operating systems

Walter Oney is an expert who doesn't talk down to you. There's a lot of gold in this well-written book, but to extract it happily you'll need a strong background in Windows programming, including first and foremost a couple of years of professional driver-writing experience for Win9X/NT platforms; in a few places, some knowledge of COM and MFC will also be helpful. Plug and Play, power management, and USB issues are covered in detail, as well as driver basics (from an advanced perspective), the intricacies of cancelling IRPs, etc.

I like Oney's approach to teaching -- he concentrates on the logic of the few dozen basic steps needed to write a driver, leaving it to the samples on the accompanying CD to flesh out the skeleton. This has the advantage of highlighting the mechanics, and the often convoluted reasoning behind them, without sacrificing completeness. He identifies and analyzes many potential race conditions and other pitfalls that you might not think of on your own.

One of the best things about the book is the tips and sidebars. Some examples: why you should use the PAGED_CODE macro and Driver Verifier when using Soft-Ice/W on Win2k; the hazards of using DDK "function calls" that are actually macros; how to ship a single binary for both Win2000 and Win98, given that Win98 doesn't support some key functions (such as those involving IO_REMOVE_LOCK) -- the book suggests writing a VDD with stubs for the missing functions, as explained in Appendix A. The sample code also contains very instructive workarounds for the shortcomings of Win98. Another strong point is the DEVQUEUE code that Oney has developed to extend the standard Windows driver model to handle PlugandPlay. In addition to including the code on the CD, he gives a detailed and highly instructive discussion in the text. DEVQUEUE is a useful tool that can be taken over as-is in your own projects.

Once you've finished this book, you'll be writing much more solid code and have enough technique to pick and choose among methods of your choice, rather than feeling cornered and boxed-in. Oney maintains a web site with errata and updates for the book and code samples (for instance, the stub VDD is now replaced by a filter driver to avoid the need to reboot).

Walter Oney is an expert who doesn't talk down to you. There's a lot of gold in this well-written book, but to extract it happily you'll need a strong background in Windows programming, including first and foremost a couple of years of professional driver-writing experience for Win9X/NT platforms; in a few places, some knowledge of COM and MFC will also be helpful. Plug and Play, power management, and USB issues are covered in detail, as well as driver basics (from an advanced perspective), the intricacies of cancelling IRPs, etc.

I like Oney's approach to teaching -- he concentrates on the logic of the few dozen basic steps needed to write a driver, leaving it to the samples on the accompanying CD to flesh out the skeleton. This has the advantage of highlighting the mechanics, and the often convoluted reasoning behind them, without sacrificing completeness. He identifies and analyzes many potential race conditions and other pitfalls that you might not think of on your own.

One of the best things about the book is the tips and sidebars. Some examples: why you should use the PAGED_CODE macro and Driver Verifier when using Soft-Ice/W on Win2k; the hazards of using DDK "function calls" that are actually macros; how to ship a single binary for both Win2000 and Win98, given that Win98 doesn't support some key functions (such as those involving IO_REMOVE_LOCK) -- the book suggests writing a VDD with stubs for the missing functions, as explained in Appendix A. The sample code also contains very instructive workarounds for the shortcomings of Win98. Another strong point is the DEVQUEUE code that Oney has developed to extend the standard Windows driver model to handle PlugandPlay. In addition to including the code on the CD, he gives a detailed and highly instructive discussion in the text. DEVQUEUE is a useful tool that can be taken over as-is in your own projects.

Once you've finished this book, you'll be writing much more solid code and have enough technique to pick and choose among methods of your choice, rather than feeling cornered and boxed-in. Oney maintains a web site with errata and updates for the book and code samples (for instance, the stub VDD is now replaced by a filter driver to avoid the need to reboot).

Oney's book provided the right overview and explanations I needed to get up to speed. I didn't expect a man to pop out of his book and do the work for me. Most any serious development is never done by the purchase of a book alone.

I do recall certain areas where I mumbled a little, where I'd wished he'd elaborated and/or expanded a little more, but this is meant only to hint at a slight criticism.

Oney's book was used in helping to produce successful results for real-world commercial software development. Thanks Mr. Oney!