serve as an excellent reference book in months to come!

This manuscript was extremely helpful to my colleagues and me in our most recent project. For anyone dealing with a .Net initiative involving any sort of distributed, and most importantly scalable, application this guide is a must read.

I personally don't believe Access is a Client/Server databse, instead it should be a file sharing type of databse. :) SQL is a client/Server databse. I would buy the book, but I don't know if it will really help me to build a real "client/server" db. thanks

This is an excellent book for non idiots managers. Usually thecomputer people think that managers can't understand the trends oncomputer tech. But this book explains everything that we must know to choose the components for build right C/S information solutons systems. So if you are a manager and you want to understand the new comp stuff in order to take some buying decisions, you need to read this book. Also if you are a systems professional and you are not upgraded with the new state of the art on technology you will take a very good sight when you read it.

This book has done a great job in providing solid foundation to Oracle Web Application Server 3 with practical code examples. This is a great reading for all the developers who want to lead the emerging NC market and N-tier application development.

This book provides a good introduction to OWAS 3.0 and explains how to configure and use the product in a very clear and concise manner. It even goes beyond the introductory level and explains in great detail how to use PL/SQL cartridge which is in my opinion the single most useful part of OWAS 3.0.It was the first book available on the market and after spending an afternoon with the book, I was able to install OWAS 3.0.2 on my company's SUN UE3000 and port the application written in PL/SQL for WebServer 2.1. I can only wholeheartedly recommend the book.

Mladen Gogala

What a life saver! A must-have for anyone learning App Server. Far more useful than Oracle Press' offerings, this book got me inside the architecture and up and running with a minimum of fluff, (something I really appreciate in these days of 2,000+ page books on basic HTML) and has been extraordinarily helpful in getting my project off the ground.

The books provides bug warnings, work-arounds, example applications (with documented source listings & explanations), pitfalls to avoid, overall great insight, and all source on CD-ROM.

I read Oracle's on-line docs and the Oracle App Server Handbook (which is good, but it's best as a package/procedure reference, as far as teaching, it's awful), both of which were essentially useless for getting a decent education about the product.

I recommend this book as necessary equipment to anyone who has anything to do with App Server 3.

I liked the book for what it did cover but, when the title includes "ATM, IP, Frame Relay, and SMDS explained" I expected the authors to give more than a 50,000 foot overview. The book fell horribly short of the mark especially with respect to IP. IP wasn't even mentioned more than six times in the whole text. If you are looking for an overview of networking technologies this book is "ok" but , if you are looking for a book that explains the technoligies listed in the title this is not it!

Nice & basic, but needs to expand on WAE as it relates to ATM. The evolution of the net will use hodge-podge connections, but there is little doubt that consumers are pushing for "roving" wireless net connections -- which I think will still use ATM @ some "point". The question is, is that ATM point going to grow as a result of consumer mobility? Anyone know of another book (or info) on how to view this from a different viewpoint?

The book has three main sections. One explains network technologies like IP and ATM. The next tells you where they fit into the real world and the third illustrates it.

The style is really nice. It is easy to read, even when some difficult things are being explained. There is plenty of good advice and sharp observation throughout.

Overall, it is a good read and a useful book to have close by. I work with a lot of telecomms people and it has done a lot for my credibility.