Product Description
An examination of configuration management (CM) from a "business value" perspective. It discusses why a company's e-business and e-commerce - encompassing Web content, Web applications, back-office applications, code and data - simply will not survive or thrive without CM. The book provides an overview of CM technology, reveals "best practice" techniques for selecting and deploying automated CM solutions, explores nine key challenges facing e-commerce, and provides guidelines for avoiding pitfalls that can quickly derail an e-business. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Useful for people who don't know what CM is or need to know why it's important.
admit, I only read the first 1/3 of this book, and I couldn't take it any longer.If you have worked for a company with proper configuration management, or are familiar with the topic, then you will hate this book.It is too high level for a software professional working for a company with proper configuration management in place and who already believes that it's a good thing.

On the other hand, if you think configuration management is a bad idea, read this book and you'll be bombarded with stories about failures due to a lack of configuration management which may change your mind.

A must read for Web developers
In the preface of the book the author states that her main aim in writing the book is to articulate and raise awareness about the Web crisis and then provide a solution in the form of configuration management. The book delivers the goods and fulfills the promises. Configuration management has been around for many years and the author is one of the top experts in the field.
The explosive growth of the Word Wide Web has changed the way software is developed for Internet and WWW. In the case of software development for the Web, the fundamental difference is the time-time to develop, time to change, time to modify and update, time to correct and so on. Configuration management, if not implemented correctly, can increase the response time of a company. But if the organizations ignore the CM principles and do a "quick job", then it can lead to greater disasters.
So how to implement configuration management techniques properly to Web development and deployment has been a problem that has vexed project managers and development teams. This book does an excellent job in telling how to integrate configuration management into the web development efforts of the organization, so that the organization can survive and thrive in this highly competitive internet times by providing its customers, shareholders, employees and so on with up-to-the-minute and accurate information.
The book provides an overview of web development and configuration management before getting down to the business of linking CM and web engineering. This overview provides a good starting point for people who are new to these fields. The chapters "CM tool selection and deployment" and "Cases studies in CM automation of web systems" are excellent and provide practical and surefire strategies and advise for the practitioners. The checklists, templates, questionnaires, etc. add value to the book as they can be readily put to use.
This book is a must read for project managers and development teams who want to consistently succeed in their web development efforts.

Good only to show why you need Configuration Management
While this book does a great job of showing the need for change management for web sites, it gets all the implementation details wrong. The main focus is on configuration management for the software portions of the site. While very important, this is a standard problem that has been addressed by a number of version control / configuration management tools. When the book discusses web "content management", it gets it wrong (FrontPage and Dreamweaver are listed as content management tools) and misses the main issues of controlling and coordinating content updates on the site. Large scale web sites have special requirements on content coordination. For example, coordination changes in design of the site, coordination of content in various languages, and change management of database updates are critical to site configuration management and not touched on in this book at all. This appears to be mainly a software configuration management book that added some terminology and checklists for the web. Speaking of checklists, there are configuration management templates described in the books appendix; I was surprised to find the book's CDROM, however, contained only two Powerpoint slide presentations.

Addresses challenges, raises awareness & gives case studies
Ms. Dart is a well known expert in configuration management and her a long list of published articlesare highly technical in nature.However, this book is not one of her "how to" approaches. Instead, it provides a path towards best practices that are conspicuously missing in most web engineering and web site management endeavors. My own background will add some context to my review.I have developed and implemented policies, processes and procedures for both software configuration management (SCM) and change control for a number of companies.SCM is an application delivery discipline that is key to product integrity and assurance during development and maintenance.Change control is a service delivery discipline that ensures that changes released to the production environment are carefully controlled.In the past the two were the concern of two entirely different domains (development and production), and only companies that had highly mature processes linking problem management, enhancements/bug fixes, SCM and release and production change management bridged the two domains.

The web changed that because cycle times compressed and are driven by business requirements, not technical considerations. The tried and true processes we employed for SCM and change control were barriers to meeting business requirements and something had to give.Unfortunately, what gave was due diligence, which is well illustrated in figures 1.1 through 1.3 in this book.These figures show typical best practice development/maintenance cycle and typical change request process employed in non-web based systems, and the "fix it-publish it-fix" it approach that is too common in web-centric systems.This book provides the middle ground by examining how to implement processes and procedures that provide assurance without the barriers of the traditional approach to processes.

