Java Distributed Computing

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.

The people below slamming this book should have taken the time to finish reading it. After reading the first two or three chapters, I thought it was pretty weak (and there are a few bizarre tangents the author takes in there, too). But the book as a whole is very good, especially the later chapters and the downloadable source code (how nice to have code that actually works!).

I've found this book very helpful. I'd recommend it highly. Be warned, though, pull the examples from the FTP site, since there seem to be a lot of corrections in there. There's some interesting stuff in the earlier examples, but the last few on different kinds of applications were the most helpful to me. I grabbed the RMI code from the mediator/collaborator examples and I used them in some projects of my own. Very cool!

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.

For someone trying to get into distributed computing in general, this book is a great way to start. The text is easy to read, and gets right to the point. The code examples are well-chosen. And the online code actually works - I've used some of it to "jump-start" a few pet projects.Note bene: If you're looking for a reference book on all the distributed computing APIs, this ain't it. If you get heavy into CORBA or RMI, you'll want to buy a good reference book on either of these. But this O'Reilly book gives a great overview of the lay of the land, and I tend to use it now and then as a reference on the basic stuff that you always forget (like, "How do those ServerSockets work again?").Well worth the money.