The first two sections of the book are most accessible to those with little programming experience. These sections introduce object orientation and provide a review of the most useful Unified Modeling Language notations while illustrating their use in software design work. But throughout the book the author examines critical principles in such a way that the most experienced software designers will be challenged to reconsider assumptions and habits and to look more critically at their work. The third section of the book is not completely accessible to readers without substantial development experience but even so has enough to offer that it should not be skipped by the newcomer to coding.

In my opinion this book is more about design than UML. If you want an introduction to UML it might make more sense to read Sams Teach Yourself UML in 24 Hours. The introduction to UML in Page-Jones' book is good enough to be your first look at UML but it is not comprehensive and it is oriented to illustrating design principles. This is an excellent book to start with and I would recommend reading it before anything else on UML. And I cannot imagine a better book for introducing object-oriented design. The author has a long track record in structured design and he frequently relates OO to SD concepts. The book is language independent but weighted toward C++. I only speak Java and had a little trouble with the concept of parameterized classes because they don't exist in my frame of reference but this was a very minor problem.

Because of its size (over 1200 pages), this is not the place for an absolute beginner to start. I would recommend Java for Students for those who are seeking an introduction to programming and Java at the same time. This is an excellent book if you have some orientation to programming, Java or not, and you want to develop a solid base in the language. The author notes in the Introduction that the word Beginner in the title reflects how much he assumes of the reader in his teaching style rather than anything about the skill level he is trying to develop in the reader. The book is thorough and does a good job of covering Java language, syntax, and the class libraries.

I have been very pleased with how clear the explanations are and how useful the examples and exercises are for learning Java. Rather than just code fragments, the author tends to use code samples to illustrate the points that he makes. He encourages typing the samples in yourself and playing with the parameters to get a feel for what is going on. This results in having more confidence with the language while developing your understanding. In the course of a chapter I find myself keying in 6 to 8 code samples.

I wonder if Ivor Horton began life as a mathematics professor. Many of the exercises involved calculating factorials, prime numbers, the volume of the Sun in cubic miles, etc. I have trouble working with these numbers on their own, let alone developing a computer program to calculate them. Thankfully, it is possible to follow the logic even with this unfamiliar material.

Wrox Press offers a website that documents errata that has been found in the book. Rather than just site a line here and there, the errata section often provides a whole block of code with the corrections made. This makes it easier to find the changes. I have not found them to be troubling but I copied them into a Word document and printed that out so I can correct each chapter before I read it.

Most amazingly, there is a Beginning Java email list associated with the book that is actively monitored by the author and a Wrox Press sysop. Readers report problems they are having with code or things they don't understand and other readers or the monitors provide ideas, suggestions, and answers. I have started a Lotus database to file things I am mining from the list so I can make use of them in the future. The list appears to be a place where both beginners and more advanced students can learn a lot.

Each chapter tends to build on the chapter before it. It works best to work through this book from start to finish. If you already know Java you might browse chapters to get a better grounding in a particular area but the author assumes you know what he covered earlier in the book and the chapters do not stand-alone.

The book is current through 1996 technology and that was a long, long time ago (as of August 2000). If the authors had concentrated on concepts and ideas rather than getting tangled up with then current commercial implementations of CORBA the book would have more lasting value. To be fair, they do provide a clear overview of CORBA concepts and mechanisms. And considering that CORBA 3 is at hand while this book is from the era of CORBA 1 it does a good job of providing a grasp of what distributed object architecture and request brokering is about.

If you need a high level over view it works. I thought the technical sections were great for teaching a manager what CORBA details involve but they were too high level to help if you need to actually code something...

I guess I got what I wanted from this book. The reason it does not get a higher rating from me as an introduction is that it was tacky when it was brand new with it's theme of being a Martian report on CORBA, an intergalactic client/server web technology. And the cutesy stuff only worsened with age. Since it is an introduction the authors should have done a better job of choosing and explaining their vocabulary. Talking about information blobs and object webs with enthusiasm does not really help a beginner to understand what the industry is doing with object sharing to facilitate access to services. The book talks about middleware frequently and I think they should have presented that as a concept and worked on it's definition. Finally, the authors kept moving in and out of discussing then current products. The book frequently sounds like a marketing spiel and yet new ones replaced these products years ago. Weren't they familiar with upgrades, mergers, and market failures in 1996?

I don't know how to compare this book to others on 6.5 because I have not read any others. But my readings in this one have compared very favorably to what I have read in dozens of references dealing with 7.0.

The book is a great education if you are willing to work with the examples. I failed to get file includes to work in my development environment despite following examples precisely but I was able to make other things work pretty well. Because I tended to bring the examples into existing environments I ran into a few problems with compatibility issues. For example, you can't declare <% @LANGUAGE = VBScript %> in a VBScript section on the same page as a block of JavaScript. When I looked carefully I saw that the authors had warned about that but I needed to learn the hard way.

