Distributed

at times the book seems as if it was taken directly from a german to english translator program and published. there are sections that are nearly impossible to read without a couple of passes. i had hoped to use this as a text for abap training, but it is somewhat confusing to follow, and offers very little detail beyond what can be taken from abap on-line help. there are bright points, such as some of the dialog programming discussion, but overall, i think there are better development books available.

The usual ABAP book is about 850 pages long. This one is a meagre 320 or so. This book is very good. It packs a lot of information into its 320 pages, whereas the other ABAP books get off on tangents, or add lots of stuff you really don't need.

I did not really understand this book until I read Ken Greenwood's "ABAP in 21 Days" - which I would highly recommend. But after Greenwood, this book is a "walk in the park", and is really detailed and clear (despite a few minor translation issues).

This book give you a whole picture for software development of abap programming. For detail, online help should be consulted.

The table of contents of this text indicate a wonderful range of topics, from resolution, abstraction to multi-level simulations and even the object-oriented paradigm. However, this text is simply too ambitious and none of these topics get covered in an real detail. (390 pages)

This team has put together a comprehensive collection on a topic that is so hard to keep up with. The reader can take in as little or as much as needed. "Distributed Simulation" is a good reference and important reading for anyone in the field.

A good overview reference for Microsoft BackOffice, except for one detail not mentioned anywhere in AMAZON.COM: This book only covers NT Server Version 3.51. How disapointed and fooled I felt when I received the book and looked at the window in an example and the small words at the end of back cover. It mainly does not cover any issues of NT 4 (Server/Workstation) or SQL Server 6.5. What a shame!

This book takes you from installing an NT Server to setting up MS Backoffice, including MS SQL Server, MS Exchange, MS SMS, and MS SNA Server. The book covers the installation and administration clearly and is a great guide for beginners

While the few other Coriolis Exam Cram books I have used have been of good to excellent quality, I discovered when only a few questions into the Server+ exam that this particular book was almost completely useless. I did pass the exam, but with little help from this book. There are numerous typos (is that GB or MB?), inconsistencies, and straight-out errors. The actual content is barely relevant to the onslaught of experience-based troubleshooting questions on the exam. I gave this two stars instead of one because I do recall a couple questions (out of an eighty question exam) where my studying in the book actually did help me. I hate to give a Coriolis book a bad rating, seeing as how they've always released quality products in the past, but this book is just terrible in comparison.

This book brings nothing to the table except for more review questions for a Server+ candidate to dutifully go through. Even then, some of the questions and answers are mismatched. The information presented are wrought with spelling errors and can only imagine that the editor(s) were busy doing something else. The SCSI, RAID and backup chapters did not have enough information in my opinion which is a no-no considering the emphasis the exam puts on these topics. However, this book is a quick read and is best used a week before the actual exam date much like the Passport series, but I think you'd do better elsewhere.

This text does an excellent job covering the topics included in the exam. Many of the end-of-chapter practice questions were nearly identical to the (pre-adaptive) exam. Also, the structure of all the practice questions are identical to the exam. I also liked how the text regularly alerted the reader to test related distinctions.

On the down side, it contains a number of mistyped text and technical nomenclature. For example, MB appears in a few places when GB was clearly intended based upon the surrounding context. The frequency of such typos left me worrying about other unrecognized mistakes I could not contextually infer. Better editing is needed. Unfortunately, the Coriolis web site refused my connection when I attempted to check for corrections and addendums to the text.

Nevertheless, I learned a great deal from the text and am quite pleased overall. Unlike that ruinous study guide by Stephen Bigelow, this text is worth of its title as an exam study guide.

Don't bother. This book contains just enough information to make you think there's probably something here but you'd be wrong. Some of the chapters are so skinny it's not clear why there there at all. For example Naming Services: Naming in a nutshell, 2 pages, How it works, < 1 page.

The authors' declared pattern to the book's exposition, which would be great if it were actually executed to a substantive level, is to enumerate the service APIs and then "demonstrate" the use of the service. But alot of this stuff is actually very deep subject matter. Take Transactions and Concurrency, for example. Reading this chapter (15 pages) will either make you feel that you missed something big (and you did, it's just not in this book) or that you got ... (and you might be right on with that assessment too).

