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If you are like me a beginner in the abap "world", you will have great expectations on being able to install the CD, learn and practice. Well I am using windows XP, and so far have yet to succeed wiht the CD's. The help is helpless!! and if anyone knows a good reference site or tips on installing this let me know - for now I am ready to bin this whole thing. Thanks in advance.

I dont have anything bad to say regarding this book. familiarity with Object oriented and programming paradims is certainly useful. This is not a learn in 21 days book. Set aside coupla months and enjoy the ride. The cool thing abt this book is the ability to tryout the abap programs.

I DID HAVE PROBLEMS!!!
1)installing the CDs. I am using Windows XP and had coupla glitches.
1) you should add the ip address and computer name to the /etc/hosts file on your computer. It can be found in the system32 folder.
2) You probably need to copy the contents of the Data CD(2) to hard disk (incase you dont have 2 CD drives. And specify the location of the data files during instalation.

2) Problem creating Objects: I did have problems creating Objects..It was frustrating for a while. Then I figured out the solution after some online research.
a) Try to apply the patch then comes with the CD.
b) renaming my files to start with z_ solved the problem

This book is the best book about ABAP I've been reading so far.
A well structured content and a simple approach to explain the new ABAP concepts are probably the best ways to describe the book. The CDs contain a complete SAP System which is a great way to get lot's of practise.

This book is outstanding! I've learned almost as much from it as from Microsoft's own "IBuySpy" demo site. Probably the thing I like most about it was that it is written correctly, using code-behind pages and OO programming principles, not just slopped out as an example. Just being able to use the code as-is without having to translate to "real world" standards is a real relief.

I've got probably a dozen ASP.NET books, and this is the one (along with SAM's ASP.NET Unleashed) that stays by my side.

I considered many books before choosing this one because it had an approach which fit the way that I learn.
I'll be reviewing some of the projects many times to understand the method behind the design of the projects.
Unfortunately, some of the projects were simply unfinished, or had problems that would prevent them from working correctly.
It's still worth it -- there's a lot here.

I've just worked my way through 2/3rds of the book and I must say that I am both impressed and overwhelmed. Impressed by the fact that the author has such a deep grasp of the .NET classes/framework and overwhelmed by how much I am learning. I am planning to go through the book again, from cover to cover after I finish this itteration, just to try to pick up some of the tidbits that I might have missed. I have gone through "cover-to-cover" 5 books on VB.NET and 3 on ASP.NET, and this one ranks at the top of my list for ASP.NET and should be considered for the more advance VB.NET people as well.

I can honestly say that you don't need to be an expert at VB.NET to get some great things from this book, but if you look closely at the VB.NET code, you will pick up a ton of useful (real-world) information.

Being a novice PB programmer I wanted more from the book than just a mention of all PB elements. It does mention more than the Fundamentals book. I guess I was looking for a book called 'Operational PB' which might have had more real-world examples in it about how to do the ordinary type things any programmer might weant to do in the average PB application. This wasn't it. I'll have to write it myself, sometime. This book was more an advanced accessory to PB help.

I'd start to say that only buy this book if you are an experienced powerbuilder developer. Why? Because there is some errors that could lead an inexperienced developer to sink. To be more precisely, I will list some errors that scared me:

Page 89: ... the control array for the Tab control is only updated when tab pages are created in the Painters. It's wrong. The control array is update automatically by Powerbuilder when you use the following funtions: 1. OpenTab( ) 2. OpenUserObject( ) 3. OpenTabWithParm() 4. OpenUserObjectWithParm( ) 5. CloseTab( ) 6. CloseUserObject( ) 7. MoveTab( ) It's a new feature of Powerbuilder 6

Page 41: ... Code table can be defined for the following edit styles: * Checkbox * DropdownDatawindow * Etc There is no table code for checkbox.

Page 473: ...Here are valid values: (communication drivers) * Winsock * OpenClientServer * NamedPipes * Local OpenClientServer driver is no more available in Powerbuilder 6

Well, there are others errors. But if you are good enough to detect them...go ahead.... buy the book, it'd worth. But if you are not prone to detect and correct others mistakes, I'd suggest try another book.

