For Immediate Release
April 22, 2002
For more information, a review copy, cover art, or an interview with
the author, contact:
Kathryn Barrett (707) 827-7094 or kathrynb@oreilly.com


BEEP GIVES DEVELOPERS A BREAK FROM REINVENTING THE WHEEL
O'REILLY PUBLISHES "BEEP: THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE" BY BEEP'S CREATOR


Sebastopol, CA--If you ask author Marshall T. Rose what is really new and 
innovative about BEEP (Blocks Extensible Exchange Protocol), he'll say, 
"Not much." As Rose explains in his new book, "BEEP: The Definitive Guide" 
(O'Reilly, US $34.95), BEEP is a toolkit that can be used for building 
application protocols. Its goal is simple: BEEP allows a protocol designer 
to focus on protocol details while BEEP handles other details, such as 
framing messages, encoding data, negotiating capabilities (versions and 
options), negotiating connection release, correlating requests and 
responses, and more, and finally, integrating all these things together 
into a single, coherent framework. The beauty of BEEP is that it takes care 
of all these things. As Rose says, "That's not really innovation, but it's 
really good news if you're already familiar with the building blocks that 
BEEP uses."

Historically, when different engineers work on application protocols, Rose 
explains, they come up with different solutions to common problems: 
"Sometimes the solutions reflect differing perspectives on inevitable 
tradeoffs; sometimes the solutions reflect different skill and experience 
levels. Regardless, the result is that the wheel is continuously 
reinvented, but rarely improved."

Rose goes on to say, "For each problem, there are usually two or three good 
solutions, and while individual tastes may vary, the sad fact is that you 
can make any of them work if you're willing to put in the hours. But why 
put in the hours if they have nothing to do with the primary reason for 
writing the application protocol to begin with? Isn't there something more 
productive that you'd care to do with your life than design yet another 
framing protocol?"

BEEP gives network developers what they've long needed: a standard toolkit 
for building application protocols quickly and conveniently. It integrates 
the best practices for common, basic mechanisms that are needed when 
designing an application protocol over TCP. Written by BEEP's creator, this 
book introduces BEEP, explains the concepts underlying the BEEP protocol, 
and demonstrates how to use the BEEP implementation in Java, C, and Tcl. 
The book shows how to build several working applications that use BEEP as a 
transport, including an implementation of the reliable SYSLOG protocol and 
an implementation of a BEEP transport for SOAP.


Standardized by the IETF in 2001, BEEP is being used worldwide by different 
groups of developers for SOAP exchanges, intrusion detection, instant 
messaging, network auditing, remote calendaring, and secure credential 
exchange.

"BEEP: The Definitive Guide" will be an invaluable asset for anyone who 
wants to learn to use this new tool, including designers who are new to 
BEEP and want to put it to use, as well as developers who want to use one 
of the open source APIs for BEEP.

Additional resources:
An article by the author, "Using SASL: Pluggable Security" can be found at:
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/network/2002/04/09/sasl.html

Chapter 3, "Tuning" is available free online at:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/beep/chapter/ch03.html

For more information about the book, including Table of Contents, index,
author bio, and samples, see:
http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/beep/

For a cover graphic in jpeg format, go to:
ftp://ftp.ora.com/pub/graphics/book_covers/hi-res/0596002440.jpg


BEEP: The Definitive Guide
By Marshall T. Rose
ISBN 0-596-00244-0, 204 pages, $34.95 (US), $54.95 (CAN)
order@oreilly.com
1-800-998-9938
1-707-827-7000
http://www.oreilly.com

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