Distributed and Multi-Database Systems (The Artech House Computer Science Library) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)I read this book to get some ideas for setting up a database with multiple servers in different countries. One requirement was high availability and fast response times under the condition of instable network connections. I am not a database expert, so I can not assess the accuracy and completeness of the material very well. The following is my view as a "novice" reader.
The book is divided into three parts: theory, distributed database architectures, and multi-database architectures. Part one introduces relational algebra, SQL, database models (hierarchical, network, relational), ER-diagrams and such. Part two concentrates on homogenous distributed database architectures. Part three is about heterogenous (e.g. mixed hierarchical/relational) distributed database systems.
The book is demonstratively well structured and easy to read. The author begins with a roadmap, and each chapter begins with a statement of purpose, a description what will follow and how this relates to the topic. I found part one to be a decent introduction to general database concepts. However, I had the impression that the book is too shallow overall. One of the more noticable omissions (to me) is in the part about deadlocks: the author concentrates entirely on deadlock detection, while deadlock avoidance and deadlock prevention are not even mentioned. I can't say if this is because the latter are not used in databases. Moreover, as another reader noted, the examples are full of errors, which is quite annoying.
Altogether, the book entirely failed to give me any hints for solving my problem. Data replication, which is probably the one technique that I need to apply under the circumstances described above, is mentioned in only one paragraph in the entire book. The author instead focuses entirely on database partitioning. If you need that, the book may be for you, although I assume there are better books on the subject. I do not recommend this book.

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