Well organized, complete, nontrivial, wealth of sample code, interesting historical notes, good index. Magnificent work. Definitely worth the money.

For nearly a decade this book has been the definitive reference on transaction processing. Although the more recent, May 2001 book titled "Transactional Information Systems: Theory, Algorithms, and the Practice of Concurrency Control" by Gerhard Weikum and Gottfried Vossen will probably supplant this book as the standard reference, there is still much material that makes this book useful.

In particular, this book covers the following topics in more depth than the newer boom cited above:
- Fault tolerance and availability, both topics are covered in depth from hardware and software perspectives. This is unique for a book on transaction processing in that most books on the subject confine their scope to software and databases.

- A wide and complete survey of transaction models. True, some of this material is about models that are falling into disuse, but the value is the way the authors go deeply into the mechanics. I've always felt that this part of the book is the most valuable because the principles can be refactored into hybrid models. Moreover, comparing this material with the newer book by Weikum and Vossen shows that these principles are still employed in today's TP solutions.

Material about transaction processing monitors is obviously out of date, but, like the TP models, the principles still apply to contemporary systems. My recommendation is if you are going to buy a single book on the topic get the Weikum and Vossen I cited in the first paragraph. However, if your budget allows, I also highly recommend this book as well because of the depth in which fault tolerance and TP models are covered. If you want to just learn the basics of TP I recommend that you consider "Principles of Transaction Processing" by Philip A. Bernstein and Eric Newcomer because it is less daunting than this or the Weikum and Vossen book (both of which are 1100+ pages).

I used this book as a CS grad student in college
for a class on transaction based systems and it covers
how to do transactions from top to bottom. Although
it was published in 1993 the techniques described in this
book are actually more advanced than techniques
used in a lot of real world systems today so it is not
out dated. I have yet to see a book as comprehensive as
this on how to actually implement transactions. Good
book for software engineers to read. My only complaint
is that the book has a lot of typos and some bugs in the
source code listings. Also because the book is so damn big
(i.e. lot of pages) they chose to use very thin paper which
makes it not very good for using hilight markers on. Still
this is the definitive book on how to implement transaction
processing.

This book is THE complete guide to building an intranet. Killer examples and techniques.

Very impressive compendium of Intranet information and the latest HTML techniques

This is an important book. Most books on SQL cover simple SQL statements, and/or focus on a particular vendor's SQL implementation. Very few books attempt to cover the SQL standard in any depth, if at all. This one does. Furthermore, because one of the authors (Jim Melton) is the editor of the ISO SQL Standards Committee, the book is extremely authoritative on the subject.
The SQL:1999 standard can be an overwhelming document, both because of its size (it surely must be the largest of the language standards?) and because of its formal language (not bedtime reading by any means!). This book provides a much more accessible description of the contents of that standard, and it is sorely needed.
While the authors' writing style is very readable, don't expect this book to be a beginner's guide to SQL; that's not its intent. The book goes into great detail about SQL statements, and their operations. If you already know something about the basics of SQL and wish to learn much more about the language (and indeed, some features in the standard not yet implemented in most database vendors' products), this is the book to get.
In the interests of full disclosure, I should say that I know Jim Melton personally. I have the highest respect for him; his knowledge on the subject of SQL is positively encyclopedic.

Having heard so much about this book, I was very dissapointed by the fact that this book really wasnt so basic . It does provide a comprehensive analysis of many other aspects of oncology ,but it most certainly is not a book for beginners and at times you feel overwhelmed by the sheer detail with an inability to bring across basic concepts. This is a book for oncologists who have a more than basic grasp of the basic sciences.Read somehing simpler first.

To understand the basis of cancer, to read about molecular biology, and the development of the mutations, and to understand how it hapens. Complete and basic.

This is probably the best introductory oncology book I have found. I taught out of it in classes for advanced undergrades, first year graduate students and doctor of pharmacy students. It is comprehensive and easily readable, and the treatment of general concepts is second to none. Some of the listings of identified oncogenes and such are a bit dated, but that should be rectified when the 3rd edition is published (currently expected April 1, 1998). The section on the biology underlying cancer treatment is particularly useful, and hopefully the 1998 update will continue to be so.

Written by some of the most respected researchers in implicit surfaces (many of the authors having invented many of the algorithms discussed), this book is exactly what the title says it is: an introduction to implicits.
Since each chapter was written by a different author, the book is rather inconsistent in its laying of the material, which will indeed make it confusing to someone that is indeed a complete newbie to the subject. This is particularly bad for a book that is supposed to be an introduction to the subject. It is hard to explain how, for example, Chapter 3 (implicit patch modelling) will relate to anything else covered in other chapters. Being a chapter so early in the book, it just confuses things.
If you are already familiar with blobs or similar implicits, you will be right at home and will be able to jump to chapters you are interested in. If you've never been able to play with an implicit surface modeler, trying to read the book from cover to cover and understand the explanations, even of the first chapter, will, I think, prove somewhat hard. You will likely find better introductions to "blobbies" if that's what you are interested in on the web.
Chapters 4 and 5 are some of the most useful and practical to anyone doing any implicit software development for the first time. Bloomenthal gives a good review of all the ways of polygonizing implicits (albeit no consideration is given to taking advantages of polygonizing specific types of fields, such as point elements) while Wyvill gives also a good review on the different approaches on raytracing implicits. Both chapters do a reasonable job of pointing the benefits and drawbacks of each method presented.
Chapters 6 and 7 deal mainly with subtle issues of blending of multiple skeleton implicits. Chapter 8 mainly with morphing. And the final chapter with dynamics applied to implicits (so as to create soft objects).
It is, however, the Reference section that is one of the most important sections in the book, since it pretty much lists most if not all papers related to implicits.
Albeit the book states that it wants to be a practical book on implicit surfaces, no sample code is provided anywhere (the book is more a presentation of the material, somewhat math oriented, with discussion of the most useful and common equations for each chapter's topic) and even the reference section does not point to some of the most widely known free code available ( Bloomenthal's Gems code or Wyvill's BlobTree ).