Ms. Dart begins this book with a broad description of web-centric computing and a list of nine major challenges faced by this paradigm.This is foundation material that is more suited to managers, but is also valuable for technical staff who need to see the big picture.She follows this with a description of what CM is. Nothing new here for those of us who have been practitioners, but this may be enlightening material for the bright, young wizards who are geniuses at coding and system integration, but have little-to-no idea about processes.The next chapter, 4, covers tools from a functionality viewpoint.The discussion of evolutionary and full-process tools will help define your tool requirements based on how you manage development and production. She also provides some excellent pointers on how to develop a benefit analysis and determine return on tool investment, which is something the bean counters will want to see considering how expensive most CM tools are.Chapter 5 gives sound advice on selecting and implementing a CM tool.This chapter is especially valuable because of the pointers on managing the RFP and vendor evaluation and selection process. Templates and checklists supporting this process are provided in the appendices.

The heart of this book for the practitioner and newcomer alike is chapter 6, which contains case studies of how major companies are using the more mainstream CM tools (ClearCase, Continuus, PVCS, and the like).This chapter is full of ideas and shows typical challenges faced, and the solutions crafted, to balance the "Internet-time" driven implementations and releases with processes that support assurance and integrity.

This book is high-level and process-oriented. If you are seeking a down-in-the-dirt book on how to implement and manage CM in a web-centric environment look elsewhere.However, if you want sound advice from a credible source about how to determine your requirements and develop processes and select the best tool, then this book provides value.I give it five stars for raising awareness and addressing the thorny problem of balancing traditional CM practices with the realities of web-centric computing cycle times.

Long on generalities, short on detail.
Surprisingly, this book already feels dated as it seems to have emerged from the e-boom.It aims very much at the broad picture as it appeared at that time.It has relatively little to say about the nitty-gritty of what aspects of Web engineering need special consideration in the context of CM.

Disappointing from someone who has written well about CM in the past. ... Read more

Product Description

Offering fascinating insight into life in the rain forest, this book follows a poison dart frog through its day as it sleeps, eats, and moves.

... Read more

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In richly colored pencil drawings, Jennifer Owings Dewey, who has had a lifetime fascination with frogs, shows different kinds of poison dart frogs in their rain forest environment. Consulting with rain forest experts, she has gathered the most up-to-date information about these amazing frogs in this intriguing book for readers of all ages. Full color . ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Fascinated By Frogs.
Over the past several years, I have learned a lot about frogs. However, I have a lot more to learn. POISON DART FROGS has helped me in my quest for knowledge about frogs. The book is full of information and brilliantly penciled drawings. The book discusses such things as where the frogs poison comes from, how hunters gather the poison, how the frogs are born, and how they mate. A great book for any young person interested in nature or for anyone who loves frogs. ... Read more

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A bank is held up and everything goes wrong. 5 people are shot, one dies, a pregnant woman loses her baby. But the robbers are caught and a conviction seems certain. When the trial takes place, the judge rules out much of the evidence, the defense attorney turns the entire event into a circus and the suspects become celebrities and walk out of court free. Two months later, they're both dead. Shot sniper style by someone who was an expert marksman using an experimental weapon - a weapon that can kill at over 2000 yards. Retired Minneapolis Homicide Detective Dan Neumann is called in because of his expertise in shooting. He quickly determines that the most likely suspect, Ben Harris, the dead woman's husband, has neither the skills nor demeanor to be a sniper. But if not Harris, then who did it? And when other bodies appear, Dan must race against the clock and the impending entry of the FBI into the chase-a chase that takes him from Minneapolis to Phoenix to Alaska in pursuit of the killer-a chase that winds up over Duluth Minnesota in a small plane being pursued by F-16s. This is the first work by Phil Rustad. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

DART
A one day read..fast, exciting. A must for the big screen. The type of justice we all long for!! Well written and informative!!