I dissagree with julio@greenwich.com. This book is an easy to read, lighthearted text that explains CORBA concepts without getting bogged down by technical semantics.

It's an excellent precursor to further technical reading.

This book is fun to read and inspiring, because the authors seam to love what they write about. Sometimes, however, the style is a little close to "commercial advertising". The concepts and visions sound evident, the technology is explained at the right level of abstraction. If you have time, read this book as an introduction to Corba before buying a real programmer's guide to corba.

Mr. Brooks is possibly the worst author I have ever read. The help files really were more helpful than this book was. He ought to go move to the Hedonism resort he reviewed a book on because the programing world could not possibly miss him if his wok is on the level of his writing.

This is the worst book I have ever read. I put my nose through the thick book and learn nothing. Later I read a thin book from Powersoft PFC training. I learn a lot from each page of it.

The author of this book does not know how to write book.

This book gives you what the PFC documentation does not. A detailed explanation of various internal workings that once followed, leads you to discover the things that make a library like the PFC work. Missing more overview and architectural discussion, but that is covered by the PFC Professional Reference. Together the 2 books provide what PFC developers need. A complete look at the PFC library.

A must-buy for serious PFC developers. Despite being an author of a competitive book, although I call it more complimentary than competitive, I would receommend this book to anyone.

Good job Rik.

I have never written an online review yet, but let me tell you, this book caused such anger in me I had to write one. People that liked this book...well, I don't know what is wrong with them. Maybe they are talking about the Desktop exam book. I used the Desktop book a little to prepare for that exam, and didn't find it to be too bad. This one though, my oh my, why did this get published? Sure it goes over stuff, over and over and over again....and really not telling you anything you didn't learn for the desktop exam.

Oh, they touch on everything, but thats it. I can't see how anyone can honestly say they go in-depth on subjects in this book. The only thing they go in-depth on is installing different apps, and if you need that, well, you don't need to be taking these exams.

I feel like the authors don't really know what they are talking about and they just threw together a book to make some money.

Don't get this book, get something else. Try the MCSD in a Nutshell book, it goes into things a little more, and in half as many pages.

The book is a failry reasonable resource and helped me prepare for the 70-175 MCSD exam. However, it is full of errors that could affect your understanding of the subject matter.

Also, it was put together by several contributing authors some of whom are apparently not familiar with correct English language structure. This sometimes makes their material difficult to follow and I was fortunate that I already knew most of the stuff that they were talking about.

Many of you have mentioned that certain topics - ie, ADO, IIS Applications, etc. are not covered. This only proves that you DID NOT READ the book!! (Also, DHTML is much more important for the desktop exam. And this exam is not about SQL Server 6.5 or 7.0 - it's about Visual Basic 6.0 in a distributed environment (ie, MTS, MSMQ, ActiveX Dll's, exe's, docs...)) I have programmed with VB for 3 years. Yes, there were mistakes in the book, but they were fairly obvious mistakes that an experienced programmer would notice immediately (why the Tech Editor didn't, I don't know). However, the book is NOT a waste of money. I READ THE BOOK 3 days before the exam - read the review questions thoroughly and KNEW the answers (not memorized, but KNEW THE MATERIAL INVOLVED IN ANSWERING THE QUESTIONS). I scored 90% on the exam last week. This book is NOT FOR BEGINNERS - IF YOU ARE A BEGINNER, HOW DO YOU THINK YOU DESERVE TO BE A CERTIFIED Microsoft DEVELOPER????

Contains errors and non-specifics similiar to the program. If you are buying it because you are just getting into Baan, you will be overwhelmed. If you are buying it to get the most out of your present Baan system, you will be underwhelmed by this book. Save your money.

Upon initial scanning of the areas in Baan that I am familiar with (i.e. the Tools package) I found it very brief. The book tries to cover all of the modules within Baan. The breadth is noted, but so is the lack of depth. I will find this book useful when first introducing myself to an overview of what a module can do. If you want an in-depth knowledge of what a session does then look at the online help within Baan!

