Distributed

This book does not give much information on implementing PeopleSoft technically. Rather, it's a book that advertises the capabilities of PeopleSoft and its different Modules. This book teaches consultants how to do project management rather than how to use peopletools. I would not recommend this book for technical people. It's a book for consultants, who wants to know things to consider in implementing peoplesoft, what resources are needed and how to go about with a project. But it won't teach you how to really use peoplesoft.

I love all of you, know all of you, feel all of you, I guess, and want to be part of this energetic, riveting, (ravishing) smiles :) project <> I know two minds are better than one {power received is power achieved} {flexiblity} {strength} {ethics} {need/fullfillment} {smiles (or a dream} {faith} {a vision} TWO Example only says expert please help: new equipment really {yields} worth, {A} simple thought: a new foundation overcomes ridiculous deceit. I am coming with you, i dont know how.

This book has NOTHING about Java 2 and all the changes that came with that release: RMI over IIOP, Java IDL, and the rest.

If you want a book that describes the ORIGINAL RMI only, then this is the book for you. Otherwise, keep looking.

Java RMI is a good refernce work for determining how to use the Java RMI API. After reading several other texts and chapters on RMI, Java RMI is by far the most direct and concise explanation of this sometimes elusive technology.

The book is divided into four logical parts. The first part describes the Java RMI API as a conceptual framework. Code examples illustrate the important points of using remote methods. The description is very clear and covers topics like creating a registry, defining remote interfaces, and setting up a distributive model.

The second section builds on the academic and theoretical descriptions presented in the first chapter. Through some simple (contrived) examples, a better understanding of basic distributed design methods is evident.

The third section gives a couple of "real world" examples of RMI usage. While the examples are simplistic, they do illustrate the material covered in the first and second sections of the book and do provide good code examples. One part of the book I like, althought it is a waste of space, is a summary of the entire code examples presented after a detailed analysis of the code samples is given. This allows the reader to see how the code fits togther without needing to look at the code on the CD-ROM.

The fourth section is a series of appendices describing the RMI API. While this is normally "fluff" material, in the context of this book, the appendices serve as a worthwhile reference.

Good points of the book: -- clear writing -- good explanations -- plenty of code examples -- the book stys focused on one topic -- RMI (too many other texts get involved with serialization, messaging, CORBA, etc.)

Bad Points: -- this is not a distributed programming how to book (but does not intend to be) -- Distributed design is not covered. The author assumes that you have an understanding of distributed design and want to USE RMI to implement a distributed design.

Summary: A good how to guide to RMI.

I started reading this book without knowing anything about RMI. By the time I was done, I started getting an idea what RMI is all about.The examples are good and the book is worth atleast two readings. In the first reading, what is RMI etc. is put in place. In the second reading one may want to place emphasis on what goes into the stubs and skeletons etc.

That said, the book does have certain things going against it. The first is the fact that it does not talk about Java2 (You'll understand the evolution of RMI when you start reading about RMI/IIOP etc.). The second is that the author does not really delve into clarifying the definitions. Also, the book is verbose and the author tries to tell you a lot of stuff which may not be quite the thing you are looking for when you start reading it. This, though, is what makes the book worth a second reading.

Finally, the examples don't always work. You will need to use a bit of ingenuity (for example convert the chat applet into text based chat client etc. to avoid the problems associated with getting the server running etc.). The popular browser when this book was written was Netscape, which supports RMI, while with the current versions of IE (5.0) you'll find that the examples don't work at all. You'll need a plug in etc.

In my opinion this book is certainly worth reading.

As for buying the book you are probably better off buying a book on J2EE which integrates RMI and puts it all into perspective.

This is a very, very boring book to read, despite being well organised and set out. Admittedly the material isn't exactly scintillating, but a bit of effort to make the exercises even a little bit challenging would have been welcome. Also:

- there are lots of errors in the sample multiple choice questions; and

- some subject areas are not covered in enough depth (cursors, locking spring to mind).

So you will need a supporting text to cover the areas that this text is weak on.

I failed first sitting (solely on the text) and passed the second time (with the assistance of another textbook).

I found this book adequate. I had very little SQL Server experience, but with the help of this book, I aced the test (I missed only one question). Of course, you have to supplement this book with the Transcender test and/or SQL server books online to do really well. Caveat: There are a significant number of errors (typos, incorrect answers) in the book, but they should be obvious.

Actually this is the only true SQL 6.5 Exam Study Guide that I know of. I credit the Sybex team and their authors with helping me complete my MCSD! I used their Win Arch I and II books, as well as this one and passed each exam on the first try. As with the other books the chapter exams are much easier than the actual exam. Also, some answers are wrong.

Complement this book with the Transcender exams to round out your study and you'll be well prepared. The book is a little light on some areas, specifically cursors. You should have some significant experience with the product itself in order to pass the exam. You will be asked to apply your knowledge, not simply recall answers.

