Customer Reviews

Peer to Peer Application Development: Cracking the Code (With CD-ROM)

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

 

 

This book is more about Microsoft products than P2P technology. A full 3/4 of the book is dedicated to C#, Visual C++ and SQL Server 2000. There is only about 10 pages dedicated to Java, and that is mostly outdated and poorly written and designed Swing code.

The reviewer who claims this is the end all be all book and includes source for both languages has not read this book completely.

It contains some [bad] Java code for a client, and C# code for a client and all the server side coding ( which in their poor implementation is 99% of the functionality ) is C++ and SQL Server 2000 based.

This is nothing more than a mis-named Client/Server book, on how to write a server side application for Windows in C++ with SQL Server 2000 as a database and how to write a Java and C# client to access it.

It is ANYTHING but P2P . . .

Stay away, this is the first book I have ever returned to Amazon.

If you want to know about p2p technology it is almsot a state
secret. It is rather difficult to find out any information concerning the topic. Whether it is to forestall legal attempts to close down services or rather to prevent copying of systems
I do not know.
If you want to find out about the topic of p2p networks this book will explain some of the basics.
However 90% of the volume of the book is devoted to programming of p2p networks. I assume this is a how to book for budding p2p system developers.
There is a little bit devoted to explaining the p2p basics
and the distinctions between the 4 models of p2p networks.
However if you are not or are not interested in programming the explanations are not too easy to read.
It was a helpfull book but be aware that it is primarily a how to book for programmers.
The book comes with a CD . Included in the CD is an e-book
of the complete (I believe) book. One wonders if the authors
thought out the implications of p2p sharing of the e-book or maybe they thought that programmers will buy the book for the
programs ? Maybe they thought that it was either inevitable or
would be good promotion.
e

50% of this book is a printing of their code line by line, the whole app! (which is already on cd-rom)

The sample applications do not complile as is without errors. The book says at the beginning that the release code will be available when dot.net goes gold.. Hello? that was a year ago, and their web site still has Beta 2 code on it.

The book does not cover the more challenging topics of P2P development, such as, what to do with clients behind proxys and firewalls. (that was two stars right there)

All in all a big disappointment.

If you are a programmer looking for a comprehensive P2P book 'not' based on 'jxta', then this might just be the one for you. One thing i particularly like about this book is that you get two fully working P2P applicaitons, with a choice of development languages between Java and C#. At the time of writing this review, C# is not as big as Java, but someday it might be, and the choice of C# just shows the insight of the authors and developers involved with this book.

I have this book, one of the very first of my P2P collection, and i don't think you would be disappointed with it either.
Have fun.

What a wast of money--let the buyer beware.
I am glad to see that the reviews of this book are giving fewer stars as time passes.
Now granted, this book is a bit old at the time that I am writing this, but I am not taking into account the outdated information (hardly fair to blame the authors for that).

What I am criticizing is:
1) Poorly written / edited or translated-- there are whole pages in this book where the author(s) do not bother with the conventions of the English language (article usage, tense agreement, etc.) Consequently, the paragraphs that are made up of these poorly written sentences are difficult to understand _at best_.

2) Incomplete application. From the back cover: "A Complete : 'discovery and lookup server' model P2P application. HARDLY!! The propaganda on the back (conveniently) fails to mention the fact that MS SQL server 2000 is required (as is IIS and WIN 2K) to create a functioning app.

3) Misleading presence of Java. The fact that a skeleton app is written in Java and such statements as: "Whenever the Java appears, (sic) interoperability follows. Java makes the application more flexible, as it is not restricted to any operating system." leads one to believe that this is a cross-platform app. In fact it is not. The presence of Java code is rather negligible, and even if it weren't, critical components require MS software.

4) Good overview of P2P application models. The first chapter is worth reading. If you are interested in understanding different approaches to P2P app design, check it out.

BTW, this is a book for programmers, though many I am sure with be disappointed.

The book was delivered to me so quick. It contained in the good package. so, i could say this guy is really good for the product and service.

As for many others, reading this books was a disappointment for me, too. The other title from Dreamtech with similar name has very same reader's rating and angry comments. I wouldn't recommend this one, unless you are going to print out all their source code and want to save on the printer ink.

This topic is hard to find information on. I do not know if
this is for legal or technical reasons.
This book is 95% programmer's material. There is a brief
explanation of p2p basics. However this is really written in a dry rather technical manner. As such an ordinary person such as
myself can only stomach one page at a sitting.
If you a non-programmer trying to undrstand or trying to utilize this new technology you might find it more usefull to go to a p2p website or program forum and either look for FAQs or help files or even posting questions on the basics of p2p networks.

Hi, I'm a programmer and had consulted many books on P2P technology, but no book is able to give me a complete conprehensive application development life cycle of a P2P application. I'm very glad to have this book at my disposal. I should recommend all my friends and collegues to have this book. The P2P technology is covered in very detailed possible manner. The chatting and streaming application are also very good. Well the thing I like most is the globalized printing, with which i can able to print my documents worldwide. THE MOST IMPORTANT THING IS THAT IT CONTAINS TWO VERSIONS OF THE COMPLETE INDUSTRIAL STANDARD P2P APPLICATION (LIKE NAPSTER) ONE IS JAVA AND OTHER IN C# AND BOTH ARE COMPATIBLE WITH EACH OTHER WITH A CENTRAL SERVER IN BETWEEN. I WAS LOKKING FOR A BOOK LIKE THIS AND AT LAST I GOT IT !!!!

first book of its kind. this is the only book which helps u out comprehensively. the book has been written from programer's stand point thus covers all the possible aspects of the development cycle of any peer to peer project. it helped me out the most though in designing part where these people have made XML as the media for communication to make the design incredibly flexible. even more facsinating is the fact that these people instead of just saying that the design is flexible or just making it look flexible have tailored a de-facto flexible design to make use of this flexibility while incorporating new add-ons towards the end of the book. Pragmatic coverage of the usability of windows media technologies in Peer-to-Peer scenario is a bonus.