This is to the reader from New York, NY:

I think you need to call Powersoft and find out for yourself that the "Validation Rules" are as described in this book. These validation rules were changed since version 5.0 and differ from version 4.0. I made the same mistake as you when I took the datawindow advanced course but to my surprize, I found out that the validtion rules were changes.

Sorry but I had to jump in.

If you read in other reviews that this book is mostly a reprint of the Sybase documentation, believe it

I rate this book only average as it suffers from the all too common computer book problem of not being up to date with the current version of the technology subject matter. At least there is a chapter 21 on the CD that reviews PFC 6.0 material. But unfortunately, the supplied sample application only demonstrates PFC 5.0 code. Finally, I found much of the material in the book merely a rehash of other material spread throughout PB documentation.

Experienced PFC developers may still learn something new from this book. It is well written, well presented, and has good script examples. I recommend this book to anyone using, or about to use, the PFC on a PowerBuilder project.

Sean Baker has done the obvious thing: As users are desperate for books on Orbix, why not reuse the Orbix Users Guide and write a book? It is purely a rehash, so unless you have a pirated version of Orbix without the manuals, its worthless. Whole paragraphs are identical (whole chapters, I'd say), No "dirty" tricks (And they exist, trust me) (Or hire an Iona consultant, they are quite good), nothing about name services, nothing advanced... Suitable for college students, not for professional developers or architects (Oh, by the way, it needs an update). A waste of money and time...

I have read it from cover to cover. This is a totally superficial book. If you are serious about learning corba there is only one book out there "Advanced CORBA Programming with C++" by Mitchi Henning and Steve Vinoski. They are also very active in the newsgroups.

In lieu of a surplus of remotely useful CORBA books, I gave this book 3 stars instead of 2 or fewer. This books is one of the few that provides any remotely relevant and coherent information whatsoever regarding CORBA. However, it should be clearly noted that this book claims to be written against the Orbix implementation of CORBA. Unless the book was written against some version of Orbix that has not been published as of 1999, I don't see how this could be true. As of Orbix 2.3, several examples within this book are innaccurate (i.e., Typecodes, as defined by the book, are of a later revision of CORBA than the Typecodes implemented within Orbix 2.3, the Interface Repository interfaces are not defined witin the CORBA module contrary to the book, the list goes on...). In terms of overall content, this book is little more than an emebelished rehash of the Orbix Programmer's Guide. Instead of purchasing this book, I *HIGHLY* recommend the very thorough treatment of CORBA: "Advanced CORBA Programming with C++" by Henning and Vinoski. The only disadvantage of the latter book is that is does not cover the Interface Repository nor Dynamic Clients or Servers (DII and DSI).

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."

Don't feel bad, the publishing companies got suckered too.

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.

I liked the book because it gave a good overview of COM/DCOM technologies. It really is the most friendly introduction to COM development. Since the title indicates this book is a primer, I wasn't expecting anything more. I didn't regret purchasing the book, and I would probably recommend it to someone brand new to COM development.

Having said that, it wasn't the best COM development book I've read, primarily because there was a lot of unnecessary material to wade through. For example, chapter 2 starts by explaining basic C++ object-oriented topics such as classes and inheritance. Presumably the reader is already familiar with these simple concepts, and isn't trying to learn C++ with this book. I'm new to C++ and even I found these topics unnecessary. Since the author explores COM via MFC, the reader never gets a clear understanding of COM itself. More difficult topics, like aggregation, aren't explained at all, but are left to MFC to implement behind the scenes. The main sample program is a big MFC program, which means you have to wade through pages of MFC code to understanding the few lines of COM-specific code. The chapter on multithreading is worthless. It consists of a series of terse descriptions of multithread API calls, followed by a couple of pages of unexplained, uncommented code which use the calls.

Inside COM by Dale Rogerson is a better intro to COM programming, but doesn't cover the breadth of material this book does.

Not as good as "Inside COM" which I also rate as a 5 star book but is simpler to understand and can be used very effectively in conjunction with the above named book. Very reasuring to the reader.

