BKPICKGD.RVW 930705 O'Reilly & Associates, Inc. 103 Morris Street, Suite A Sebastopol, CA 95472 800-998-9938 707-829-0515 fax: 707-829-0104 A Guide to the Pick System, Dale Dougherty, 1990, 0-937175-41-2 "A Guide to the Pick System" is just that: a guide. Those looking for an introduction to Pick, or an explanation of why one might want to, or not want to, choose or use it may wish to look at other sources. The "overview" (Chapter 1) should be understandable to the technically literate user. He or she should be familiar, at least on a user level, with multiple operating systems and with basic data structures. Readers with less background may get something from it, but are not likely to come away with any cogent idea of Pick's purpose or workings. At the same time, some basic concepts such as "time-sharing" are assumed to be completely new to the reader. This dichotomy is odd. Chapter 2, entitled "User Accounts" is actually a guide to the basic user commands of the operating system. This chapter would benefit from clearer examples. It is difficult to understand different command parameters when the same name is being used for different levels of files (and "dictionaries", in Pick parlance). For those without a grounding in data base and data structure concepts, Chapter 3, "Creating a Database" will seem unnecessarily complicated. While the instructions are clear, the power of the system will only be apparent to one who understands the various data file access methods. One would think that this *should* be rectified in Chapter 4, "Database Architecture", but this actually begins the detailed vocabulary and commands of the Pick system which continues in Chapters 5 through 11. Chapter 12, dealing with communications, starts with some very generic data communications points, and then moves in to specific Pick/BASIC programs for communications. The book itself suggests that the details are best dealt with in the individual implementations. It is ironic that the lone appendix, immediately following, is on "Non-Standard Dictionaries". The preface seems to imply that this book is a replacement for Pick system documentation. As such, it seems to be clear and complete. Beyond that, one wonders what purpose it might fulfill. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1993 BKPICKGD.RVW 930705 ====================== 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