Title: Poorly written. Boring.
Product review: I think this book is poorly written. The authors go a long way describing all kinds of taxonomies (look at the abundance of 3d diagrams such as Figure 4.11) without letting the user grasp the major ideas. Just check the discussion on the 10 types of distributed databases in chapter 4.They also spend a lot of time and paper describing relatively simple concept without actually making the concepts any clearer. Some concepts never get defined so it's not clear why they had to be mentioned, check 13.4.2 and try to figure out what the convoy effect is.I think the main problem of this book is that it tries to please to wide an audience: undergrad students, database researchers, and practitioners. I don't think the book is of much value for any of these categories of people.
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