Windows System Programming (3rd Edition) [Hardcover]

Johnson M. Hart (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0321256190 | ISBN-13: 978-0321256195 | Publication Date: November 5, 2004 | Edition: 3

"If you're a systems-level 32-bit or 64-bit Windows developer, whether using the Windows API directly or via .NET interop, you'll definitely want to take a look at this update to Johnson Hart's well-respected and well-loved book. Johnson starts with Windows history and cultural issues and moves through basic and advanced system services in a thoughtful, thorough manner. If Mr. Rogers wrote a book with David Cutler, this is what they'd come up with."
—Chris Sells, Longhorn Content Strategist,
Microsoft Corporation

"While focusing on UNIX developers that are looking to augment their skills or simply jump ship, Windows System Programming, Third Edition is a book that even some seasoned systems-level Windows developers will undoubtedly find useful. This is not your average bland GUI treatise; Hart takes you down to the metal, explains all the relevant concepts clearly and in-depth, and gives you an extensive library of high-quality code examples that can be easily adapted for your own larger applications. Even if you've created server applications before, Windows System Programming will teach you new tricks, shed new light on concepts you thought you'd mastered, and offer new strategies for creating robust and secure solutions."
—Klaus H. Probst, Senior Architect,
Spherion Technology Services; Microsoft MVP

"This book is quite easy to follow; there are clear explanations of everything. Even the explanation of the standards is readable! For a developer not familiar with developing with Windows, Hart's book also provides basic information on where Windows was and where it is today, plus a great explanation of how it is different from Posix and Unix."
—Eric Landes, Microsoft MVP,
www.aspalliance.com/corporatecoder

"Even advanced developers will always need to have a book like this one on hand when the abstractions of a platform like .NET are inadequate or when they need to know more about how .NET is implemented. And the focus on low-level programming (specifically memory management and IO) and other non-GUI topics makes it stand out as superior among other Windows programming books. In keeping the GUI focus to a minimum, Hart's book is able to be comprehensive on the topics contained within."
—Michael Davidson, IT Analyst

Windows System Programming, Third Edition gives a solid grounding on using the core Windows APIs, includingWin64; is updated for Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, and the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Framework, and has extensive examples illustrate all topics and show performance impact and tradeoffs

A practical guide to the central features and functions of the Windows API, Windows System Programming, Third Edition, will get you up and running with Windows XP and 2003, as well as other Windows systems. Unlike most Windows programming resources, this book focuses exclusively on the core system services—file system, memory, processes and threads, synchronization, communication, and security—rather than on the more commonly featured graphical user interface functions. Especially geared for those already familiar with UNIX or other high-end operating systems, Windows System Programming, Third Edition, helps you to build on your knowledge base to learn the most important features quickly and easily.

This new edition has been updated and enhanced with coverage of new API functions, network programming, Windows Services, process and thread management, synchronization, and application performance on single and multiprocessor systems. It also describes techniques for porting applications to Win64, the new Windows 64-bit API.

Beginning with an examination of the features required in a single-process application, the text gradually progresses to increasingly sophisticated functions relating to a multithreaded environment. Each chapter contains realistic examples to illustrate the topics. You will find extensive coverage of such critical Windows topics as:

• File and directory management
• Character I/O and Unicode
• The registry
• Structured exception handling
• Security services
• Memory management and DLLs
• Threads, process management, and scheduling
• Thread synchronization, including the condition variable model for event and mutex usage
• Interprocess communication, featuring pipes and mailslots
• Network programming with sockets
• Developing Windows Services
• Timers,Asynchronous I/O, and I/O completion ports
• Guidelines and trade-offs to improve application performance and reliability
• Win64, covering architecture, data types, and legacy code migration

Short, practical examples illustrate each topic and are included on the companion Web site (www.awprofessional/com/titles/0321256190). The appendixes provide performance measurements and compare Windows, UNIX, and the C library.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“If you’re writing a native Win32 program or just want to know what the OS is really doing underneath, you need John’s book. He covers the stuff that real systems programmers absolutely must know. Recommended.”

–Chris Sells, Microsoft Corporation

 

“This fourth edition does a great job of incorporating new features in the Vista, Windows 2008, and Windows 7 API, but also stays true to teaching the foundational elements of building applications that target the Windows OS.”

–Jason Beres, Product Management, Infragistics

--This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Johnson M. Hart is a software trainer and consultant specializing in Windows, L inux, and UNIX application development, enhancement, and maintenance. John develops and delivers professional training courses and seminars to clients worldwide, and he is the author of numerous technical articles.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional; 3 edition (November 5, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0321256190
• ISBN-13: 978-0321256195
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 7.6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #939,720 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I've been in the software industry for many years, but I'll refrain from boring you with entertaining stories about punch cards or obsolete systems I've known. I'm much more interested in current trends.

