Books

Understanding Microsoft Windows 2000 Distributed Services

It's not possible to build an effective distributed application in the Windows 2000 world without understanding the distributed services this environment provides. Yet grasping the code-level details of all of those services is a monumental task. Where should you start?

Understanding Microsoft Windows 2000 Distributed Services gives you an architectural overview of this large set of technologies. For developers, this may be the first book you read, while for technical managers, it may be the only one.

The book provides a technical introduction to the middleware bundled with Windows 2000: Windows DNA services such as COM, COM+, ASP, and ADO, along with Active Directory and distributed security services such as Kerberos. But the book contains almost no code. Instead, its goal is to make clear what these technologies do, how they do it, and how they relate to one another. Reading this book won't make you a Windows DNA developer, but it will give you the foundation you need to be one.

Review Comments

"Every architect, developer, and manager worth their salt should own a copy of this book. I give it my highest recommendation–it's one of the best technical books I have ever read."
- Richard Monson-Haefel, author of Enterprise JavaBeans (O'Reilly)

"The best I have seen to date . . . Chappell has a reputation as one of the very few consultants who can objectively sort out the differences between CORBA, EJB, and COM. He also has a well-deserved reputation for providing clear explanations of Microsoft's often Byzantine standards."
- Paul Harmon, Senior Consultant, Cutter Consortium's Distributed Computing and E-Business Service

" ***** "

- Mitch Tulloch, swynk.com

"Don't even think about writing distributed apps for the Windows platform without reading this book first."
- Jeff Prosise, author of Programming Windows with MFC (Microsoft Press) and co-founder of Wintellect

Table of Contents

• The Windows 2000 Distributed Environment
• Directory Services
• Distributed Security Services: Kerberos
• Distributed Security Services: Public Key Technology
• Component Services: COM and DCOM
• Data Access Services
• Distributed Transaction Services
• Component Services: COM+
• Message Queuing Services
• Web Application Services