Distributed

This book is an introductory overview for the non-professional. Far from living up to its cover copy, the book seems to be aimed at individuals or amateurs who, for example, want to present their collections of antique baseball cards online. It includes whole sections, for example, covering Microsoft Access and FileMaker Pro while coverage of Oracle, DB2, or SQL server is handled by a couple of paragraphs. I seriously doubt if any IS professional will find this book "to be an invaluable step-by-step guide" as claimed on the cover.

I read through this book and learned a few things, but it is not an in-depth step-by-step guide. It seems to be aimed at amateurs or IS people who are clueless about database-driven Web sites, which is possible since IT is a wide field.

If you truly want a step-by step guide and you're going to use Microsoft products/technologies, you definitely have to check out 'Web Database Development Step by Step.' This is your step-by-step guide! It is a cookbook with excellent insight. There truly aren't many guide books covering Web DB development, and that MS Press book is a gem.

Got to the index, and it is for ver 5.0. Very disappointed

I was very disappointed when I tried to install this book onto my PC and failed many times ! Seems something wrong with this CD-ROM and it can not be recognized by Win-95 ! If anyone out there has any idea how to install it or get a refund on the CD (not the book itself, since I still need it) from Amazon, please let me know. Many thanks in advance !

This book is not difficult to understand. However, I find that this book's examples have too many errors. For example, in chapter 8, the examples given have errors. The result of the examples are not what I expected. It makes me feel whether my understanding is correct or not. Moreover, there is no author email address in this book. The reader cannot send comments to the author.

The book is good in the sense of the simplicity with which the author tries to explain and introduce the concepts. However, it is full of errors: I could not find one example without errors. Specially in Chapter 4, which introduces SQL, there are too many errors. That is unforgivable!! I think the author of this book did not even check what he was writing. I do not recommend this book to anyone until a serious revision of all the examples is perfomed!

I read this book to get some ideas for setting up a database with multiple servers in different countries. One requirement was high availability and fast response times under the condition of instable network connections. I am not a database expert, so I can not assess the accuracy and completeness of the material very well. The following is my view as a "novice" reader.

The book is divided into three parts: theory, distributed database architectures, and multi-database architectures. Part one introduces relational algebra, SQL, database models (hierarchical, network, relational), ER-diagrams and such. Part two concentrates on homogenous distributed database architectures. Part three is about heterogenous (e.g. mixed hierarchical/relational) distributed database systems.

The book is demonstratively well structured and easy to read. The author begins with a roadmap, and each chapter begins with a statement of purpose, a description what will follow and how this relates to the topic. I found part one to be a decent introduction to general database concepts. However, I had the impression that the book is too shallow overall. One of the more noticable omissions (to me) is in the part about deadlocks: the author concentrates entirely on deadlock detection, while deadlock avoidance and deadlock prevention are not even mentioned. I can't say if this is because the latter are not used in databases. Moreover, as another reader noted, the examples are full of errors, which is quite annoying.

Altogether, the book entirely failed to give me any hints for solving my problem. Data replication, which is probably the one technique that I need to apply under the circumstances described above, is mentioned in only one paragraph in the entire book. The author instead focuses entirely on database partitioning. If you need that, the book may be for you, although I assume there are better books on the subject. I do not recommend this book.

This book is the virtually identical to "Corba Networking With Java" from the same author and publisher. Both books are content-free and contain only vague discussions of general resource/development planning issues that have nothing to do with Java or DCOM.

Actually, I just browsed the book, but I'm sure this book is certainly not helpful for a programmer who want to know how DCOM works with Visual J++ 6.0. I have returned it to Amazon.

The entire text contains just six lines of Visual J++ (on page 69). One of the appendices also contains half a page of Java (on page 306). Neither example is of any value.

The book only discribes DCOM in very general terms. You will not learn how to use DCOM from reading this book!

Amazon described the book as "hand's on". This is clearly a false assertion. It is a book for technical managers and is distcinctly hands-off.