Don't expect this book to be anything like a bible on implicit surfaces. But if you are looking for a way to get quickly accustomed to the existing work, it's definitely the right book. You will find lots of pointers, in a wide range of related subjects.

This book is extremely helpful as a supplement to textbook readings. It definitely meets the objective of placing the primary concepts UP FRONT! Using this book, I was better able to focus my study, prepare for exams, and drastically improve my grade. I feel this book works best as a supplement, due to very recent advances in embryological study that are not included in this book.

I bought this book as a prep for a licensing exam. I found it to be a good starting point for further research. (a handy bibliography is provided at the end of the book) The author does a good job at introducing issues that get ignored in the general education of a designer. At least half of the book was case studys the methodology of practicing designers.

Merril may be a funny man on the field but in the book he is boring. As in many sports stories the subject gives the writer a line and the writer blows it up to a paragraph or a nonsensical chapter.

What was billed as a wildly hysterical look at major league baseball through the eyes of an umpire turned out to be a rather booring couple of nights of reading. If you want real humor, check out Ron Luciano's efforts. If you want "ol' boy, down home country lingo" this will do. The foreward, written by Ken Griffey, Jr. is banal and self-serving. The book itself does little more than proclaim baseball analyst Tim McCarver as a jerk, superstar Reggie Jackson as the "second coming" (presumably because he professed to enjoy the author's fried chicken) and Merrill himself as a blind supporter of his fellow umpires. Funny,,, Merrill referred to former umpire Nestor Chylak as "Nestor Shylock".Didn't his editors check this out beforehand? That's reason enough for me to ask for my money back. If your looking for baseball humor, try Luciano - and leave this book on the shelf.

Durwood Merrill has had some interesting experiences, and crossed paths with some of the more intriguing people behind the scenes of baseball. For that, it may be worth struggling through this poorly written manuscript.

Mr Merrill is not expected to be much of an author, and should rely heavily on his editor to tighten up his anecdotes into a readable, coherent, flowing manuscript. Mr. Dent has failed him miserably here. It's as if the editor read each anecdote separately, and forgot about it once he turned the page. Spelling and typos were ATROCIOUS.

In short, this book would have been much better if it were edited down to about 2/3rds its size, and nothing of value would have been lost.

Not as comprehensive as I thought. The only best thing of this book is that it talks about almost all the web languages, give you the basic understanding.

I am a professional web designer and have wanted to further my skills into the relm of web development. I found this book and started reading it immediately. It is an excellent resource for web design and development as a whole. It goes into technologies such as ASP, PHP, Java 2, Usability and Design rules, Creating Graphics, basic web design fundamentals, CGI, a little C, Coldfusion, Perl, XSL, XSLT, XHTML, SSI, CSS, DHTML, JavaScript, VBScript, database design, ADO, just about everything. It gives a great introduction (40-60 pages or more)into most of the technologies used in web design and development and goes in depth on XML, XHTML and Java 2 best of all it tells how all the above technologies can work together. Not only xml and xhtml. but how ASP and perl relate. No it doesnt come with a CD but I have had no problem compiling the code and getting it to work. A CD would have been nice but the information in the book is so useful that its worth the price without the CD. It is easy to read (if your into reading computer books) and is the best resource that I have found on web development technologies and how they relate to each other. It is a great book and I recommend it highly to any college student aspiring to get into web work (as long as they know HTML) or any professional web designer or developer at any level. This book is a must have.

I am a network security engineer, not a Web developer. When I first saw this book's title, I realized I lacked an understanding of XHTML, XML, Java, and other subjects listed in the table of contents. The book's 2.5 inch thickness and 1400 pages were daunting, but skimming the first few chapters showed the text to be lively and informative. I gambled that I could at least gain some familiarity with modern Web technologies by buying this book.

That gamble paid in spades. This book will provide a computer-familiar reader an idea of the plumbing behind modern Web sites. The text describes many varieties of Web-building tools, and includes clear explanations, examples, and code. I especially enjoyed learning from the book's dozens of figures. These typically show the results of executing example code, with the captions giving excellent summaries of points made in the text. For example, rather than writing "Here is a sample of Netscape Dynamic HTML layers," the caption on p. 684 says "Netscape Dynamic HTML layers can be used to show context-sensitive information on your Web pages."

I could not find any faults with this book, although Web development is not my specialty. If you are looking for a book to make you an expert in any one or two of the subjects covered (i.e., JavaScript, Dynamic HTML, even XHMTL), you will not be satisfied. The authors recognize this point and direct focused readers to more comprehensive sources. If you are looking for a guide to what makes Web surfing and serving work at a technical level, I strongly recommend this book. Keep in mind that rapidly evolving Web processes can make books like this less relevant as time passes. If you believe this particular edition is becoming obsolete, be confident that the authors' next edition will be just as educational.

Note: I congratulate the editors and four authors for creating a "cohesive" 1400 page book. I was pleased to see each chapter explicitly bearing the individual author's name, and glad to see seamless references to work in chapters by different co-authors. Bravo Que.

This was a waste of money and is no wonder why it is out of print. Of course I may or may not even read the damn thing so this review is essentially usless and I have wasted your time. Mission Accomplished! THANX