Windows 2000 and Mainframe Integration

Rating:
Summary: Windows 2000 for the Data Center
Review: If IBM and Microsoft follow through with their promises, Win2000 will be more tightly integrated into the data center than any other workstation-based operating system. That means that more people need to understand the architecure of both Windows and OS/390. This book describes Win2000 systems and subsystems by comparing them to the equivalent functions in OS/390. The emphasis is on the similarities and differences, and where each has relative weaknesses or strengths.

William Zack has packed an enormous amount of detail into less than 400 pages. In some cases, there is more detail than makes sense in a book that introduces concepts, rather than being a technical manual. There is a scattering of mostly minor errors in this first edition. More importantly, the description of the mainframe environment is rather out-of-date. Modern OS/390 systems are more automated than the book suggests: they are also more 'open'. Contrary to the author's repeated asssertion, TCP/IP is standard in modern systems, not 'very rare'.

Nevertheless, the book provides an excellent way for OS/390 and Windows administrators and developers to understand the architecture of the two systems. They merely need to bring some knowledge of their own to the subject, or be willing to spend some time on IBM's and Microsoft's web sites for the latest updates.

Rating:
Summary: Good Book, but comes up short
Review: The previous review of this book is very good, but the book has one major flaw. It does not cover Unix System Services (USS) or Network File Server(NFS) which are the new technologies available on the Mainframe and the role it will play with integration of OS/390 and Windows 2000.

There are other Open System issues like Websphere that IBM is making the mainframe scaleable to the small platforms that I had hope the book would cover, but did not. This is a very good summary of what the two operating systems have to offer, but I feel the author failed to show how far they can be brought to work together.