I really like the 24-hour format for this subject and the authors do a good job of explaining what they do cover. The examples were complete, working ASP code blocks followed by detailed analyses that helped me understand how things worked. I found myself marking sections to come back later when I am on particular projects to steal some of their code and modify it to my purposes. I have already taken and modified many blocks of code from ASP sites on the Internet but the explanations in this book are better than any I have seen on the Internet. If you are a programmer this is a great place to start. If you are not a programmer, be prepared to dig in.

I have used this book to solve problems and to research configuration settings when troubleshooting performance issues. At over 1000 pages I am not sure I could have survived reading it as a study guide and it is really not suited for that. But if you want a resource that goes into pretty good depth on subjects, this is an excellent book to consult.

After the project was over I took some time to read through it carefully instead of just looking for solutions. I was very pleased that the material is well written and clearly leads the reader to develop a very sound understanding of Terminal Server and the issues involved in managing and securing applications running in this environment.

To me, a book like this one is supposed to take a generally knowledgeable person from ignorance to basic competence in the specialty area. I had accessed applications over terminal services prior to reading this book but had never managed them. This book quickly gave me the knowledge I needed to feel comfortable administering a Terminal Server.

Sharon Dooley takes a practical, hands-on approach to database administration that reflects a wealth of field experience. Having read my way through more than 5 SQL books already I might have passed on one entitled SQL Server 7.0 Essential Reference, expecting it to be too basic. What I found was a perceptive field guide to managing a SQL Server. This book provides a clear, understandable review of administration topics that is useful to experienced administrators for the richness of knowledge revealed while remaining an excellent book for persons new to database work who need an introduction that is at once accessible, concise, and relevant.

I disagreed with the author about the value of defragmenting SQL Servers and believe that if she is going to say that there has been no proof of the value of defrag software she needs to deal with the findings of the National Software Testing Laboratory on Diskeeper. She also says that Microsoft is fuzzy about supporting defragged databases and yet Diskeeper was one of the first products to gain the Certified for Windows logo. I think she is out of date in this area. I also thought her distrust of third-party backup software needed more defense as I personally have not run into problems though she alluded to many. Other than these specific points I found the material to be outstanding and I would acknowledge that there is room for disagreement on these points.

For the experienced administrator the book reveals undocumented and falsely documented issues that can improve administration. The book is very realistic about what can and cannot be done on a SQL Server. I liked the point made that server tuning can only account for about 10% of performance while the bulk of what really matters is in database design.

Upgrading from 6.X to 7.0 is covered very nicely. The author provides useful suggestions for dealing with what might not convert seamlessly in an upgrade. I have worked with SQLdiag numerous times. Sharon Dooley is the first person that has clarified that this utility must be run directly on the server; it cannot run from a client workstation. I liked the way she touched on many of the places where an administrator could go wrong. The discussion of SQL Mail reviews how to make it work with Lotus Notes as well as POP3 and Exchange. Previously I had thought that if I did not have an Exchange Server available I could not setup email alerts. Books On Line is not as helpful here as is Sharon Dooley.

This book is like having an experienced DBA standing right beside you interpreting the fine points and telling you about undocumented or misdocumented features while you do your everyday work. The general tips and warnings alone are more than worth the cost of the book.

Rob Kirkland admits that he struggled with meeting deadlines to finish this book and he brought in several of his friends to write 7 of the 20 chapters in the book. Perhaps being late explains why this book has so many problems with formatting, punctuation, missing words, words that don't fit the context, and mislabeled concepts. I would estimate there are over 300 of these incidents in the book. Most of them are minor but occasionally I found a situation like this, two different features are explained and they are both labeled with the same name. As the reader, you must decide from your understanding which one is which. This material is not meant as an introduction for beginners but I found these glitches challenging at times and imagine it could throw even experienced Notes Administrators.

The writing was clear enough but the organization of the book was such that you frequently had to leave your understanding of a concept open for quite a long time until an explanation was completed in a later chapter. For example, partitioning a server is discussed early but only at the end is the concept explained. Many times early chapters referred to later chapters for a fuller discussion of features. By the time you get to the end the material is covered pretty well but it is clear to me this book needed another draft. The book is a great candidate for a second edition. Not only could the organization of the material be revisited, the wording and formatting problems could be fixed and the issues resolved by Lotus in the latest updates to R5 could be covered.

I look forward to consulting this book again and again in the field. Despite the problems it is full of wise advice and it is clear that Kirkland understands production environments. One of my favorite aspects of the book is the step by step method of being walked through setting up a new server or adding a new server or deleting a server. The impact of making various changes in terms of performance, reliability, and availability is consistently discussed. I thought the coverage of mail services and routing was particularly strong and the coverage of web server features somewhat weak.