I purchased this to better understand the query execution plans that are produced by Query Analyzer and this book explains them in terms consistent with 6.5, not 7.0!

Excuse me, is it a version 6.5 book? It lacks important information about SQL server 7. The presentation of the whole book is terrible. How can Prentice Hall let this book out in the market??

This book blatantly lies about what is in SQL 7. It's somewhat accurate about 6.5, but who cares? I would have given this 0 stars if I could.

It was very hard to find one thing good about this book and the only thing good about this book is that it is a Dummies book. I have bought Dummies books in the past and have found them to be very helpful, but not this time! If I could have given this book a lower review than 1, I would have given it. I have spent many frustrated hours trying to figure out the code, that does not work. Every chapter is like an uphill battle, trying to get the code to work. Didn't anyone test the code before the book was published?

The authors take a lot of things for granted. They assume that you know a lot of C++, for instance, and expect you to be experienced at this and be able to do many of the examples from the book, and automatically know what to do. They also skip over important details and I almost feel like I have to read the Authors mind to figure out what they are up to. There are so many holes left in each explanation. I have never seen so many holes and empty spaces left in a book! The authors fail to take you step by step. This book is not for beginners and is more for people who have Corba experience. Why do they call it a dummies book?

I was having so much trouble that I thought that I would E-mail the author. The dummies books, that I have, give you the authors E-mail in case you have problems. Unlike other Dummies books the Authors had left their E-mail address out so that the reader could not contact them, I wonder why? I have contacted the publishers and they sent me John's discussion group which, needless to say, did not work! I got some kind of error message and could not leave a message for him. The allocated time registration to use Orbix is too short to finish the book and I have to continually renew it. Which is a real nuisance.

One good way to get turned off Corba in a hurry is attempting to read this book. Another good thing, I just remembered about the book is the cartoons. Dummies cartoons are always funny and they urged me to keep trying to figure out this book. At least I could get a laugh in between the times when I was thoroughly frustrated with this book.

If I could return this book, I would.

I wrote a review for this book about one month ago and I still do not see it here. I wonder if it is a waste of time to write a review? I would like an explanation as to why my review was not put in with the rest. I took a great deal of time and thought to create that review. I also followed your guidelines, what is up?

Thank You Rob Fisher Programmer/Analyst

I bought this book thinking that it would be a good place to learn CORBA. While I picked some things up because I didn't know anything at all, when I did learn the correct way of implementing CORBA, I realized how this book over-complicated many things. The biggest problem is the proscribed method of compiling the projects using Visual C++. Sheesh. It is a lot simpler that the process they use. The actual IDL examples are OK, but overall, there a better books out there that can be had.

This book does a poor job of summarizing the actual framework. Probably because Tivoli continues to change the product to keep in the running with its competitors.

As a new Tivoli Administrator, I thought that this book (copyright 1998) would give me a good overview of the product. Unfortunately, the product is a moving target, with frequent updates and patches. Major architecture changes are in the works, with a new version of TME 10 due out in Sept. '98. Unless updated, this book will not be the least bit useful then.

I used this book as my primary study guide for the exam and I barely passed the exam. If I hadn't used the Visual Basic 6 Distributed Exam cram and Transcender as supplements, I probably would have failed. This book does not provide enough depth on vital information for the exam. I would recommend using the transcender and exam cram to pass this exam. Don't waste your time and money on this book.

This is NOT a suitable book to prepare for the exam. It contains a lot of syntax whereas the whole exam is scenario based. I studied it through and through and failed. This book is a good revision of the actual study guide, but defenitely not a guaranteed pass for the exam.

I found this book didn't really provide me with the know how Ineeded to use the Netscape ONE technologies. a much better book is theNetscape ONE Developers Guide

Definitely not on a par with other books out there

This book is not helpful to even the beginning SAP security administrator. It lacks technical information and does not include enough depth in any area to be of assistance.

I recently purchased this book and returned it the next day. I was very disappointed in the lack of technical detail. Several areas were focused on Germany regulations and not appropriate for the US.