Building Secure and Reliable Network Applications [Hardcover]

Kenneth P Birman (Author)

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

KENNETH P. BIRMAN is an ACM Fellow and a Professor of Computer Science at Cornell University, where his research focuses on reliable, secure, and scalable distributed computing systems. His work has been applied to the NYSE, the Swiss Stock Exchange, the US Navy's AEGIS warship, and the French air-traffic control system.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 591 pages
• Publisher: Manning Publications; 1st edition (January 15, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1884777295
• ISBN-13: 978-1884777295
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,709,343 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars read the new version "Reliable Distributed Systems", July 11, 2007

By 

Marc Magrans De Abril - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Building Secure and Reliable Network Applications (Hardcover)

Although the first version has a more general scope I really think that the author tried to talk about to many subjects.

The new version of the book "Reliable Distributed Systems" is much better. It is true that in the new version the author mixes two different things: Web Services and Reliability in distributed systems.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent reference for reliable distributed computing, November 1, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Building Secure and Reliable Network Applications (Hardcover)

Ken Birman is one of the foremost academic experts in this still young field. This book will give you a good understanding of the different techniques available for ensuring reliable communications between machines: from transactions to group communication systems.

It is *not* a book for novicies, though his style is still quite readable. It's a very dense text - not much whitespace or many diagrams.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent marriage of theory and practice, July 13, 2000

By 

Don Branson (Ballwin, MO USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Building Secure and Reliable Network Applications (Hardcover)

Kenneth Birman is one of the best at bringing together an academic thoroughness with a real-world practicality. He explains concepts well. In addition, many parts of the book stand on their own quite well. That is, you can skip chapters that are not relevant to your current work, and still glean tremendous insight into the issues and ideas presented. I highly recommend this book to anyone who's interested in understanding how to implement distributed applications or replication strategies.