Customer Reviews

Programming Applications for Netscape Servers with CDROM

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
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I thought I knew a lot before I read this book. I was just fooling my self..... Must own book if you work with NES.

This book has it all, from CGI to NSAPI to WAI and beyond. Not only does it cover their use in Netscape Enterprise Server, it provides insight into server internals, as well as extensive introductions to related protocols and features. This book focuses on making you thoroughly understand the subject, not just to be able to use it -- because thorough understanding is key for effective use of these interfaces. I found the countless side notes especially useful, allowing for more complete understanding, one tidbit at a time. These notes also feature warnings, and even mentions of bugs that might otherwise slow development down due to problems that may seem inexplicable. You can tell the author is an expert on his subject, and has clearly been in the application developer's shoes to accumulate the knowledge that he has poured into this book. An invaluable resource for application developers for the Enterprise Server.

If you administer or develop for Netscape servers, you will benefit from this book. Administrators: the knowledge you gain from this book will allow you to modify the config files to do correctly what the Server Manager sometimes doesn't do properly, and configure features that simply cannot be administered from the Server Manager. Developers and Architects: Having read this book, you will know what options you have, and be more easily able to decide which architecture is best for your application -- and you'll be able to code it. In addition, your understanding of the key concepts will allow you to grasp quickly how external but related technologies (like Forte's Web Enterprise) work. Well-written, detailed and comprehensive; highly recommended.

Easy to read, I delved in and finished it in 2 workdays without falling asleep. The info is clear and the examples great. Two suggestions: more examples, and greater focus on what the non-threadsafe functions are. He lists NSAPI funcs and says to use 'em (util_sprintf() for instance) but doesn't mention if strlen or other functions are threadsafe. Also, the time function - I can't get a compile using time funcs that don't have a local time_t or timeb structure (instead of pointers to system structures). That should be noted. Otherwise, totally required book and excellent for beginners to get into it.

Just got my copy of this book and it is great. Wish Netscape provided such accurate and detailed information in their books. Mr. Bassiri seems to know what he is writing about. He seems to write from experience instead of reading Netscape manuals and rehashing the old story. Appendix A and B are really helpful. They included a complete list of server configuration settings. The NSAPI tutorial is the best around and the WAI section provides a true programmer's review of this API. This book is packed full of information. If you want to know how the Netscape server works and program applications for it, you should definitely buy this book.

Mr. Bassiri definitely has an excellent grasp of the Netscape Server architecture. After reading this book, I have gained a better understanding of the Netscape server inner workings. I found the chapters on WAI very helpful! I would definitely recommend this to anyone developing applications for the Netscape platform.

My only complaint is that some of the sections are too wordy and redundant.

It was quite a while since a book like this was published. Finer details erstwhile unknown or not made known to the developer has been clearly explained with sample codes in this book.