Books

Ron Resnick (resnick@interlog.com)
Mon, 22 Sep 1997 19:03:50 +0200


My officemate Esti just showed me a copy of a relatively new book by
Nancy Lynch - "Distributed Algorithms"
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1558603484/forkrecommendedrA

Talk about a heavy hardcover text - not exactly for the easily
intimidated sort. Not cheap either - $74.95 at Amazon.

But, it looks quite neat. It's in the same Morgan Kaufmann series
as the classic Jim Gray/Andreas Reuter volume 'Transaction Processing:
Concepts and Techniques'
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN=1558601902/forkrecommendedrA
written by JoeB's boss :-).

The latter is often cited as the 'bible' for anyone serious about
building robust distributed systems. Anyone actually familiar
with the Lynch book willing to suggest it as a 'New Testament'?
Is it likely to be much use as a practical guide to people building
distributed object systems? Opinions from Doug & Werner particularly
sought, since I suspect you're likeliest to be familiar with it.

Both should be added to the FoRK recommended reading list
http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~adam/LOCAL/fork-books.html
when Adam gets a chance.

dist-objers may want to check that URL out - lots of interesting
stuff there. And, if you order books directly from there (via Amazon),
we FoRKers get a cut. A little bit of homebrew ECommerce :-).

Other books we should at some point add to the FoRK list are the
Orfali/Harkey books, DLea's CPJ, the ObjecTime/ROOM book, Booch OOA&D,..
I'll try to dig up the Amazon URLs one day and forward them to Adam.
Also Adam, maybe a link from the dist-obj FAQ to the FoRK reading
list, so we don't have to duplicate these book lists all over the place?

Ron