J. Joseph and C. Fellenstein: "Grid Computing"
IBM Press/Prentice Hall (2004)
ISBN: 0 13 145660 1

The back cover of this books claims that it's aimed at the "executive,
strategist, architect, [or] technologist" as much as at the developer.

The material divides into 3 parts. The middle section (chapters 5-10)
describes Grid services, the OGSA components and services, and
the OGSI framework.The final section (chapters 11-15) works through
the architecture, programming model and services of the Globus GT3
(and a perfunctory 5-page chapter on the OGSI.NET implementation
for MS Windows). These sections make extensive use of SOAP and
WSDL with the odd bit of UML thrown in; as I don't know much about
web services (my Grid experience involves trying to use GT2-based
systems) I found them pretty daunting. There is a bizarre sample
application in the form of a Grid-enabled search engine: while there
is extensive coverage of how the services making up the application
communicate amongst themselves, there is no higher-level overview
of what the application is meant to achieve (and therefore _why_ it
has been de-composed into that particular set of services).

An interim conclusion might thus be that this book would be useful
to experienced web-services developers faced with implementing a
GT3-based solution, but is not particularly helpful to executives
looking e.g. to "Use grid computing to maximise the value of existing
resources" as suggested on the back cover, but there is one major
flaw: the first section of the book is so poorly written and edited
that it completely undermined my faith in the rest of the book.

This first section is a few chapters introducing Grid computing
concepts and various organisations and middleware involved. The
coverage is a bit brief, but per se this is not a concern as the
material has already been covered in more detail elsewhere. Rather,
the problem is that this section is filled with bizarre phrasing,
sentences that simply don't make sense, and a huge list of spelling
errors. Although these might not render the simple introductory
material impenetrable, the presence of so many spelling errors
and typos does not invite one to spend time typing in the any of the
sample code provided.

Summary: if you're not a web-services whizzkid already, this book
won't help much. If you are, and GT3 is looming large in your life,
you should still proofread some of the middle chapters in the shop
before you buy.

Henry

(Well, it seemed TOO quiet here)

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