The author does a fine job of reviewing the essential parts of all exam objectives. This book would be improved with a few more real-world examples. The one supplied early on is not used enough or is absent from some chapters. Again, a convenient exam topic (with matching page numbers) guide is found on the back cover. A very nice touch.

More and more books are written lately by poor visual basic programmers that have nothing to do with computer programming or computer science in general. This is one of them; a real shame for Microsoft Press...

Not only did this book fail to provide me with any succinct information with regard to the problems I'm attempting to solve, it was also a very dry and boring read. The author did not present concepts in the order in which one would regularly learn them. Given this, it is highly unlikely that the author has real world development experience.

In summary, painful book; purchase at risk to your own mental health. Oh yes, THANKS JAKE STURM.

I have worked with HTML for many years, but I have never worked with XML. This book starts with a clear presentation of XML, covering all of the basics. XHTML is also discussed in detail. The book gives a good discussion of DTDs. The schema coverage was really great; it is based on the latest W3C standard. Microsoft's XML parser uses an older version of schemas, which is also explained in the book. The book covers a wide range of XML related topics, including XSL, namespaces, BizTalk, SOAP, etc. The best part of this book is a really wide range of real world examples. For example, there are examples for every Microsoft DOM object, for XSL, Microsoft DSO, SOAP, etc. The examples are geared toward Microsoft's products, but this book can be used by anyone who wants to learn about XML, even if your work is not focused on Microsoft products.

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."

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.

Could not understand the head or tail of the book. if only he could get rid of the gnomes. My initial impression was that the gnomes must there only in the beginning of the chapters to start out the explaination of COM and DCOM...but unfortunately it dragged on and with it my attention..
Highly not recommended..

After purchasing this book I had the unusual experience of liking it for the wrong reasons. I thought that I was getting another COM programming guide. Instead, I ended up with a solid understanding of the fundementals of the business computing market and how Microsoft intends to conquer it.

The Gnome metaphor was difficult to struggle through and not totally effective but it did convey some key concepts about transaction processing. The bottom line is that after reading this book, I have gained a more fundemental understanding of the "why" of several core Microsoft technologies like MTS. This understanding will enable me to more effectively leverage these technologies.

A "Beowulf" is the concept of using a network of low cost personal computers for distributed processing. The book doesn't specify a particular configuration. The author describes the three fundamental parts of a Beowulf system: node hardware, network hardware, and parallel software applications. Three chapters explain how to use the message passing interface (MPI) standard to distribute the work for a program executing on multiple nodes. An example MPI program for sorting is presented. The features of the Linux operating system are covered in Chapter 4 since Linux is a common choice for Beowulf clusters.

I must take issue with some of the other reviewers of this text. I found this book to be a very good overview (and snapshot) of the current status of a rapidly evolving system architecture. It is written at a fairly high level (although it does dip periodically into details) - so the reader gets a good overview of what a Beowulf is, its' components, and many of the issues involved in designing and implementing one. In my view it balances detail and theory quite well.

IT IS NOT (nor do I believe it was intended as) a detailed roadmap of EXACTLY how to build one. The Beowulf architecture isn't so much a single type of implementation, but rather an approach to applying COTS technology to solving computational problems. The details of any single Beowulf implementation depend greatly on the specific computational problem being attacked. (Something that is pointed-out within the book.) The authors therefore took a different approach.

Some of the topics covered in the book WILL, eventually, be outdated: specifically, the section on the PCI bus, some of the material on network technology, and the section on available processors. As COTS technology advances, and as Beowulf architectures change to take advantage of those advances, some sections will become outdated. However, this is unavoidable for any text reviewing the current state-of-the-art. There is also a lot more here that is NOT likely to be outdated within the next several years..

There may also be sections in the text that the reader will already be familiar with, and can therefore skip. This is also inevitable considering the nature of the text and will obviously vary depending on the reader.

I can recomend this text highly as a starting point in learning what a Beowulf is, some of the ways they are put together, and for exploring many important design and implementation decisions. In my own case, it helped me resolve a number of design issues I was wrestling with about my own system. It does not, however, stand alone. After starting with this text, most readers will then certainly need to refer to online sources for further information.

Before I purchased this book I was completely intimidated by the idea of building a Beowulf Cluster. I found this book to be a surprisingly thorough and accessible resource, allowing me to get a great understanding of what was needed. I've just placed my order for the equipment for my first cluster and can't wait to get it up and running!

