BKUPOS.RVW 930916 Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. Kelly Ford, Promotion/Publicity Coordinator P.O. Box 520 26 Prince Andrew Place Don Mills, Ontario M3C 2T8 416-447-5101 fax: 416-443-0948 or 1 Jacob Way Reading, MA 01867-9984 800-527-5210 617-944-3700 5851 Guion Road Indianapolis, IN 46254 800-447-2226 Unix, Posix, and Open Systems, Quarterman/Wilhelm, 1993, 0-201-52772-3 jcq@tic.com There is a pretty clear definition of what and who this book is about and for. We have a series foreword, two regular forewords, and a preface to spell it out for us. The series covers UNIX and open systems topics, and is intended primarily for the technically oriented; designers, programmers, and system administrators; plus their managers. This book, dealing as it does with a "political" aspect of the technology, has a slightly broader audience, involving developers, marketers, purchasers, administrators, system integrators, those creating standards, and end users. The preface goes to great length to clarify the purpose, organization and audience of the book. The description is attempted in multiple forms. Read carefully, this provides a quick reference to what parts of the book are suitable to your purpose. The incautious reader, however, may find the repeated descriptions of the same parts of the book somewhat confusing. Part one deals with the concepts and background to open systems. This is recommended, in the preface, to the end user, but may have some difficulties with that audience. Chapter one, for example, is only technical insofar as specific examples must be taken from specific technologies. However, while those with a technical background will understand the concepts which the authors are trying to develop with reference to mainframes, networks and GUIs (graphical user interfaces), this may not be clear to the average user. The illustrations add little to the explanations. Towards the end of the chapter, though, the material tightens up, and provides very clear definitions of specifications, implementations and interfaces. In chapter two, the book starts to hit its stride with UNIX and open systems. A brief look at the history and development of UNIX is supplemented with material on other open systems such as TCP/IP. Chapter three contains much of the material that appears to be "missing" from chapter one. There is extensive definition of the terminology of standards, as well as some rationale for the promotion of standards. Part two of the book is entitled, "Cutters". This refers to the "puzzle" analogy of the subtitle, and the various standards bodies who "cut" the standards and specifications. Chapters four and five list the formal and "industry" (or user) groups, respectively, while chapter six describes the processes that different groups use. Part three gives an overview of the existing and developing standards themselves. Chapter seven deals with the broadest outlines, while chapters eight and nine cover networking and programming language issues, respectively. Chapter ten discusses conformance with standards, and testing of conformance. While prior sections of the book have dealt with portability of programs, data and users, chapter eleven deals with all three in the specialized case of language and data representation across national and cultural boundaries. Part four contains some examination of practical applications of the ongoing work in open systems and standards. The work concludes with an appendix listing contacts for the various standards groups, and another containing an acrostic puzzle made up of the "alphabet soup" surrounding open systems and standards. (Personally, I don't think there *is* an answer. I suspect they made it up with a "random letter" generator, and waited for organizations to fit the pattern.) Finally, there is a glossary and index. Open systems, and the standards relating thereto, are becoming major factors in all of information technology. Many, if not most, of the current developments in information systems are related to open systems. Many of the current buzzwords; client-server, distributed processing, downsizing, GUI, portability, groupware; have their roots in open systems. "Open system" itself is a buzzword, and often used by vendors of even the most proprietary and "locked in" hardware and software. For anyone who must deal with open systems, this book will provide the perspective you need to evaluate the claims of openness. And, given the ubiquity of open systems, that probably means almost everyone. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1993 BKUPOS.RVW 930916 ====================== DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters Editor and/or reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca, RSlade@sfu.ca, Rob Slade at 1:153/733 Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" (Oct. '94) Springer-Verlag