The purpose of buying this book was to increase my knowledge of the various BAAN IV Sessions and the corresponding functionality therein.

This book proved ideal for this purpose. I now have an excellent reference guide for the majority of the Baan IV Sessions.

The Baan functionality is explained in a clear and straight forward style.

Furthermore, there are various "Tips" scattered throughout the book. Also, there are checklists outlined for various stages of a BAAN IV implementation.

Although, the material concerning Baan Tools is more limited it serves as a gentle introduction to customisation of BAAN IV Sessions.

All in all, an excellent book.

I bought this book to help prepare for a new job in which I would use my Java programming experience to develop CORBA applications. I had a basic familiarity with CORBA, but no practical experience with it. That said, I found the book to be an extremely tedious read. While the author certainly does know, and convey, plenty of information about CORBA, much of that information is obscured by the redundant definitions, excessive use of acronyms, and poor editing(grammatical errors and words that should have been edited out abound.) The thing I found to be most frustrating about this book is the fact that it would be outstanding if only it were readable. I read 30-40 computer books every year, and of those I have read this year, on subjects ranging from Java and DHTML to network security and object-oriented data structures, this one was by far the least inspiring read in the bunch. If you can wade through the numerous grammatical errors and (intentionally?) very dry text, you will find that this book contains a lot of good information about CORBA. If you want to learn CORBA and enjoy the experience, pick something else.

The book is very confusing. While the OMG bozos have done their best to make the CORBA as confusing as possible, the author doesn't even try to make it a bit more clear. All examples are given "as is" with the API explained in a "by the way" manner. The examples are VisiBroker oriented, yet the author doesn't even try to cover other ORBs and to give any hints on portable CORBA programming. I found the information flow very hectic and boring to read and the figures quite confusing (looks like more effort was spend on all those borders and shades).

Finally, some examples are not indented (sic!), making them look like the winners from the Obfuscated C Contest.

Conclusion: if you are considering purchasing this book - don't. Instead got for something from more reputable publishing houses (Prentice Hall or AW maybe).

Much to my surprise, I was able to compile the example client and server applications without any serious problems. Thanks to the author of this book, I did not have to spend hours debugging example code.

This is the only book on the market which claims it is an exam study guide, and it does cover all the core concepts, it covers enough to just to pass the exam if you are lucky. The exam certainly chooses to test beyond the contents of this book though. Note : To find the extra questions you need to go through the online chapters and at the end of each chapter there is a QUIZ button which gives you the test questions for that chapter. these are the same as what are in the book though. Anyway lets hope more books are published for Metaframe XP.

In the process of reading it to prep for my certification test, I found multiple problems with it. You can still pass using this book, but the experience will not be pleasing.

I'll list them as best I can.

--Different chapters list different minimum requirements (DOS3.3 vs DOS4.0) for the same module.

--The last few chapters of the book have multiple errors in the self-test answer keys. They are obvious things like Right- A, C, D and Wrong- A, C, D or their descriptions a few pages back contradict the answers. At least one of the electronic practice test questions is the same way.

--After a few runs through the electronic practice test, it's painfully obvious that it is repeating the same questions in the same order every time, not grabbing fresh questions from the question pool for each run or installation. So far their tech support has not replied on this. (original email sent in second week of December)

-- The "Update" link provided in the enclosed software (for test 220) takes you to the publisher's web page for test 218. This page shows that there are no updates available, even though the CD came in a book for the next version of the test. I was unable to find any mention of the 220 test on their website.

---- these items are more aesthetic than technical, but contribute ----
---- to the overall dissatisfaction inspired by and in this book ----

--The wording and emphasis of the book does not match up to the actual test questions.

--The material covered, both in a chapter and overlapped between chapters is laid out in a stumbling and awkward way.

--The "drivetime" audio tracks on the included CD were read by an engineer, not proper audio talent. I found myself subconsciously tuning out the annoying voice.

--The quality (tone, volume and clarity) of the audio tracks was not consistent and one was quite bad.

Wonderful book, although CD could have been more thorough, still, very, very good. And excellent customer support.