The authors advise in composing an email to make your most important points first as readers may not read to the end of your document and they follow their advice in this book. Most readers will get what they want from the first chapters while more demanding users with more specialized needs will find more of what matters to them as they continue reading.

There really is nothing here for a Notes Administrator except to find that this is THE book to recommend to end users to answer their questions effectively. There is a wealth of information here on using short cuts and formatting documents to produce more appealing presentations. And the authors also do a great job of suggesting ways to improve collaboration and workflow in a team environment.

The information on subscriptions was too brief and I think it would have been helpful to warn users that sometimes you just need to shut down Notes and restart it to get some things to work properly.

If you need to be more efficient in your communication and documentation in a Notes environment, this book will help.

One of the features that appears throughout the SRK is flowcharts. This can be a helpful method for visualizing the step by step activities of establishing connections, resolving names, etc. This approach is applied in this volume particularly to troubleshooting. I liked having a flowchart and a list of steps to clarify the points covered.

Microsoft is emphasizing the use of network analysis through the use of Network Monitor in the SRK. Capture files are frequently included to illustrate TCP/IP functions.

A number of new tools for testing and verifying TCP/IP on a Windows 2000 network are covered in the book. The coverage is a little light weight and it is common to be referred to Server Help for more information. It appears to be necessary to review Server Help, the SRK Companion CD, as well as the SRK itself to fully review some tools and features. This sounds worse than it really is however.

A chapter is devoted to IPSec. On the one hand an attempt is made to review the material from a basic level to begin educating the industry on an important security option. The chapter also tries to cover the means of making IPSec functional on a network. I wanted more.

I was also disappointed with the chapter on Quality of Service. There was too much repetition and important issues were not addressed clearly enough. For instance, not all QOS features can overlap on machines. It was not clear what features can be run together and which must be installed on separate machines to function appropriately.

The last chapter in the volume was on SNMP. It was basic and clearly written.

Nine Appendixes were included covering everything from the OSI Model to LMHOSTS files. It is a shame this volume will not be more accessible to students as it is really an excellent treatment of TCP/IP.

There is a significant amount of repetition within sections and only a little between sections as new concepts are introduced that depend upon others already explained but I never found myself tempted to go look at an Active Directory concept again while I was reading about the Distributed File System, for instance. I do not understand how keeping these sections in one book enhanced value. It was hard to carry around too.

The Active Directory book earned 2 stars with me. The explanations were cloudy but the detail was good. It was in reading this section that I realized Microsoft was thinking of third party developers when they wrote the Server Resource Kit (SRK). While many references were made to the Software Developers Kit (SDK) in the SRK an attempt was made to lay out the ground work for understanding what it would take to customize tools to work with Active Directory. Much of this material was irrelevant to a network engineer who has to work with what is available without having the option or budget for customization but it seemed to me that Microsoft was showing helpfulness to third parties with this publication.

Distributed Security was written in a fairly accessible manner. Since the technologies covered in this section are new to many organizations I wondered if a special effort was made here to start from the ground up without expecting too much from the reader. I found it refreshing to get this package laid out neatly. This section earned 4 stars with me. The explanations were good but I thought the details on managing a security infrastructure were a little lean.

Enterprise Technologies made up the smallest section of the book and earned a 3 star rating with me. The explanations of Distributed File System, File Replication Service, and Network Load Balancing were okay but not great. The chapter on interpreting the Cluster Log was pretty obscure but I guess you have to be into your own cluster log before this material can get exciting.

Desktop Configuration Management was the last section and earned 3 stars. I happened to work through some CD based training on Preinstalling and Deploying Windows 2000 Professional while I was reading this section and that gave me a comparison with what is possible. The CD based training earned 5 stars with me. I learned more with it in about 25 pages than here in 200. Of course the CD only hit the high points while obscure details are reviewed here but it seemed to me that if you removed the coverage of obscure details the SRK still would not have been as clear in covering the technology.

I have to admit that in the course of reading this volume I began to question my commitment to reading the whole SRK. These presentations do not measure up in clarity to most other material I have encountered. I will continue for several reasons: 1) There is no more authoritative source of information. 2) The reading is getting easier as I go. Many concepts are related and now that I am over 2500 pages in I can read for new details and confirmation of my previously developed understandings. 3) I am stubborn.

I am starting the TCP/IP volume next. Funny how 1000 page books are looking small now. Check back in about 20 days and see what it was like.

What I liked best about Interconnections was being consistently able to understand what the author was saying. While an electrical engineer might get a little more out of her discussions than I did I never felt locked out because my undergraduate education was in the liberal arts.

