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Author/s : Black, et al
Publisher : Prentice Hall PTR/IBM Press
Category : J2EE
Review by : Jeanne Boyarsky
Rating : 8 horseshoes</pre>
"IBM WebSphere Application Server for Distributed Platforms and z/OS" from IBM Press targets WAS admins. The book covers WAS 5.0 and 5.1, highlighting differences. It covers almost every OS: UNIX, Linux, Windows and Z/OS. A differentiating factor from other books is that the authors focus on Network Deployment throughout, starting with chapter 2.
One thing to note is that there is a lot of duplicated information. Five (out of 26) chapters have separate chapters for distributed and Z/OS. The remaining 16 chapters, sprinkle distributed and Z/OS differences within. In a way, it is two books in one. However, if you are only using one type of OS, the book is thicker and more expensive than necessary.
The authors are quite thorough in discussing most options. They also refer to the InfoCenter, papers and redbooks for more details. There are also many tips and gotchas in each chapter. The step-by-step instructions and screenshots are very helpful.
A running example shows the steps for deploying, configuring and maintaining a sample application. The app is of sufficient complexity to seem real. Tools such as MQ, ASDK and wsadmin are shown in parallel.
The authors intend for each chapter to stand alone. As a result, there is a fair amount of repetition. Aside of one dependency on a future chapter, the book reads well linearly too. This book serves a good reference and I recommend it to those maintaining both distributed and Z/OS systems.
More info at Amazon.com More info at Amazon.co.uk