Great mystery
I don't normally read murder mysteries, but I could not put this book down.The further into the book that I read, the more sleep I lost as I wanted to find out how it ended.This book was very well set up and kept the reader trying to guess "who dunit."I would most definitely recommend this book!! It was great reading for the winter nights!

DART
Finally had time to start a book so since Dart had been sitting on the coffee table ever since we got back to Texas in October, I picked it up & started reading!! I loved it!! I couldn't put it down once I started it. Read in the car & every where we went. Kept me interested right from the start all the wa...y to the end. Can't wait for Alamo, North Dakota!!

Not just for Minnesotans
Phil Rustad has written an exciting mystery. It has a cinematic quality - months after reading it, I can still remember scenes with great clarity. The characters are well drawn; their motivations intriguing. I liked the overall theme of the search for justice.

Dart by Phil Rustad
A fun, gripping murder mystery / who-done-it. The author has done a marvelous job of telling the tale and keeping you involved from the first page to the last. ... Read more

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Downhome: Dispatches from Dixie is a collection of his true-life Southern yarns that he likes best. Some of the locales and names are familiar. Virginia Tech. Music Row. Junior Samples. Willie Nelson. A family reunion. But others concern places and events most folks never heard about. A tiny island in the Chesapeake Bay that time forgot. A Moonpie Murder. The beach game of Halfrubber. The Santa Train. With often humorous, always insightful prose, these pieces blur the border between journalism and literature. ... Read more

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To steal, kill and destroy the relationship potential between a believer and God requires individual and corporate participation from mankind with Satan. ... Read more

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This is a complete introduction to the game of darts,designed for the beginning to intermediate player. Extensiveillustrations complement the easy-to-read text, and the detailedsample games describe the step-by-step process of playing and scoringthe most popular dart games such as Cricket and 301 as well as manyothers. ... Read more

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Over a period of three years, Alice Oswald recorded conversations with people who live and work on the River Dart in Devon. Using these records and voices as a sort of poetic census, Oswald creates a narrative of the river, tracking its life from source to sea. The voices are wonderfully varied and idiomatic - they include a poacher, a ferryman, a sewage worker and milk worker, a forester, swimmers and canoeists - and are interlinked with historic and mythic voices: drowned voices, dreaming voices and marginal notes which act as markers along the way. ... Read more

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In a tale of friendship and survival in the dog-eat-dog world of show business, four aging women whose careers in Hollywood are dwindling are brought closer together when one of them is brutally attacked. Reprint. PW. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

I love Iris Rainer Dart but this did not live up
I have read every Iris Rainer Dart book and this just didn't have the page turner effect for me.I struggled just to even finish the book.

Anyone who read Beaches HAS to read this!!!!
I have read a lot of books in my 27 years, and let me tell you, IrisRainer Dart is one great writer. This novel about four close friends whoare all in show business is very in-depth and very entertaining!Thesearen't young, glitzy women, these are real women in a real hard world. Trust me, this one is sure to please! ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

Outstanding tribute to the original Ellenhorn
The original Medical Toxicology by Matthew Ellenhorn was a fabulous resource for the clinical/medical toxicologist.That it is still widely used despite being published in 1988 is a testament to it's impact and utility.This third edition of Medical Toxicology goes back to those first edition roots:a plethora of useful topics written in a clear, consice manner.

The book provides excellent detail needed for the understanding of a wide range of toxicologic problems.Treatment recommendations are as evidence-based as possible given the field of study.

The third section of the book focuses on one of the key elements of being a toxicologist:detective!The section is titled, "Diagnosis of the Poisoned Patient: The Toxicolgist as Sleuth".Rarely do patients present with a (accurate) diagnosis.It's the job of the clinician to take all the available information, work through the possibilities, and identify the most likely agents that could be causing the observed effects.

This is an outstanding resource and should be considered for critical care and emergency clinicians as well as poison center staff (especially those still in training in these areas).Given the popularity of TV and movie scripts that include toxicologic information (e.g., CSI, ER, etc.) those writers would do well to review this text. ... Read more