Distributed

I've struggled to read this text, since it contains many very recent results distilled into intelligently organized chapters. Unfortunately, even though this book is intended for a savvy audience, the text is often too detailed and technical, while important "big picture" intuition is never relayed. Frequent errors in the algorithms and proofs, ranging from simple subscript swaps to more subtle errors in logic to the (rarer) complete lack of logic make this a difficult book to recommend. In addition, the exercises are frequently too vague (sometimes meaningless) -- this book is definitely not recommended for class work.

I used this book for teaching an under-graduate primer course in distributed computing. The book is readable, coherent, well-structured and very efficient as a textbook. It strikes a good balance between the sea of details and the basic principles. I am familiar with the core of this book since it was a collection of lecture notes (alas, no longer available). It's a pity that some important topics have been omitted from the book version (e.g., Gallager, Humblett, Spira alg). There are some minor errors and imperfections in pseudocodes and exercise definitions which are a little bit annoying. That's why I'm giving this book four points and not five. Bottom line: I would recommend this book as a course textbook.

As a required text, this book was a dismal waste of my money. Not only is the book long-winded and filled with useless and sometimes inaccuate information, it is written by professionals that appearantly stumbled into the multimedia arena after trying their hand at other work. (A degree in Applied Mathematics proves to be of little value to Mr. Agnew when he speaks of multimedia.) This book reads like a high school research paper that the student was not interested in completing... There is little organized thought, facts are found every 30 pages or so, and are based on out-of-date information. Pathetic interjections of dry, witless humor make the reading all the more painful. Disagree with me if you wish, but I have seen far better analyses on Multimedia and its current trends out there. Purchasing this book for any personal reason is just plain stupid, and purchasing it for a required reason is unfortunate.

I purchased this book after reading several very positive reviews of it in PC Week and EMEDIA. Despite being a couple of years old now which is very long in this business, I find myself frequently taking this book off the shelf to read about the basics and framework in this changing industry. Well worth having

This book contains a lot about the history of VRML, but is pretty short on the actual subject of distriubuted virtual environments (and that is the title-so you would assume a little more information). The examples are kind of useful, but some don't work and in general you can find much better stuff on the web.
This book is really only useful if you are desperate for a short introduction and not looking for any detail.

The book is well written with a wide and broad view of this area. The book has a practical and a theoretical part. In
the theoretical part it provides an overview of the methods and principles behind virtual worlds clearly presented with illustrations. The practical part introduces the Virutal Reality Modeling Language and gives examples of how to built virtual worlds using VRML and Java.

I've read a few books on computer science and mathematics, being a university student in both subjects. However, I've never read anything nearly as conjested as this book. Basically its 665 pages of randomly mixed crap. I wonder if Amazon is going to censor this review, still this is what I think about this book.

Many parts of this books shows that the author has a very poor understanding of mathematics, logical deduction and also pays to attention to details. Further he seems to have quite a bit of flawed intuition about programs/processes and threads. Okay that might be harsh but atleast he has no ability to communicate his understanding anyway so...

More specifically I disagree with the following things;
The author repeats definitions (sometimes three or more times!).
The author does not explain his weird pseudo-code notation which I additionally think is counter-intuitive. He presents many copies of the same snippet with the first few versions beeing incorrect and the versions only differ my a few lines. Great way to take of two whole pages with minimal actual information content.

The one thing that made be go online and write this was page 73 (i've not read futher and i'm not sure i'm going to either) where the author delivers a lengthy insult to ones intellect by telling you that a program is BAD if any possible trace of execution leave the program in a BAD state. Further he continues to write that GOOD is equivalent to BAD, and then uses these two concepts as if they were each others logical negations.

The book provides all material needed for a beginner to easily acquire knowledge required for development and beginner's research in the field of parallel computation. It's written though not for a beginner in programming, solid basics and initial knowledge of OS internals are prerequisites. I found it's easy to read and understand with a mass of useful examples and with coverage of MPI and Java. This was especially important to since it bridges the theory in the earlier sections with practical implementations using production environment tools. In overall I strongly recommend it for those who are new to the field. For a more deep discussion on parallel algorithms one may want to look at F.T. Leighton's "Intro to Parallel Algorithms and Architectures: Arrays, Trees, Hypercubes" - that one is much more technical though.

J2EE 1.4 Essentials by Aaron E Walsh gives a very high level overview of the entire J2EE platform. First of all, let me explain what this book does and what it doesn't do. This book does provide a very high level overview of the wide spectrum of technologies involved in the J2EE platform. However, it doesn't go into depth in any of them. As a developer, I felt I was given just enough information to get me interested, but not enough information to accomplish anything. In addition, I found that the writing was remarkably accurate, albeit quite dry in style. Coupled with the amazing number of acronyms used to describe the various technologies involved, the writing style doesn't lend itself to easy reading. In fact, I found that I needed to be fairly familiar with the technologies or I'd end up rereading large sections. As this book is to be an introduction to J2EE technologies, the excessive use of acronyms is very awkward. Some of the redeeming qualities of the book, however, include accuracy of content and very few editing errors. Also, throughout the book, there are a great number of references to web sites for more information and even extra material available via the Internet. All in all, if you're looking for a brief overview of J2EE technologies, this book isn't bad, but if you're looking to do something with J2EE, you'll probably find yourself looking for another book soon.