A book that takes the reader all over the place. The author pretty much cut and pasted the words from numeruous sources(plagiarism comes to mind) The author is neither an expert nor very good writer. The MSDN contains the same exact information so go there and save your dollars for a better book.

huh ?? what is this book about ? absolute waste of time.

Please buy Moniz' book and not this one if you are interested in building a real architecture and not just experimenting with the latest buzzwords. XML is good but the author is too enamoured of the technology to tell you how to use it well.

The other reviewers didn't miss the point - the 5 principles he outlined are important but not the most critical. Just read them and think for yourself if you don't believe me...

If you want to write the COM equivalent of a "Hello World" program, this book will show you how to do it very simply. It also provides a basic overview of the most important COM topics (threading, callbacks, connections points), but the coverage is generally on the light side. The book works as a readable and succinct introduction to COM, but those seeking greater mastery of the subject will have to look elsewhere.

This is possibly the most error-filled programming text I've seen. There are typos on practically every page, even in some of the code examples. It's not a long book -- somebody should have proofread it once.

This book is ideal for any proficient C++ programmer who needs to delve into the practical world of COM. Though riddled with typos, which i am sure is a testament to how quick the authors had to get this to press, the book is easy to follow. The examples though are sometimes a little misplaced but if you read the book twice over which i did for the second time in three days, then you should get something out of this book.

However the title of the book is inappropriate since the authors really only devote one chapter to DCOM, which is a little lame to say the least. The best chapter is the one that deals with callbacks and bidirectional communication. Those who need to implement push/pull applications well be delighted with this.

If you persist and work thru' the examples,then you will get a lot out of this book. If you want to understand more about how COM really works, buy Don Box's "Essential COM".

I own many books on the subject on COM/DCOM. I bought this one days after it was first published in December 1998. While my other COM books are pristine, this one is tattered and torn with pages falling out. I keep it within reach at all times. When I can't find it, I panic. Whenever I'm stumped, I grab it and within a few minutes, I'm back on track. It is not a theoretical dissertation which is why I like it. If you want to spout COM jargon, buy Don Box. If you want to get work done, buy this one.

Better than most of the published books on ABAP, but still not "experience" oriented. This is a plain ABAP/4 book that gives no more than what you can get from the SAP ABAP/4 online documentation. If you expect a connection to any of the SAP module, you will be disappointed.

Very analytical. Long sentence, long paragraph writing. It is helpfull only if you read it from the first to last page. Not a reference. More like bed time book

This is a handy book for quick referencing. It is clearly laid out with SAP keywords highlighted in bold. I would recommend this book for any experienced ABAP programmer who needs a 'comfort' book.

As someone with a basic knowledge of COM (gained through VB, VJ++ and MTS) this book cleared up several nagging questions that I had about low level COM and COM terminology. It also got me started with ATL. However, I found that the book suffered from being both too detailed and too selective. When the authors tackled a topic they tackled it in excruciating detail. Unfortunatley the topics where chosen from too many different subject areas resulting in incomplete coverage of any one subject area. In the end I felt that I learned a lot about certain topics but I hadn't learned enough core ATL to build a real application. The back cover states that "no prior knowledge of COM or ATL is assumed, as the book gives a full tutorial on both." It is true that this book begins with the very basics of COM and ATL but the coverage is by no means 'full'. After about 300 pages I made a list of all of the _basic_ things that I thought I would need to know to work with ATL on a daily basis. This list was based on my experience with VB, Java, C++, and OO in general. At the 300 page mark this book had covered between 1/4 and 1/3 of my list. I just didn't get what I needed from this book fast enough.

I read this bood as an introduction to COM. The back of the book says that anyone with a strong understanding of programming and C++ can learn COM from this book. The first two chapters were good, but in chapter three the author went into developing a COM application. For someone with no COM experience it was too much of a jump. I stopped reading the book about half way through chapter three and read Inside COM. It was a great introduction. I then went back to this book and found it to be a very good tutorial on using ATL, MTS and MSMQ in developing and using ActiveX and OLEDB COM applications. The As these are all very important things to know, I highly recommend the book; however, only after one receives a thorough introduction to COM elsewhere.

Good book condition. Thank you.