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UNIX for commercial use
Abbott J., Prentice-Hall, Inc., Upper Saddle River, NJ, 1993. Type: Book (9780131489097)
Date Reviewed: Feb 1 1996

Published to mark the tenth anniversary of Siemens Nixdorf’s implementation of the UNIX operating system (known as SINIX), this book contains contributions from more than 40 Siemens Nixdorf managers and staff members.

If you are looking for a story about the toil and heartbreak of team members working against the clock on a new implementation project, you will not find it here. Nor will you find an unbiased guide to the wide range of UNIX implementations available for commercial applications.

The book is interesting and useful. This comes about through the repeated assertion that “SINIX is UNIX.” Thus, in chapter 2 (“The SINIX Operating System”), the editor is obliged to give us a brief history of UNIX, from its inception in the early 1970s through three main development lines (BSD, System V, and XENIX) into System V Release 4. He also provides concise and accurate paragraphs about application binary interfaces, dynamic shared libraries, virtual file systems, and memory management.

Chapter 3 deals with communications and networking. As might be expected, there are paragraphs about ftp, the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP), X.400 (message handling), X.500 (directory services), and the OSI model. This chapter also covers Siemens Nixdorf’s own networking products, able to support interworking with System Network Architecture (SNA) networks and MS-DOS subnetworks; these products are now “being evolved” in line with OSI recommendations.

Similarly, chapter 4 deals with user environments, with reference to both GUI (X Windows and Motif) and alphanumeric (FMLI and FACE) interfaces. It is refreshing to read a book where it is accepted that investment in expensive graphics terminals may not be justifiable for simple data entry and display tasks. There are, of course, the obligatory paragraphs about the proprietary offering--would you believe “SINIXwindows”?

The chapter on “Programming Environment” describes a wide range of compilers having both commercial and scientific applications; I was surprised to read that SINIX C++ programs are actually passed through a translator that generates C programs. There are also paragraphs about debuggers, editors, and utilities such as make and yacc.

Other chapters deal with “System Administration and Network Management,” “Distributed Computing,” and “Future Development.” A chapter devoted to applications has some INFORMIX and Oracle specifics, and another chapter concerns availability, security, and quality and includes a good explanation of the Veritas file system. I found both of these chapters useful.

The book is securely bound within a soft cover. Its text is liberally sprinkled with easy-to-read schematic diagrams, together with a couple of color screen photographs. It has a concise index at its end, but no bibliography. I was unable to find any significant errors in spelling, grammar, or factual content. I cannot say whether the claims made about SINIX specifics can be taken at face value, but I can say that it does not really matter.

I am not sure that you should rush out and buy this book. But if you are involved in systems management or strategic planning, you should call your favorite Siemens Nixdorf salesperson right away and see if he or she can arrange for you to receive a copy.

Reviewer:  G. K. Jenkins Review #: CR118826 (9602-0087)
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