Distributed

The accronyms alone will kill you in the first few chapters unless you wear special protective gear while reading this book. If you haven't got the faintest clue about middleware when you start reading, you'll find yourself half-drowned, bedraggled, and nearly as clueless when you finish. A truly "Complete Book of Middleware" ought to at least have a chapter that orients the reader to middleware--that way we know which acronyms to duck and which to glom on to!

This seems to be quite the shotgun approach to middleware. Make that a fully automatic shotgun with a large magazine. From Java to CORBA to specific vendors and program scripts, Ms. Myerson manages to cover a lot of ground, sometimes deeply, sometimes shallowly, and mostly with acronyms. I useful (?) overview, but one that will leave the reader wanting to buy more focused books to solve real life problems--or run out to hire a consultant who knows it all anyway.

I found several chapters quite relevant to a project I'm currently working on--although they mostly describe why current business solutions are inadequate to solve our particular problem. I also found that the relevant chapters demanded that I purchase more books so that I could leverage what I had read into real information.

So, know a bit about middleware _before_ you get this book. Then, if you need a description of (nearly) current systems and approaches that covers vast amounts of acreage, give this one a shot to see where you need to focus your reading--but plan on buying other books.

This is not "The Complete Book of Middleware," it's a modestly broad-based and exhausting introduction to what's out there and what it does.

This collection of papers is divided among eight major topic areas, each on a specific middleware category. The main value of this book is the wide range of technologies and vendor solutions, and the fact that it's up to date (at the time of this review).

I like the complete coverage of both transaction and queuing approaches, and the vendor-specific information that includes Microsoft's .NET and Sun's Java, as well as everything in between. The sections database middleware and middleware performance are especially valuable because they are more generic and applicable to a wider audience than the MS- and Java-centric sections.

While individual papers have a slight vendor bias, the book as a whole is vendor neutral. This is not a book for learning about middleware as much as a good description of what's currently available and their strengths and weaknesses. If you are looking for a more general book I recommend Chris Britton's "IT Architectures and Middleware: Strategies for Building Large, Integrated Systems" for the fundamentals, and David Linthicum's "B2B Application Integration" for a detailed text on how to employ middleware in practice. However, this book will give vendor-specific details and a more up-to-date view of middleware that are missing from Britton's and Linthicum's books. If you're a system architect or consultant this book is an excellent desk reference.

According to me, the book has been done very nicely. Tthe chapters have been managed carefully and efficiently. Read it once and u will surely know the HOWs , WHATs,WHYs and etcs of Distributed Systems.

This book takes on quite a lot of material and covers all topics quite well. As an introduction to Distributed Systems it serves as an excellent first-base and covers very current technologies such as ATM. The networking protocols section (especially for Ethernet & Token Ring) is outstanding and very well designed, while the emphasis through the text on transparency ties things together quite neatly.

The strength of this book lies in its no-nonsense approach to technical issues while remaining very considerate to the reader. A great text and hopefully the next edition will include some sections on CORBA and other object-based technologies.

Thouroughly recommended

Can more people review this book? I am very interested in this book, but I can't find it in the bookstore. I read "Inside COBRA" and "CORBA Design Patterns", and I want to know whether this book offers something beyond the other books. Sorry that I have to give "3 stars" to the book even though I haven't read it -- I can't post a message without the rating.

Despite some distracting professor-speak, which belies a lack of practical or real-world experience with programming, the book does provide an execellent architectural view of CORBA for experienced professionals with some exposure to Object Oriented tools and techniques (anything from C++ to PowerBuilder). Weak perhaps on commercial tools and actual implementations, the book is strong on the case for the destributed objects paradigm and component-ware approach. I enjoyed it (but wrote furiously in the margins. Example: author elaborates objecti-orientation using a "TV set" metopher that I found completing unenlightening.

Scan the book, and look for another detailed book on Oracle Personal 8.0. This is the strategy you have to use when you have finished Mr Ramalho's book. The book starts with a lot of anticipations, but the topics are discussed very briefly with ill-defined technical stuff and illustrations. It will give you some beginning skills, definately not intermediate knowledge of Oracle 8.

The book is a well balanced text that covers the basics of the Personal Oracle 8 and the Power Objects tool. The subjects are introduced in a logical order of dificulty. With lots of screen shots the reading is very easy, even without a nearby computer.

