Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture
Author: Martin Fowler
List Price: $49.99
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ISBN: 0321127420
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pub Co (05 November, 2002)
Sales Rank: 8,168
Average Customer Rating: 4.35 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 5 out of 5
A Comprehensive book
This book gives a catalog of patterns for enterprise solutions based on layered architecture(he has not covered the filter/pipe pattern). It provides multiple probable solutions(In C# and Java) for many enterprise related issues/problems. Most of these issues are shared by J2EE/.NET/CORBA framework based applications. If the user has already read J2EE Design Patterns, Design Patterns(Gang of Four) books and worked on 3-4 Enterprise multi-layer applications, then this book makes a lot of sense. The solutions can be put to practice fairly easily , atleast in the J2EE app server based solution space.BTW, this books is out of stock at Amazon, I ordered my copy from Barnes and Noble and got a good discount too.
The book was on the net for a while on martinfowler.com site and only after it was published at OOPSLA 02, was it removed. Going through the June 02 snapshot of this book provided for interested reading. The final version has been edited for easy reading and comes out pretty well.
CONS :
1) Does not come with a CD :-)
2) Does not use all(advanced) language facilities (to make it readable)
Rating: 5 out of 5
Outstanding work in the field
I normally don't bother to write reviews, but some of the shallow ones I found here irritated me enough to write. I have been a developer, architect, and development manager. My latest project was a 100+ developer year enterprise application. Fowler clearly knows the field, he speaks with confidence of development experiences with projects that went live. I have no idea of what a newbie to enterprise application development would gain from this book. The DTO pattern, for example, is profoundly powerful and his representation of it is accurate, but he presents it in a casual, low-key way, and its significance might well escape the uninitiated. When you talk to programmers who only know the one thing they worked on you hear a naive, blind conviction in their voice, but when you read Fowler, you hear the weary lessons of hundreds of developers on dozens of large projects. If you are experienced, read chapter 8 first, then the patterns, then 1 - 7 if need be. If you are new, read chapter 8 first, then the patterns, then CODE the patterns a dozen times, then read the rest of the book. Fowler says you should read 1-8 then the patterns as needed, but I say the 8 pages of chapter 8 roll up the first seven chapters very nicely, and then please read all the patterns in associative order from your point of view.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Design Patterns at the implementation level for J2EE, .NET
This book is a little more implementation specific than the incredibly popular Gang of Four Design Patterns book. Many of the patterns, the Data Transfer Object pattern, for example, are fairly specific to the J2EE structural problem at hand. Other patterns, like the Lazy Load, are good architectural patterns on any platform. There is enough generic content to justify the purchase of the book for architects implementing on any platform (J2EE, .NET, PHP, etc.) but it does favor the two current platforms de jour; J2EE and .NET.One of the nice things about the book is how the code tends to de-emphasize the application container by doing most of the work in the raw database access systems (e.g. JDBC), which makes it easy to understand what is going on but will offend the true J2EE believer. This makes the patterns in the book accessible to anyone coding in any environment, which I greatly appreciate.
One pet peeve is that some of the patterns are obvious shells for a single technique, such as the Transform View, which is really just XSLT. The text says as much, but shouldn't there be more than one example of a particular pattern in nature? It's just a pet peeve though, it's no reason to avoid the book.
Overall, the book is well written and edited and the graphics add to the exposition but are not gratuitous. It's a useful guide for anyone looking to raise the level of the enterprise application (read web application) thought up to the next level.
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