Real-time database systems. Architecture and techniques (Q2739559)

The book by Lam and Kuo aims at summarizing important research results in the area of real-time database systems and serving as reference for practitioners, researchers and educators in that area. The book is divided into six parts, each containing three to four chapters. Part I covers the basic concepts and typical applications for real-time databases. Part II and III concentrate on the main issue of that area: real-time concurrency control and other aspects of run-time system management. Part IV and V cover additional characteristics of many real-time database systems: active functionality and distribution. Part VI addresses prototypes and future research directions.NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEAltogether, the book provides a good introduction into the current research in the field of real-time databases. Due to the style and the terms used, the book mainly addresses researchers within the field of real-time databases or related areas. Within the book, several topics are discussed -- each topic is shortly introduced and a variety of references is given for further reading. With this rich offer of further topics and references, several terms are mentioned but remain undefined with only a literature reference given.NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINESeveral authors have contributed to the different parts of the book, partly resulting in diverse styles. For example, some parts of chapters 15 and 16 contain rather long and complex formulations. In most chapters, the authors present their approach to a specific problem related to real-time databases. Nevertheless, it often remains unclear for what reason a particular approach was presented, i.e., whether it constitutes the state of the art solution to a particular problem or it just happened to be the approach of the authors of that chapter. Additionally, the text body contains several typing errors.NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEThe book is suited as an introduction and overview for researchers and as additional resource for educators of advanced courses. The usability for practitioners without strong database background seems rather limited.NEWLINENEWLINENEWLINEThe price is extremely high. 150 Euro are not appropriate for this book.