BKCMCOOP.RVW 931014 Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. Kelly Ford, Promotion/Publicity Coordinator P.O. Box 520 26 Prince Andrew Place Don Mills, Ontario M3C 2T8 416-447-5101 fax: 416-443-0948 or Tiffany Moore, Publicity 72203.642@compuserve.com 1 Jacob Way Reading, MA 01867-9984 800-527-5210 617-944-3700 5851 Guion Road Indianapolis, IN 46254 800-447-2226 "Communications for Cooperating Systems", Cypser, 1991 The subtitle of this book is "OSI, SNA and TCP/IP," thus giving a nice, neutral alphabetic ordering to the systems. In reality this is "SNA with OSI and TCP/IP." The organization, examples and slant to the material is all unmistakably IBM: not altogether surprising, given that they sponsored the Systems Programming Series from which it comes. Regardless of the generalities given in the preface, the intent seems to be to prove that SNA can "fit in" with OSI and TCP/IP. That it does need not be surprising: both systems are quite flexible. However, please do note the emphasis here. You *can* learn about OSI and TCP/IP from this book, but it will be, as it were, through IBM-coloured glasses. The structure of the book itself follows the SNA/SAA (systems network/application architecture) model, with a four-layer model which only fits the OSI (open systems interconnection) seven-layer or TCP/IP (transmission control protocol/internet protocol) five- layer model after some degree of work. Part one comprises an overview and introduction, with three chapters listing the usual platitudes regarding the needs and desires for open systems. Part two describes "Application - Services," which is "above the top" of both the OSI and TCP/IP models, and has no parallel structures other than application programs. Part three discusses the "End-to-End Data-Exchange Facilities" which relates to the applications layer on both OSI and TCP/IP diagrams. Part four talks of "Transport Inter-Subnetwork Facilities" relevant to the presentation and session layers of OSI (and subsumed within the application layer in TCP/IP). Part five deals with "Link/Subnetwork-Access Facilities" which comprise the bottom four layers of both models. (Notable here is chapter seventeen which, somewhat surprisingly, gives an excellent overview of local area networks and all component parts.) While the book is fair and accurate as far as it goes, the IBM bias is deeply entrenched, mostly in terms of what is *not* covered. It is instructive to note that neither OSI nor TCP/IP are defined in the glossary (or anywhere else). As only one example, in discussions of presentation, ASCII and EBCDIC are listed but not Unicode, and there is no mention of MIME at all. An attempt has been made to present the book as a possible course text. "Exercises" are found at the end of each chapter. They are simple queries taken from the bottom of the questioning taxonomy. To answer all correctly you need only read the chapter and recognize a few key words. The "technical references" are of use only if you work within an SNA/SAA environment. The two bibliographies could have been compiled by collating "Books in Print" with a periodical index. There is a very definite need for this book. SNA/SAA, although by no means an "open" system, has a large installed base, and one that is still expanding. Those both inside the IBM camp and without have requirements to "cooperate" with each other. This work serves as a valuable guide not to the implementation of gateways, but to the IBM mindset and jargon. Those on both sides will find it a helpful introduction to "how the other half lives." copyright Robert M. Slade, 1993 BKCMCOOP.RVW 931014 ====================== DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters Editor and/or reviewer ROBERTS@decus.ca, RSlade@sfu.ca, Rob Slade at 1:153/733 Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" (Oct. '94) Springer-Verlag