Programming Server-Side Applications for Microsoft Windows 2000 [With CD-ROM]

This book tells how to use existing Win32 API facilities to write solid and efficient server side apps. Most Win32 API books just describe GUI API part like Petzold's books do. This book takes you to the point - how to use EventLogging, Threads, IO completion port, security, Sockets, Overlapped IO, Synchronization, etc and why they work this way. It tells you even more - where most apps losing performance, standard techniques for synchronization, how to monitor system health. It offers little help for VB and MFC programmers at the same time if your apps should run for weeks and serve thousands requests an hour this is your survival guide.Well, when Win32 about to be succeeded by Win64 we finally got answer how did it work and how we had to use it.

Programming Servers expects the user to have an understanding of development on Windows 32-bit platforms, and this is a good thing, because it gives the reader the chance to jump right into some advanced topics. First the book spends some well-deserved time on the topic of scalable I/O development in Windows. Then it covers service development in great detail, new and advanced developers will pick up some points here. After this, it covers administrative features. Although the administration section is interesting and detailed, it is also the lightest-weight chapters in the book. Following these chapters is the security development section! This section is by no means lightweight, so hold on tight. It covers security from the creation of the very first user account to full blown scalable encrypted communication using industry standard protocols. This section includes an incredibly complete coverage of NT security programming plus dozens of topics totally new to Windows 2000. Just about any developer will increase their understanding Windows with this book.

I found this book to be a well-presented and enjoyable read for some very advanced Windows programming concepts. This book thoroughly detailed the following topics: Server/Service development, scalable development techniques (including thread-pooling and scalable I/O), server management tool development, and the most complete security programming coverage I have seen to date. This book is a must buy for anyone who wants to understand the nuts and bolts behind security or server software development in Windows.Note that this book does not require COM or DCOM knowledge. Even though basic C++ knowledge may be helpful, it's not a prerequisite either. All the samples are easy to follow and written in C.

For a detailed technical reference, this book is a surprisingly easy read. Not only is it a great introduction to new Windows 2000 technologies, I think that it will get quite a bit of use as a reference text over the next few years. The authors must have put a lot of effort into this one.

I've found the coverage of Windows NT security to be excellent. The book covers SSL, NTLM, kerberos, the crypto APIs and SSPI. Topics which I have not been able to find in any other book.