The material she presents is not always easy. In fact, Radia notes, "Anyone who isn't confused about when routers become EGP neighbors and what the rules are for configuring routers to initiate being EGP neighbors does not understand EGP" (p. 428). And yet the reader who is willing to concentrate and follow her lead can understand everything covered.

Even though this is a marvelously written book it is not for everyone. I would hesitate to recommend it to a network technician wanting to understand networks more fully. While I think every computer science student should spend two semesters working through these 18 chapters, memorizing the Glossary, and discussing the suggested homework problems the book is overkill for the ordinary MCSE candidate wanting to master Networking Essentials for a Microsoft certification exam. Interconnections is foundational reading for those who would design protocols or vendor equipment designed to interoperate with protocols but it is a bit much for someone who just wants to know which port to plug the cable into.

While Interconnections is not for everyone, I think it is essential reading for anyone who makes purchase decisions in an enterprise network. Without a firm understanding of bridges, routers, switches, and internetworking protocols they become far too vulnerable to sales techniques. And Interconnections is an essential reference for the Network Analyst. Radia notes that in the first edition of her book she assumed people would read the RFCs to get details that she omitted but they didn't. As someone who has spent some time trying to digest RFCs I am grateful that she bulked up the Second Edition with what she thought people needed to know. I can figure out what she writes but frequently feel I have wasted the effort when trying to get what I need out of the RFCs. Interconnections is a convenient one stop resource for researching packet headers and the various control messages that analyzer software may capture while sniffing a network to identify problems.

Interconnections, Second Edition is 150 pages larger than the First Edition published in 1992. Radia has reorganized, rewrote, added examples, included new protocols and more fully documented details to make it a better reference book. The Glossary was expanded from 4 pages to 10 but that was not enough. Radia does a good job of defining terms in the body of the book the first time they are used but not again in later chapters. When they are not in the Glossary it leaves the reader having to page around looking for the first definition. And the Index shrank from 15 pages to 5 between the First and Second Editions and thus became less useful for finding obscure terms.

Radia Perlman proposes that, "Before we design a solution, it's often useful to define the problem to be solved" (p. 505). To explain a protocol in the book she typically presents a list of problems and then walks through adding features to an algorithm to solve one or more of them. She discusses how adding one feature may create new problems. It is fascinating to do this exercise in relationship to real world protocols that are used everyday and to realize that some problems could be relieved if standards bodies could more readily agree. And that brings up one of the most enjoyable aspects of Interconnections, Radia sharing anecdotes and criticisms from years of participating on the Internet Engineering Task Force.

One take home message for me from reading Interconnections is that it is always best to keep it simple. Added complexity rarely pays off in anything but trouble. Radia opined, "I think people should be grateful if their packets get there at all" (p.202) rather than jumping through a lot of hoops to insure optimal routing. This is a good message for those who build internetworking protocols as well as those who just plug cables into ports.

The Deployment Planning Guide reflects Microsoft's understanding that Windows 2000 must be implemented with thorough planning to achieve the potential it has for supporting an enterprise environment. This volume is a Project Manager's dream. Nearly every planning base has been covered here from identifying the appropriate composition of various teams to task sequencing to checklist templates. The material is so well organized for guiding an implementation project that I am surprised it was not released with a Microsoft Project file and instructions to just add your own dates and stir.

The Deployment Planning Guide provides a useful survey of many of the features of Windows 2000. Even after a week of MOC training and reading through the two volumes associated with that class I learned some new things from the Planning Guide about how Win2K works. For people who need to gain an understanding of what the options are and how all the pieces fit together this is an excellent read.

For the most part the Planning Guide is clearly and accurately written. A few times terms seemed to be misapplied and the results were confusing. Repetition became annoying as the reader was referred to Server Help or the Unattend.doc on the installation CD for more information too frequently. Chapters 13 and 25 repeat the same material, once to describe automating server installations and then again to describe automating client installations. These problems reflect an obvious effort to make each section self contained but even so the volume is quite readable as an overview of Windows 2000 networking.

Check back in about 30 days for my review of the 1500 page Distributed Systems Guide!

This is a book about programming and does not touch upon server management. It is largely a Microsoft SQL Server book and while it does cover Sybase Adaptive Server it organizes the information in such a way that if you are interested in just one version you can easily stick with that.

There were a number of typos that were disconcerting at times and sometimes you had to really work with material to actually get it to work and I suspect that was about editing problems. The book is based upon the 6.5 version of Microsoft SQL Server and the 7.0 material is only treated in an appendix. This was disappointing as it forces the reader to do more work than would otherwise be necessary to put all the programming concepts together.

I look forward to a revised edition of this book that is based upon SQL 7.0 but I would advise anyone who is ready to improve his or her programming skills not to wait. This volume is easily the best value I have seen in technical books.