Creating Components: Object Oriented, Concurrent, and Distributed Computing in Java

Concurrency is a powerful technique for developing efficient and lightning- fast software. For instance, concurrency can be used in common applications such as online order processing to speed processing and ensure transaction reliability. However, mastering concurrency is one of the greatest challenges for both new and veteran programmers. Software developers with all levels of experience can refer to Creating Components: Object Oriented, Concurrent, and Distributed Computing in Java to better understand how concurrency works, more effectively deploy it in program components, and reuse these components to improve program design, quality, and performance.This text introduces concurrent and component programming to students, engineers, and programmers who are familiar with Java and procedural and GUI programming. It helps them to understand and apply concurrency in Java component programming, while exploring distributed program implementation, Java threads, objects, interfaces, exceptions, component reuse, and system design and management.By providing the fundamental concepts of object-oriented components and offering templates for distributed program components, this valuable resource reveals how programmers can apply concurrency and components to solve complex problems.

User review
Reasonable Presentation
This is the only book on Java concurrency that I have read, so I cannot compare it to others such as Brian Goetz's book. My overall impression is that the general methodology for designing concurrent programs with Active/Passive objects and state diagrams is well presented. I think some of the java code in the book, though, is becoming a bit dated and no longer best practice given the concurrency features, and other things such as Enums, added in Java 5. The book relies heavily on the wait/notify implementation. As far as I know there is no errata for the book and although I didn't see anything major there are a few errors that would benefit from being documented. There is also sometimes a tendency to confuse `principal` and `principle`.

I'm not sure what the other reviewer is saying about the book's layout. Any programming text is going to have code spread across multiple pages. One thing, though, is that each program and figure is labeled as both that, as well as with an `exhibit` number. This seemed unnecessarily redundant.

I think a lot of work went into the book, but I think it could now benefit from a second edition. Without that, you probably want to look at some of the other books with more recent publication dates before making your decision.

User review
Good book, questionable topic coupling and poor printing
I was assigned this book by Dr. Kann as part of an online course in concurrent programming and object-oriented design at University of Maryland University College. This book is particularly well-suited to that class but I question its usefulness as a generic resource for either concurrent programming or object-oriented principles. In my opinion those topics each deserve full treatment in their own book. Kann is a clear writer and good teacher, and the book is replete with examples, although some of the examples span multiple pages in such a way that they are difficult to read and follow. In my opinion a book on programming should have large enough pages to show entire code snippets on one page instead of forcing many to span 3-5 pages. Also, some of the commentary about the code snippets is found on pages you might not necessarily expect. If you are assigned this book for a class it is nothing to be afraid of, but I not recommend this book for general purchase, there are many better books out there.

User review
Great introduction to concurrent programming with objects
This book provides a good introduction to Concurrent and Object Oriented Programming in Java. I was fortunate enough to take Dr. Kann's class last semester, while this book was being finalized. This is probably the best book I have been assigned as a class textbook while in school, both in readability, and usefulness.

Reading this book will make programming concurrent applications in Java easy, just by following the design patterns in the text. Use of notification objects and synchronization is well explained. If you'd like to understand object oriented concepts such as composition and classification in an easy to understand way, this book will help. Throughout the course of the book, the reader can watch the construction of a concurrent program from beginning to end. The concurrent program (the animator), is also a handy class which can be used to perform simple multithreaded animations.

The section on distributed computing (Java RMI) implements a simple chat client/server in Java which can be used across the internet. Very easy to write your own chat program in Java using the material in this book.

Code included in the book should have you up and running quickly. If you're ready to start utilizing the full power of java objects and multithreading, buy this book.