This is the one book you ought to have if you want to expand your knowledge of online transaction processing (OLTP) and learn how to apply it to the real world. Transaction Processing completely covers the problems faced by OLTP systems and discusses fault tolerance and recovery--the ability of a system to withstand failures of various kinds without dropping the ball. Additionally, Gray and Reuter cover system architecture decisions, monitoring, concurrence (including locks and isolation), scheduling (including deadlock resolution), and file systems. The book concludes with a discussion (circa 1993) of the merits of various hardware and software used in OLTP systems. Although there is no companion CD-ROM with Transaction Processing, the authors do illustrate many of the book's concepts with C source code. As this is a college textbook, you can expect some dry prose and academic approaches to certain problems. Nonetheless, the authors' writing is clear and easy to follow.


From Book News, Inc.
For advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and for professional programmers who either want to understand what their transaction processing system is doing to them (e.g., a CICS/DB2 user) or who need a basic reference text, this pragmatic volume shows how to apply transaction concepts to distributed systems and how to use them to build high-performance, high availability applications with finite budgets and risk. Assumes a reading knowledge of SQL and C. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.


Book Description

The key to client/server computing.


Transaction processing techniques are deeply ingrained in the fields of
databases and operating systems and are used to monitor, control and update
information in modern computer systems. This book will show you how large,
distributed, heterogeneous computer systems can be made to work reliably.
Using transactions as a unifying conceptual framework, the authors show how
to build high-performance distributed systems and high-availability
applications with finite budgets and risk.

The authors provide detailed explanations of why various problems occur as
well as practical, usable techniques for their solution. Throughout the book,
examples and techniques are drawn from the most successful commercial and
research systems. Extensive use of compilable C code fragments demonstrates
the many transaction processing algorithms presented in the book. The book
will be valuable to anyone interested in implementing distributed systems
or client/server architectures.


From the Back Cover

The key to client/server computing.


Transaction processing techniques are deeply ingrained in the fields of
databases and operating systems and are used to monitor, control and update
information in modern computer systems. This book will show you how large,
distributed, heterogeneous computer systems can be made to work reliably.
Using transactions as a unifying conceptual framework, the authors show how
to build high-performance distributed systems and high-availability
applications with finite budgets and risk.

The authors provide detailed explanations of why various problems occur as
well as practical, usable techniques for their solution. Throughout the book,
examples and techniques are drawn from the most successful commercial and
research systems. Extensive use of compilable C code fragments demonstrates
the many transaction processing algorithms presented in the book. The book
will be valuable to anyone interested in implementing distributed systems
or client/server architectures.


About the Author
Jim Gray, Microsoft Research and Andreas Reuter, University of Stuttgart

ANNOTATION

A comprehensive presentation of the key concepts and techniques of transaction processing. The authors provide a description of the transaction concepts and how it fits in a distributed computing environment, as well as a thorough discussion of the complex issues related to transaction recovery. The book will be invaluable to anyone interested in using or implementing distributed systems or client server systems.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

The key to client/server computing.


Transaction processing techniques are deeply ingrained in the fields of
databases and operating systems and are used to monitor, control and update
information in modern computer systems. This book will show you how large,
distributed, heterogeneous computer systems can be made to work reliably.
Using transactions as a unifying conceptual framework, the authors show how
to build high-performance distributed systems and high-availability
applications with finite budgets and risk.

The authors provide detailed explanations of why various problems occur as
well as practical, usable techniques for their solution. Throughout the book,
examples and techniques are drawn from the most successful commercial and
research systems. Extensive use of compilable C code fragments demonstrates
the many transaction processing algorithms presented in the book. The book
will be valuable to anyone interested in implementing distributed systems
or client/server architectures.

FROM THE CRITICS

Booknews