This book's orientation is different from many other SAP books. The target segment for this book appears to be prospective SAP Consultants aspiring to be involved in implementation of projects, personnel in the Implementing organisation whose services will be used in implementation and end user. These days many people get trained/ acquire knowledge in SAP modules such as FI-CO, Logistics, SD, HRMS, etc by attending training courses in various Computer Training Institutes. Some even work as Trainee Consultants in some organisations. The real-life Implementation experience is all together different from what these people learn in Institutes. I feel that this book will be certainly helpful to fill such gap between real-life Implementation exp and learnings. At least, the book will enable the reader what to do when he is put in the project for the first time. Good points abt this book: 1. It gives good view of R/3 architecture 2. Giving ideas about possible Implementation issues that can arise 3. Inputs for preparing a good SAPper CV 4. Employment opportunities in SAP. Negative points: Jack of all, master of none! Inadequate coverage of various modules, which is understandable!

Conclusion: The user level is mentioned as Intermediate to Advanced in the back cover, but I feel that this book is only suitable to Beginners to Intermediate level.

This was my first book on SAP, it did help to get an overview nothing more. If you're planning to ge t specialized in ABAP or any Module then better forget this one.

There are good and bad points about this book. First, like the summary states, it is a nice,big, heavy book. If you need to hold down something firmly, this is the book to place on top of it. Now, the bad part: many parts of the book are simply too superficial. This book sounds like a big advertising brochure for SAP, and if you are looking for that, SAP AG might be able to do a better job of selling their product. Also, in many major modules, the book has an irritating tone that somehow presupposes that you have an absolutely ready SAP system in front of you and are trying to get an idea of what it is doing. Many sentences have the phrase " the system will have been configured to" do this, or do that... This includes sections that should really be giving you good, solid information on how the system has been configured, and how else it could have been configured. In the middle of this, we have inane statements, which are really too numerous to list, which give the book a "business perspective". If that is what the book aimed to do in the first place, then I wish people like me, who are looking for a techno-business view, were better informed before buying this book.

In short, the book falls short on the very count that appears be it's strong point: depth. If anybody who is really working on SAP got anything useful out of this book, I would be amazed to hear about it.

I bought this book to gain the fundementals of the new breed of client/server systems. The value of this book is that it argues that Java and XML will revolutionize the data interchange and data presentation. From this perspective, I think it makes it's case.

BUT, much to my amazement, I found most of the examples(code)(programming constraints) inconsequentially and almost irritatingly organized throughout the book, as it assumes you have some java programming under your belt which I do not.

There are some great points to this book. $50 is steep, but then it does manage to give you a fundemental understanding of how Java and XML may prove the most common tools in future web endeavors.

There's a lot of good information in here, but it really isn't all it should be. The quality of the writing is a tad erratic, chapters are padded out with long lists of methods etc which would be better consigned to an appendix.

It has feel of a book which has been thrown together in a hurry. Some of the sample programs are poorly documented and difficult to understand. I'm not sure the writers really knew who their target audience were; some of the Java text, for example, is very basic but other parts of it are difficult, but there's not a logical step-by-step progression. The book is really a bit of a rag-bag. That said, there's a lot of good stuff in here, but it's hard work finding it sometimes.

Had a look at it the other day at the Borders. Covers almost all the technologies associated with WEB development in a nice way with sample code that demonstrate each technology. It's a puzzle why the title is what it is. It's misleading!

Do not buy this book. The code is full of bugs and does not appear to be tested by the author. You will spend ... and waste many hours trying to get the code to complie. The code is not very well explained in the text. Overall, the book is very disappointing, and really a huge waste of time.

O'Reilly have a big turkey here. Save your money - buy something else.

In general, this book will give you quite a good overview of distributed Programming in Java. It covers many subjects from sockets to security. Some of the subjects like sockets and RMI are explained fairly well, but others that are complex like CORBA and Security are not explained in detail. The nice part about this book is that it gives a good overview of most API's and subjects related to Distributed Computing in Java. For people, looking for a clear book with lots of examples and details on this subject, this book is NOT for you. This book is not excatly EASY to read and its definately NOT full of examples, BUT if you are patient enough while reading, you will learn quite a lot from this book. I also warn you that you may need to read other books on some subjects in this book like CORBA to be able to understand them well. In conclusion, if you are a newbie that wants to learn distributed programming in Java I suggest that you buy this book ALONG with another one that is clear and easy.

I needed to get into distributed progamming with Java and found this book to be a very good entry into the topic. Like the reviewer below noted, it only scratches the surface of each of the topics it discusses. This is fine for someone that is just getting into distributed programming...you can read on all the different methods of distributed programming in Java and then figure out which will be best for your application. Once you've mastered the topic of your choice to the level that this books gets into, you'll most certainly want to pick up another book that is more in-depth on what you are trying to do.

For example, I used the book to examine Corba, RMI, and message-based systems. I decided to choose RMI as the best method in my circumstance...I wrote several sample apps using RMI following the examples in the book. Once I felt comfortable with this, I went out and bought a Java book on RMI.