I think this is a great book for experienced Java developers who are getting started with J2EE but would not recommend it if you don't already have a fair amount of Java programming experience (you should probably wait for a "Dummies" book on J2EE or some book like that if you are not good at Java already). I liked the no-nonsense approach to the J2EE 1.4 platform that this book takes since I did not need a lot of help on basic Java concepts, only J2EE, and I really like all of the online resources that come with each chapter since I can followup on topics that I want more details about. Almost every chapter had half a donzen or more extra online resources which is more than I'll probably ever have time to read but its nice to have them anyway.

Before reading this book I used mainly Java servlets and JSPs but didn't really understand how these technologies fit into the J2EE "platform" even though I bought a few other J2EE books for this. Now that the work I'm doing on the server side is more complex I had to come up to speed on the J2EE "platform" fast and also had to learn what the pros/cons of J2EE 1.4 are and this is the book I have been waiting for. I had bought Sun's J2EE Tutorial thinking it was "from the source" and would be what I needed but it was no good other than to get you familiar with Sun's own J2EE tools (so no good for me). In comparison J2EE 1.4 Essentials gives a wider view of the J2EE platform and also is excellent at showing what's important and new with 1.4 (it is is not a step by step "how to" book like the tutorial... it is overview perfect for learning about the J2EE platform and 1.4 features so I highly recommend it for this). I am also impressed that this book covers version 1.4 since I thought I would have to wait for a long time to get a good overvew book on J2EE 1.4.

I only wish this book had a companion volume of related sub-books so that I could get more coverage of each topic in print (bound hard copy) but the extra online chapters and materials do a good job if you don't mind reading them online or printing yourself. I would highly recommend this book to Java developers who need to get started with J2EE or who need to get a well rounded understanding of the platform in general with an eye on what's really important with J2EE 1.4.

I had been working with SQL Server 7.0 in an analyst capacity (importing and exporting data, scrubbing data, SQL query creation, etc.) for about a year when I was given the DBA responsibilities. I was looking for a book that would contain good examples and provide a solid reference...this is not that book.

The majority of the book is way too high level. It's a "10,000 foot fly-by" if you will. Each chapter only covers the extreme basics in the same pattern: an explanation using Enterprise Manager and another, redundant explanation of the same thing in T-SQL. There are few descriptive, "real-world" examples and a lack of helpful tips that are usually found in PC books.

The chapter on capacity planning was somewhat useful, but that's about it. I doubt I will use this book in the future since it contains very little "reference" material.

I would suggest a Sam's book for an SQL beginner. You know, the "Learn in 24 Days..." books. I've had success with those books in the past. As far as a DBA manual for SQL, I'll keep searching. This book is not it.

My question is, who is this book for anyway?

This book is very well organized for a new comers to SQL administration.
If you are taken by the title you will be gone for a toss.
However, it is a great book to get your feet wet. Specially if you are planning to go for certification.

Book doesn't even explain what is meant by "Java IDL" until page 91, and even there the definition is a poor one. A pretty good definition finally appears on p 241.

This ia good material on CORBA with some useful discussions on CORBA services and architectural concepts. I have been doing a lot of CORBA and find this book to be a good guide.

I thought that this book was very difficult to understand. While titled "Thin Clients", the book is really an overview of web enabled systems (intra and inter and extra nets). However, the author does not really explain how and why the new architecture differs from previous architectures. The book is very poorly integrated. I never really understood what the main point was. Also, it's very poorly written and very difficult to understand. While I am not a programmer, I have read other technical articles on this subject that are much clearer and to the point.I don't know who the audience for this book is. It's not technical enough to be of use to a developer and it's not succinct enough to be of use to a business person. It's a really bad book.

My context is as a student researching Thin Client computers. When I started my dissertation last year, the books on Thin Clients were extremely limited. This book provides a great overview of a variety of software technologies and their use in inter-, intra- and extra-nets. The flow of this book is a bit awkward, but the content is good for someone who understands a bit about the subject and wants to know more.

As one of the few books available that deals with Powersoft's Optima++ RAD developer, one would hope that this work would be concise and informative - guess again! Poorly edited text, badly organized chapters, and buggy code are what you'll get. The only thing that prevents me from giving this book a lower rating is that indeed there are smidgens of useful information to be found if you're willing to wade through the the muck. Don't open the included CD-ROM until you've had a chance to go through 4 or 5 chapters - that way you can return it once you realize what a dog it is

There are two major faults associated with this book. The first one is that the author seems to assume that the reader has a working knowledge of Powersoft's Powerbuilder. The second is the monumental, astronomical, number of errors in the text. If you have the time to solve the puzzles that arise because of these, and also enjoy doing the detective work, then you won't mind the mistakes. I hope that the editor got a negative bonus for his (her) work. Another quirk of the publication is that the accompanying CD has the cpp files but it doesn't have the hpp files - a big stumbling block when you're trying to solve some of the mysteries. On the other hand, the book is full of extremely useful information, both from the Optima++ side, as well as from the C++ side. I wish Que will reprint the book with no errors and a more complete CD.

The book covers from the basics of Distributed Appications and to the design of one of those. It concentrates on the SUN's RPC library. It does deal with good and simple examples, but on in depth. Certain examples can be dealt with more elegantly and more interestingly. Only few examples are given which doesnt cover much of this vast field. I think an example is worth 1000 words. But the book doesnt progress in that way. Infact the SUN's tutorial in docs.sun.com deals more of examples and explanation than this book does. But one thing to be appreciated is that the XDR portion of this book is great and a master piece. For a beginner like me it helped me in understanding a lot into it. I does cover only the basics of every thing. Nothing in depth. The chapter on rpcgen is worth mentioning for the author's lucidness in explaining the beautiful concepts involved in it. Finally the book ends up with the mention of the future of RPC. According to me it is the best ONLY for Beginners.