Book Reviews

This book is a first student text for a course that might be titled "Introduction to Data Processing Systems." As such, the book attempts to cover a broad range of topics. The following summary gives an idea of this coverage. Chapters 1 and 2 provide an historical introduction to stored-program computers with examples of first-, second-, and third-generation machines. The distinctions among hardware, software, and firmware are also introduced. Chapter 2 continues with the functional organization of an EDP system and a discussion of the CPU, main memory, secondary memory, and input/output devices. Chapter 3 covers data representation and coded character sets for various media. Chapter 4 deals with input/output media, and Chapter 5 gives the characteristics of magnetic core storage, semiconductor storage, magnetic drums, and magnetic disks. Chapter 6 considers the CPU and floating-point representation of numbers. Chapters 7 and 8 discuss input/output operations and devices. Chapter 9 mentions minicomputers and microcomputers and introduces the notion of a flowchart. Chapters 10 and 11 introduce techniques for program construction. Structured programming, instruction modification, and address modification are considered as programming techniques. Programming languages including machine language, symbolic language, and such high-level programming languages as Fortran, WATTIV, Cobol, PL/I, PL/C, Basic, APL, and RPG are discussed. Data bases are covered in Chapter 13. Operating systems and Job Control Language are covered in Chapter 14. In Chapter 15, the author considers system concepts such as multiprogramming, multiprocessing, real-time operation, timesharing operation, and virtual storage concepts.