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Reviewer: Alberto Squassabia

This book proclaims itself to be a college-level textbook for undergraduate seniors and graduate students in computer science. The book assumes a good understanding of Java, and of programming in general. It contains 18 chapters and one appendix, plus adequate references and an index. After the introduction, five chapters (including one fully dedicated to a case study) discuss concurrent programming in Java, and then 11 more chapters (of which one is also a case study) cover real-time programming; the 18th chapter wraps up and concludes the presentation. The appendix is a summary reference of all classes and interfaces used in the book. The first part of the book is comprised of a treatment of concurrency, to introduce the reader to threads in Java, and, more specifically, to the scheduling of threads in real time, as discussed later in the second part. The coverage and discussion of concurrency is basic, and includes solutions in Java for a few classic concurrent programming problems. Albeit sufficient for an introduction, it is certainly not exhaustive; the goal is to provide enough background to appreciate in full the issues of threading in real time, as well as the constraints of the concurrency and synchronization model that Java provides. The second part addresses real-time programming, and is the core of the book. It reads almost like an annotated reference to the Real Time Specification for Java (RTSJ), which was created under the Java Community Process as JSR-1, by the Real Time for Java Expert Group. This part of the book occupies more than 60 percent of the pages, and details all aspects of the JSR-1 specification. Whereas much of the JSR-1 document is arranged as a reference, this book is more likely to elicit understanding, by presenting code snippets for usage examples (of which there are many), and to indulge in more explanations and clarifications on the whys and the hows of various aspects of JSR-1. This book is not a tutorial; its aim and contribution is to provide a general commentary on RTSJ, with a systematic approach to coverage. The kind of help this book offers is that of an encompassing, advanced user's guide. The style, however, is very dry, enough so to discourage linear reading from beginning to end, because of an approachable, but flat exposition. Readers determined to go through this book cover to cover will need to express a correspondingly adequate amount of motivation. It is worth noting that this book, while claiming to be a textbook, does not include any exercises; several practice problems, however, mostly in the form of coding assignments, are available from the companion Web site (http://www.cs.york.ac.uk/rts/CRTJbook.html). There, additional teaching aids (Web references, software links, source code, and Microsoft PowerPoint slides) are available to complement the book. Online Computing Reviews Service