Customer Reviews

Java RMI: Remote Method Invocation

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is a fairly basic introduction to RMI, going nowhere near the detail available through the JDK documentation. This is not a book for those already in the know about RMI. The author tends to make a big deal of inconsequential topics (eg. the server name does not need to be specified when binding). A lot of effort is spent in showing java code to do things "the hard way" or even "the wrong way" (eg. doing your own serialisation, writing a socket comms protocol) without any attempt to explain why you might want to (other than "Becuase you might need to" - although I suspect its probably "to pad out a book"). The content of this book would have made a decent chapter in a larger, more general "advanced java" book, but does not provide enough meat to stand on its own.

Advanced Tech. for Java Developers contains in one chapter what this book drags out. But ATFJD also gives you good info on Beans, Servlets, JNI ... . If some one gives you a copy of Java RMI you will get something out of it, but buy the other one. I bought both (sigh).

This book is not for a serious distributed developer. The book takes a look at RMI from 100,000 feet. If you are a serious RMI user, you are better off reading Javasoft RMI tutorials and RMI specification.

The following are the reasons why I give one star 1. The sample code in the CD-ROM does not match in the book. a lot of files are missing in chapter 9. 2. the sample code still use old 1.0 event model 3. I sent questions about how to get the up-to-date sample code but the author never respond.

If you are interested in 3-tier application using RMI and JDBC, I highly recommend George Reese's book - Database Programming with JDBC and Java

I thought that this book was a good overview of Java RMI. Athough I do have to agree with the other reviewers, this book is a bit wordy. I do the fact that code is repeated throght the text. This prevents having to look for it in previous chapters. Worth buying if your new to Java and RMI.

It didn't answer any questions I had about RMI. With 370 pages on a single topic, I wondered how the author could do it.

Java RMI is a good refernce work for determining how to use the Java RMI API. After reading several other texts and chapters on RMI, Java RMI is by far the most direct and concise explanation of this sometimes elusive technology.

The book is divided into four logical parts. The first part describes the Java RMI API as a conceptual framework. Code examples illustrate the important points of using remote methods. The description is very clear and covers topics like creating a registry, defining remote interfaces, and setting up a distributive model.

The second section builds on the academic and theoretical descriptions presented in the first chapter. Through some simple (contrived) examples, a better understanding of basic distributed design methods is evident.

The third section gives a couple of "real world" examples of RMI usage. While the examples are simplistic, they do illustrate the material covered in the first and second sections of the book and do provide good code examples. One part of the book I like, althought it is a waste of space, is a summary of the entire code examples presented after a detailed analysis of the code samples is given. This allows the reader to see how the code fits togther without needing to look at the code on the CD-ROM.

The fourth section is a series of appendices describing the RMI API. While this is normally "fluff" material, in the context of this book, the appendices serve as a worthwhile reference.

Good points of the book: -- clear writing -- good explanations -- plenty of code examples -- the book stys focused on one topic -- RMI (too many other texts get involved with serialization, messaging, CORBA, etc.)

Bad Points: -- this is not a distributed programming how to book (but does not intend to be) -- Distributed design is not covered. The author assumes that you have an understanding of distributed design and want to USE RMI to implement a distributed design.

Summary: A good how to guide to RMI.

I started reading this book without knowing anything about RMI. By the time I was done, I started getting an idea what RMI is all about.The examples are good and the book is worth atleast two readings. In the first reading, what is RMI etc. is put in place. In the second reading one may want to place emphasis on what goes into the stubs and skeletons etc.

That said, the book does have certain things going against it. The first is the fact that it does not talk about Java2 (You'll understand the evolution of RMI when you start reading about RMI/IIOP etc.). The second is that the author does not really delve into clarifying the definitions. Also, the book is verbose and the author tries to tell you a lot of stuff which may not be quite the thing you are looking for when you start reading it. This, though, is what makes the book worth a second reading.

Finally, the examples don't always work. You will need to use a bit of ingenuity (for example convert the chat applet into text based chat client etc. to avoid the problems associated with getting the server running etc.). The popular browser when this book was written was Netscape, which supports RMI, while with the current versions of IE (5.0) you'll find that the examples don't work at all. You'll need a plug in etc.

In my opinion this book is certainly worth reading.

As for buying the book you are probably better off buying a book on J2EE which integrates RMI and puts it all into perspective.

I thought this book was a pretty good intro and overview of RMI. I walked away with a pretty solid understanding of RMI, but most of this could have been accomplished in 100 rather than ~300 pages. It almost seemed like the author needed to add filler, so 100 pages of reference was added and lots of sample code, repeated twice everytime.

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