This long view does, however, make it particularly exciting to witness the arrival of inexpensive, fast, multicore, 64-bit systems, along with operating system support to exploit the hardware. I've anticipated this development for a long time as it makes it possible to tackle large problems, with lots of data, and get great performance. Here's a recent article that talks about some recent results: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/gg535673.aspx.

While my book, Windows System Programing Edition 4 ("WSP"), shows some of the possibilities using threads, but the book covers the entire "core" API, exclusive of the GUI. Creating 4 editions over a period of 14 years has been a great experience. In particular, I've enjoyed communicating with readers from around the world. Edition 4 is about twice as long as Edition 1, and I've attempted to double the coverage, accuracy, and every other metric. Will there be a fifth edition? That's hard to tell, and we'll have to see if new developments and Windows evolution warrant another edition in 5 years or so.

Recently, I've been working mostly with .NET 4.0, C#, and PLINQ. Detailed Windows API knowledge really helps to understand how .NET works with Windows and helps to identify performance and reliability issues. Even if you work exclusively with .NET, WSP may be helpful, and a couple of the Amazon reviews make this same point.

I also use Linux and UNIX, generally using C++ but occasionally venturing into Java and other languages. When it's all said and done, I've found that Visual Studio is really a superior development environment, and C# 4.0 has some excellent features.

It's not all work and no play, so I'll add a bit of personal information soon. In the meantime, please feel free to visit my web site; there's all sorts of technical stuff there: www.jmhartsoftware.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Useful, Reliable, Clear Code Examples, May 25, 2005

By 

Joe Green (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Windows System Programming (3rd Edition) (Hardcover)

"Windows System Programming" is clearly written, with subjects presented in a logical order. The program examples tie the topics together so that you can see how the Windows API functions work in real Windows application programs. This is not an internals book; it explains the core Windows API, and the author clearly defines the book's scope.

The subject matter is very important in a lot of practical application development situations where the GUI is not an issue (this is the code "under" the GUI that does the real work). I was able to adapt two of the example programs ("JobShell" from the Process Mgt chapter and "Pipe" from the Interprocess Comm chapter) for use in a recent consulting job. Everything worked well and the changes for my particular task were easy to do, but I would not have been able to figure it out myself without spending a lot of time. I'm thinking of adapting one of the thread synchronization examples in an upcoming assignment. I looked at other books, and none of them had anything even close to these very useful examples.

By the way, the example code (download it from the URL given in the book) is clear, quite reliable (maybe it's not perfect for all I know, but what code is?), and it performs extensive error checking. The code listed in the text is usually streamlined so that the reader can see the logic without getting bogged down in error checking details (the author explains this in the text). I disagree with the March 28 reviewer about this, but maybe he was only looking at the code in the text. The code is clear, straight-forward, seldom "tricky" in any way, generally well documented, and the author goes to a lot of trouble to point out variations, other methods to solve the same problem, performance tradeoffs, and other useful and thought-provoking information. Incidentally, the coding style is compatible with professionally developed Windows code I've encountered during consulting projects.

Finally, the author maintains a web site (same as the code download URL) with corrections, updates, and a lot of additional information that is informative, helpful, and sometimes entertaining and even witty. He also responded quickly when I sent an email requesting some clarification.

So, Hart gets 5 stars for this book; it really helped me in "real world" situations. I wish more authors would write as well, take as much effort with their examples, and support their books the way this author does.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellant Windows system level programming, January 20, 2007

By 

J. Carroll (NJ) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Windows System Programming (3rd Edition) (Hardcover)

I'm an old system's programmer, and I loved this book. It provides the exact information you need if your an experienced system's coder, and just need the specifics of how to accomplish the operations on windows. Multithreading, memory mapped file i/o, process & thread management, networking, you name it, and it's in here.

I use this text hand and glove with "Windows Internals" by Russinovich. Winternals explains what needs to be done, and Hart's book describes how. This is really an excellant text.

I particularly liked Appendix "C". Sprinkled throughout the text are example programs. Then Appendix "C" compares the real world performance of running the programs. The author does an excellant job of explaining why one approach is suprior to the other, than backs it up with timing examples (on difference versions of windows, using different hardware, and even the differences between FAT & NTFS).

About the only imrpovement to the text I could suggest, is less reference to Unix/POSIX. Most systems programmers are familiar with Unix, and it helps to have previous understanding from another platform, but I think people who buy this text are looking to learn the "Windows Way". Also, the text would benefit from a deeper treatment of the Windows Security model. As it stands, a demonstration of Unix-Style permissions for NTFS is not terribly useful in the real world.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars clearly written, December 9, 2004

By 

F. Huynh "tech book junkie" (Sunnyvale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Windows System Programming (3rd Edition) (Hardcover)

The author does a wonderful job in explaining the fundamentals of windows systems programming. His writing style is clear and concise. This doesn't mean that he glosses over the details however, he makes a good attempt at highlighting tricky or confusing areas in the API and makes sure the reader knows what to watch out for. I reccomend this book for those wanting a good overview of the Win32/64 API. It take to notice that this book does not cover GUI in anyway.