Title: Grid Computing for Developers

Author: Vladimir Silva

Publisher: Charles River Media (Thomson Delmar Learning)

ISBN: 1-58450-424-2

Price: US $49.95

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Vladmimir Silva's Grid Computing for Developers promises so much, offering to teach developers today's standards for Grid computing, with the Globus Toolkit (GT) taking center stage. I initially thought I was onto something very useful when I got the book and was looking forward to learning more about grids. Soon, however, I realized the book has a number of problems.

To start, the back cover refers to the book as "A Developer's Guide to Grid Computing". It also states that the book is aimed at "beginner to intermediate" level users, which it is not. After 50 pages of introductory material, which sometimes is confusing and often is more marketing-speak than technically useful information, a real shock came on page 55. That's when the first source code is presented. The code is preceded by a short disclaimer about how the code assumes the reader already is familiar with parts of the GT, even though another 200 pages go by before the author discusses those GT parts. Without that familiarity with GT, the code is hard to follow. And, being that the book is aimed at developers, there are pages upon pages of such code. Unfortunately, little accompanying explanation is offered beyond brief overviews.

Beyond the problems with its content, the book has presentation problems as well. It contains a number of glaringly obvious and embarrassing spelling mistakes, the worst examples being "Baatch System" (page 119), "Virtual zorganizations" (page 181), "Diffie and Helman" (page 193) and "Web Ervices" (page 291). In addition, the included images mostly are grainy bitmaps that look as though they were knocked together in a desktop spreadsheet program. Screenshots are no better; they're grainy, poorly labeled and sometimes incredibly small. For example, the screenshots on page 260 are no bigger than a one-and-a-half inch square. And, the less I say about the impossible to read let alone follow UML diagrams, the better. Furthermore, the index is next to useless: try looking up "OGSA-C", which appears on both the front and back covers but is not listed in the index. Finally, being a computing text on a hot new topic, this book is full of acronyms. But, no glossary and no list of acronyms are provided. This book badly needs both.

In truth, I should have listened to the little warning that went off in the back of my brain when I read on page 4 that the creation of the ARPANET was one of the "milestones of the 1950s". Again, another embarrassing error.

If you already are familiar with grids and the GT, there's probably material in this book that is worth reading, although discussion of GT4 is thin on the ground. If you are new to grids, look elsewhere for a better introduction.