Enterprise Computing with Objects

This book is a little bit dated, but most of what is here still applies. As long as new people are making the shift to OO devleopment, this book will be of great benefit.First of all, the authors give a very objective view of OO devleopment without a bunch of hype. Then, the book begins by addressing the non-OO way of developing client/server applications and explains how objects can fit in. After giving a road map of the possible ways to introduce objects into existing systems, the authors go in great detail of client, server, and "glue" OO development. The glue is essentailly the communication mechanism used between the client and server.To round out the book, the authors give good introductions to object persistence, performance, scaleability, and security. These are all important topics with books dedicated to each of them. Readers will be ready to read the more advanced material after having read what the authors present.The last two chapters are more speculation than fact, and it would be nice to have a second edition of this book to account for the changes since the book was published in 1998.As a final note, managers with a techincal background but no OO experience will find the material very useful in coming up to speed on OO client/server development.

This book presents a clear and high-level overview of the issues and topics of client/server and OO computing. I've worked in the field for a while, so there was not much new material for me. Nevertheless, I still found it a useful read. It presents a coherent and comprehensive conceptual framework for thinking about the many of issues and tradeoffs in the field. The book's layout, format, and style make it readable and useful. It has a reasonable index, bibliography, and glossary. The beginning and ends of each chapter clearly summarize the material. The book's stated goal was to give the reader a fundamental understanding of essential issues rather than a barrage of incidental technical details. I believe it succeeded. I wish I had this book five years ago when I was new to the field of OO applied to business applications.

This book was a pleasant surprise. I think it stands out. Here is why: many books don't survive the test of time. Either the technology is moving to the next buzzwords and the terminology in a just-published book is already slightly obsolete, or a book style is such that it concentrates only on extremely volatile and time-sensitive skills that it usefullness only lasts a couple of years. Of course an author can publish a new edition every two or three years to keep up with the terminology and what is in vogue, and that is why Orfali's "martians" book on client/server is now in its third edition. A better solution would be to have a web site with documents in PDF format that update a published book. While this book is published only two years ago, and it seems to show some of its age by not mentioning the latest Internet buzzwords, such omissions are deliberate exactly to withstand the test of time. Examples abound of different architecture configurations and topologies without ever looking old. The writing style has a nice flow, with wide margins on each page showing summaries written in italics. It never displays too much information, but just what is needed. And it relates how choosing a correct configuration, is actually an evaluation of the best compromises, never dictatorialy stating what is the correct and only solution. The words are carefully crafted, and this book is a good source if you are preparing a presentation and need examples of one-liners or one-page concepts. It is not a reference book of treasure-chest solutions and code snippets. It is more a book to read next to a fireplace and "harden" and make sense of information that you may already have but you are not sure how to frame it, organize it, or rationalize it. The nice flow in this book shows the path.

This is one of the top five technical book I have ever read. Unlike most technical books that are 40% filler, every page in this book contains interesting and useful information. Very well written. It is a great introduction to the latest object technology that is taking over enterprise computer. Every paragraph in the book has a one sentence summary of the paragraph in the margin. I found this feature very helpful and I wish more authors did this.I highly recommend this book!!!