Shrideep,

1) Please put this draft introduction at beginning of book This seems to me to 
make what we have possible to show to publishers. Obviously this is just a 
draft for comment
2) How does our book compare to Orfali and Harkey "Client Server 
Programming with Java and CORBA"
3) Please greatly increase references (books, URL's -- IWT and CPS714 
homepage have plenty I think) so can be resource for a course such as 
CPS616. I would associate references directly with each section
4) I think a explicit glossary expanded from HPcc will be very useful
5) My plan is to take with me to China and so I need it to look incomplete but 
with as much stuff as possible by Dec. 25. 
6) I will use in CPS616 next semester to motivate and give structure to course. 
So needs to be even then so that each subsection gets completed as I cover in 
course!
7) This suggests complertion of book by April 98

Summary of Book:
We are experiencing an unprecedented revolution in computer hardware and 
software. This is driven by relatively low-end commodity applications and features 
powerful multimedia PC and workstation nodes, wide area networks and complex 
distributed systems of systems. The median configuration is only typical of the very 
heterogeneous reality with POTS (classic telephones) to gigabit networks and nodes that 
span entry level network computers to backend supercomputers. The underlying 
architecture has a compelling universality as it encompasses for instance business 
enterprise systems, home entertainment and information delivery and large scale 
distributed simulations. The hardware revolution has been accompanied by remarkable 
new software technologies whose capabilities and pace of innovation bring opportunities 
and challenges. The Web (Java, JavaScript, VRML to name a few technology highlights), 
CORBA and COM enable new and better approaches to essentially all application areas. 
The technologies bring greater capability and performance as well as the potential of 
component reusability. However keeping abreast of these rapidly evolving new 
possibilities is certainly not easy and here we try to set up a framework to allow system 
users, designers and developers to do this.
This book does not discuss any particular software technology in detail. There are 
many excellent existing books on Java, CORBA and so on - the widgets from which the 
Pragmatic Object Web is built. E assume the reader will turn to these for any given 
particular knowledge area. Rather we assume that the software juggernaut will continue 
to evolve but somehow converge to what we term the Object Web. This combines the 
distributed object management model of CORBA, the visual programming of activeX 
and Javabeans, and the universal deployment of the Web. Today we can only see a 
fragmented distorted view of this express train to software heaven but suggest that one 
can identify a "Pragmatic Object web". This is a mosaic of emerging software 
technologies which can build distributed systems which are at times flaky and incomplete 
but offer significant advantages over competing approaches. The Object Web is built on 
universal interfaces allowing not just component re-use but more importantly integration 
of "systems of (sub)systems" of unprecedented power. The Object Web offers software 
components that are higher level and hence more powerful that those of previous system 
building methodologies. For instance JDBC ( Java Database Connectivity) allows one to 
view a database as a system widget -- a larger subsystem than that embodied in say X or 
Motif. Such large grain size components with universal interfaces allow major increases 
in programmer productivity that can cut software development costs significantly.
We have designed this book to be read standalone by those interested in 
distributed systems. It can also be used in training or University curricula where the book 
provides a framework or architecture for a set of courses covering the individual 
technologies in great detail.