Books In Sync Author Roland Hughes is the president of Logikal Solutions, a business applications consulting firm specializing in VMS Platforms. His fiction book, Infinite Exposure, is followed by his many published books for real programmers.
Books for Real Programmers:
The Minimum You Need to Know book series gives computer programmers the OpenVMS development and Logic skills needed to get the job done in less time and with fewer hassles.
The series is authored by Roland Hughes, a seasoned veteran who passes along information about:
· What works
· What doesn’t and Why
These books give IT people the information we actually need rather than the information the magazines say we need.
Special Features:
· Tons of free code to use
· No hype - You'll get the good, the bad, and the ugly
· Only the Truth - OpenVMS is the most powerful and stable OS ever
· Everything you need to start building real business apps on OpenVMS
· Free CD-ROM
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The Minimum You Need to Know About Service Oriented Architecture
This book will show you how to port FMS-based business applications to Intranet or Internet applications using ACMS.
· ACMS fundamentals
· How to connect to the Heritage data silo/application
· Service Oriented Architecture principles
· About Service Oriented Architecture: This is not your typical, dime-a-dozen SOA book.
Whereas many other books focus on the front-end of SOA, this book focuses on the backend. This is the book that tells developers how to actually connect to the Heritage data silo/application that other books just draw a box around and say, "Connect somehow."
This book addresses that problem. The first five chapters of this book provide an eye-opening overview for Management. The remaining seven chapters are for programmers.
What You'll Learn from the Book:
· Port FMS-based business applications to Intranet or Internet applications using ACMS
· ACMS fundamentals
· How to connect to the Heritage data silo/application
· Service Oriented Architecture principles
Genre: Computers/Technical
Book Purchase Link
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This book covers the fundamentals of problem solving from the programming perspective.
· Learn the tools of flowcharting and pseudo code
· Ways to go about problem solving
· The correct questions to ask and the design constraints to be considered are all covered
About Logic to Work in IT:
Learn the skills which are completely non-existent in today's college courses.
Logic simply isn't taught anymore, Pascal is taught in what was the logic class - if they have any class at all devoted to it. The result of such a curriculum is that new college grads are simply unemployable in today's market.
This book is designed to correct that problem.
What You'll Learn from the Book:
· The fundamentals of flowcharting
· The fundamentals of pseudo code
· The Leaping Lynn search algorithm
· Insertion Sort concept and usage
Genre: Computers/Technical
Book Purchase Link
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Discover what is required to write real business applications on OpenVMS using Java.
Java on OpenVMS covers the ugly side of Java, the Java Native Interface, so readers can more easily develop back end applications.
• Requested by the industry as a follow-up to The Minimum You Need to Know to Be an OpenVMS Application Developer
• Learn how to store Java source in CMS and use MMS for builds
• Use Java to replace existing OpenVMS applications which use FMS, RMS, and/or RDB
Tips from the Book:
Everything is a class….almost.
Passing by reference isn’t what you think it is, no matter what the other books tell you. JNI_ABORT means you want to free your local copy without copying back to the Java environment. JNI_COMMIT means you want to copy back to Java and keep your local copy. Naturally, 0 means you want to copy back to Java and free your local copy. Isn’t that just obvious?
Date handling in Java is somewhat littered with land mines. Java provides you with a Date class, and then tells you not to use it. When you use the classes that are supposed to replace the now depreciated Date class, you are forced to use Date objects. Use a Date object in your code where it will actually get a name and the compiler will flag a warning.
Genre: Computers/Technical
Book Purchase Link
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This book allows programmers who know at least one programming language to quickly excel on the OpenVMS platform - the most powerful and stable computer operating system ever created.
• First book published in over a decade on OpenVMS Application development
• Provides a deep understanding of how to develop OpenVMS applications
• Assists programmers with using different programming languages on OpenVMS
There are two main intents of this book...
1) Allow developers who know at least one of the covered languages on another platform to quickly come up to speed on the OpenVMS platform
2) Assist current OpenVMS developers finding themselves having to work with a different language on this platform.