I finished reading on this book in September 1996. As a developer, system analyst and team leader among various Oracle projects since 1990, this is the best Oracle book I ever read. It is very easy to understand but deep enough to give you a clear concept about how Oracle 7 fits for Client/Server applications. I bought another Oracle book written by the same author, Oracle 8 Architecture, in December 1997. I have been waiting for the third edition, something like 'Mastering Oracle 8 & Client/Server Computing (and/or Data Warehousing) in the near future', written by the same author. Please !

Material is a dated by the pace of Oracle releases. I have not reviewed the new edition (June 1996).

Sorry, but this is more an SAP advertisement for why you should consider mySAP.com, than a reference on what it is. In fairness, the various industry solutions are reasonably well explained, and so is how mySAP.com addresses those industries. But it's really about the level of depth and detail, which is not much in this case. For example, at the end of each chapter, a case study is provided. These, however, are generally a bit vague and "marketing-sounding", while the name of the company or client is often omitted, affecting credibility.

Granted, the whole subject is extensive, however, I was expecting more. It doesn't help that this is a translation from German, which tends to make the reading a bit "stiff" and academic compared to what we are accustomed to in North America.

You need not be a SAP R/3 consultant to benefit from this interesting book. In fact, I am not an R/3 expert and have little direct experience with the product. My motivation for reading this book is to better understand ERP in general as it applies to various industry segments, and SAP R/3 and PeopleSoft in particular because of a consulting assignment.

Before reading this book I was under the mistaken impression that SAP R/3 was inflexible and required any company implementing it to completely redesign their business processes to accommodate the software. In many respects this is true. However, SAP has a tagline that "All Industries Are Not Created Equal", which means that a generic solution enforced by an application is not a real solution at all. Using this book I discovered two things: (1) SAP R/3 is a lot more flexible than I heard and can be highly customized using industry-specific solution maps to a number of industries, and (2) the market challenges of the 20 industries covered in this book.

What I like is the consistent way each industry if presented, using a fixed format that discusses each industry's market trends, requirements and solution maps. As a consultant who works across a wide landscape of industries I was able to quickly absorb some of the characteristics of each industry and their key challenges, as well as see how an ERP solution fit within them. Of course, learning about how SAP as a product supports these industries is also useful, and I suspect essential to consultants and constancies focused on this particular product.

The book is a quick read, informative and definitely a worthwhile investment to anyone who is involved in ERP in general and SAP R/3 in particular.

It certainly is a good book to have for real project implementations using Microsoft OLAP Services. ALthough I had different expectations from the book. I expected it to have more tips involving technical details about OLAP Services projects. But, this is a good book not only for anybody who is new to OLAP Services but also for project managers or team leads who are planning to implement an OLAP project in real life. I liked chapter 4(has good breakup of task lists) and chapter 13(good technical tips).

As the title suggests, this book is a practical guide to Microsoft OLAP Server. It is not a reference (refer to MSDN for a detailed documentation) nor is it a theoretical book. It gives concrete advices on a wide range of subjects from planning to implementation. This book will save you time if you develop or manage an OLAP solution. I give 5 stars because it succeeds at what it was supposed to deliver.

All of the information is available on-line either in "Help" or SAP's ASAP discs. Does a reasonable job of condesing down to 180+ pages. Targeted towards the first time SAP user NOT experienced users/consultants.

It is my first book on SAP R/3, it was really helpfull during my college clases.

This is a very useful book on SAP PM.This covers recent Version of of SAP PM ie 4.6x.Flow is smooth.Transaction codes are also available for quick navigation.

This book was very helpful while doing a PM implementation and has since allowed me to make several enhancements to my implementation. Fortunately it touches on nearly every aspect of SAP PM and gets fairly in depth in many areas. If you are thinking about Plant Maintenance with SAP, don't think about doing it without this book.

I felt this book was more like a beginners guide to Cluster Concepts and Veritas products. You would be disappointed like me if you are in quest for any greater knowledge on configuration of Veritas / Oracle Clusters or any tech details.

It would served better if this book was titled CLUSTER IN SEARCH OF STOARGE. I guess author would agree with me on this.

If you've got to figure out how to get clusters to work together to run your SAN more cheaply and with plenty of high availability like I do, this book is for you.