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Rating: 
Summary: Solid, readable and covers topics not found elsewhere
Review: Although this book's full value will be realized if you understand the C programming language (he uses source code it illustrate points throughout the book and provides a C library for performance analysis on the accompanying disk), anyone with good math skills will gain much from this outstanding book.The core approach is Performance By Design, which is aligned to product development. His approach, if used properly, will ensure that performance goals are established in the design phase, and are met as a system or software evolves through the development life cycle. Highlights of the book are:
(1) Through introduction to the foundation of performance: queuing, parallelism and multiprocessor systems.
(2) Coverage of contemporary issues, such as client/server and web system performance,
(3) Unexpected forays into performance characteristics and considerations that I've encountered in no other book. For example, Part 3 of this book addresses subtle issues such as transient analysis, scaling behavior and similar topics. Here the author integrates theoretical physics into performance analysis - while this may seem odd, it only reinforces that much can be added to the performance analysis body of knowledge by drawing from sources outside of computer science. His qualifications for this material includes a Ph.D in theoretical physics, and his ability to clearly explain concepts that are foreign to the average computer scientist or performance practitioner is excellent. I like the conversation style that the author employs, the way he starts with the basics and builds upon them and the thoroughness in which all aspects of performance are discussed. More importantly, although advanced math concepts are introduced the way they are presented can be understood by anyone with high school or college freshman knowledge of probability and calculus.
Rating:
Summary: If computer performance is in your job - you need this book
Review: If understanding and managing computer systems performance is in your job description and you can only buy two books, this is one of the two (the other is Raj Jain's, "The Art of Computer Systems Performance..."). Neil Gunther's book is not just another tome on queueing theory. Immediately useful methods and formulas are presented in the context of real problems. The two chapters on instability in systems and scaling of multiprocessor systems alone make the book worth its price. Readers need to know that there is some math in the book (there is just no escaping it) and that some of the cited vendor products are becoming dated. The Web site associated with the book contains many items of current interest, an errata sheet correcting minor errors in the book, and downloadable programs related to performance evaluation.
Rating:
Summary: If computer performance is in your job - you need this book
Review: If understanding and managing computer systems performance is in your job description and you can only buy two books, this is one of the two (the other is Raj Jain's, "The Art of Computer Systems Performance..."). Neil Gunther's book is not just another tome on queueing theory. Immediately useful methods and formulas are presented in the context of real problems. The two chapters on instability in systems and scaling of multiprocessor systems alone make the book worth its price. Readers need to know that there is some math in the book (there is just no escaping it) and that some of the cited vendor products are becoming dated. The Web site associated with the book contains many items of current interest, an errata sheet correcting minor errors in the book, and downloadable programs related to performance evaluation.
Rating:
Summary: A must-have for serious performance analysts
Review: The book is well written and "user friendly". As Dr. Gunther said during a class I recently attended which is based on this book, "You will not look at performance analysis the same after taking class." -- or reading the book. He was correct ... I don't. My views have changed for the better. The only mark against the book I have is it doesn't have an example section (with answers for each example as an appendix) at the end of each chapter to help people apply the concepts they learned reading the chapter.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent except his symbol notation
Review: Very readable and highly useful book. One major hit. It is ironic that the author complains about the symbols in other books. For queueing he invents his own, instead of sticking with standard practices. This is very fustrating to readers that have other books on queueing and need to compare.
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