Tips from the Book:
The /SPECIFICATION qualifier of the SORT command lets you identify a text file which contains a plethora of power. You can define named fields, named keys, named test conditions, inclusion criteria, and omission criteria. In a batch job stream, you typically have a lead program which creates the sort specification file (if you need to do record selection that varies from run to run), execute the sort command, and then write your follow-up program to process the sorted data. This is a much more acceptable approach than writing one massive executable which will run for hours without creating many entries in the log file. Most developers I run into don’t know a lot about the sort specification file, so we are going to cover it in the COBOL chapter.
A reference is a “special” object. There is a reason we covered COBOL prior to covering C, and references are it. You better have read that chapter. When we discussed the linkage section in COBOL, we discussed how COBOL doesn’t really pass parameters unless it is forced to pass them. The linkage section creates reference points back into the caller’s working-storage section. These references allow your called module to use those values just like they were your very own, but they aren’t. The reason most COBOL programmers don’t even know there is a GIVING clause on the procedure division is because they know the linkage section operates via references (unless you tell it not to).
When you alter the values of items passed by reference you are actually altering the values in the caller.
Genre: Computers/Technical
Book Purchase Link
Infinite Exposure Purchase Link
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Order Details:
The Minimum You Need to Know About Service Oriented Architecture
Special Features: CD included, Exercises with answers and comprehensive index
Pages: 370 pp
ISBN: 0-9770866-6-6
ISBN-13: 978-0-9770866-6-5
Format: Soft Cover
Perfect binding, 7 in. x 9 in.
Retail price: $45.00
Available for ordering through:
Books on St. Louis
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The Minimum You Need to Know About Logic to Work in IT
Special Features: Exercises with answers and comprehensive index
Pages: 154 pp
ISBN: 0-9770866-2-3
ISBN-13: 978-0-9770866-2-7
Format: Soft Cover
Perfect binding, 7 in. x 9 in.
Retail price: $18.00
Available for ordering through:
Island Computers
Books on St. Louis
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The Minimum You Need to Know to Be an OpenVMS Application Developer
Special Features: CD-ROM included, chapter assignments, exercises with answers, comprehensive index, and tons of useful code.
Pages: 795 pp
ISBN: 0-97708660-7
Format: Soft Cover
Perfect binding, 7 in. x 9 in.
Retail price: $90.00
Available for ordering through:
Island Computers
Books on St. Louis
Barnes & Noble
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The Minimum You Need to Know About Java on OpenVMS, Volume 1
Special Features: CD-ROM included, chapter assignments, exercises with answers, comprehensive index, and tons of useful code.
Pages: 352 pp
ISBN: 0-9770866-1-5
Format: Soft Cover
Perfect binding, 7 in. x 9 in.
Retail price: $45.00
Available for ordering through:
Island Computers
Books on St. Louis
Barnes & Noble
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Distribution of Books from The Minimum You Need to Know Series is handled by: Big River Distribution, St. Louis, MO
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Roland Hughes

With a degree in Computer Information Systems, the author's experience is focused on OpenVMS systems across a variety of diverse industries including heavy equipment manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, stock exchanges, tax accounting, and hardware value added resellers, to name a few. Working throughout these industries has strengthened the author's unique skill set and given him a broad perspective on the role and value of OpenVMS in industry.
Roland Hughes welcomes opportunities for Book Signings, Expert Panels and Consulting. Please contact Roland at Logikal Solutions.
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This work of fiction uses historical information and relevant news stories to draw a line from post 9/11 through the off-shoring of IT jobs and the largest terrorist strike the free world has ever known to the resulting nuclear war.
By the year 2012 the U.S. will no longer be a world power. The world will have seen many countries deploy nuclear weapons. Anarchy will reign in many parts of the world and electricity will be considered a luxury nearly everywhere.
That, however, is not the interesting part of the story. How we got there is a far more interesting tale indeed. Follow the story from post 9/11 to where it all went bad and see if you can find a way out, not just for yourself, but for everyone.
Read Infinite Exposure, Roland Hughes' new work of fiction: a stark portrayal of a world gone wrong.
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Books In Sync/Cold Coffee Management
Submission Date: January 2012
Books In Sync Mission:
Books In Sync and Cold Coffee were created for the purpose of bringing extra online exposure to our authors and their books. Our goal is to bring readers and authors together, thereby boosting book sales and improving authors' one-on-one relationship with their potential readers. Our Cold Coffee (Hard Copy) Magazine Features Our Authors, Their Books, Contests And Awards Recipients.