Enterprise Solution Patterns Using Microsoft .NET

Rating:
Summary: No solutions, no patterns
Review: First, let me say that I've been a software developer for over ten years and I've used many different tools and languages in my work. I've been doing object-oriented development for about the past five, but I've used both C++ and Java in the course of my work. It's only been in the past couple of years that I got my arms around what people meant by design patterns in software development. Patterns provide two things: a catalog of known software problems and the best practices for solving them, and a common vocabulary that everyone can understand for refering to those problems and solutions. How does this book fit into that picture? Well, not very well. It's like buying a book that claims to teach you French, and it has all the French words in it, but the meanings offered for the words are all wrong. Granted, this is a typical Microsoft thing to do, they call it "embrace and extend," except they embrace "bonjour" and extend it to mean "see you later." Not very good if you want to use the book to interact with people who actually speak French. There ideas about Model/View/Controller and Front Controller don't correspond at all to what people who know patterns mean when they use those terms, they refer to some weird Microsoft .Net kludge attempting to simulate that functionality. I'm sorry, I wanted to like this book, I tried really hard, but I couldn't. I have to work in an evironment where .Net is being used increasingly, but this book provided neither patterns nor solutions.

Rating:
Summary: Best practices for designing robust software
Review: This book contains nuggets of pure gold for anyone looking to design better software faster.

Don't be put off by the title "Enterprise Solution Patterns" - this book is not targeted solely at technical architects working on massive projects. The insights, analysis and examples are highly relevant to developers designing and building any non-trivial software.

The association with .NET needn't put you off reading this book, either, because the design patterns it contains are firstly described in the abstract and then applied using .NET - the patterns themselves are equally valid for Java developers, for example.

What makes this book outstanding are its structure and the clarity of its language.

Microsoft has created a framework in which its design patterns (and those of others) can be seen in a broader context - in the way they relate to each other and in the way they relate to the various software development roles (DBA, Developer, Operations Staff, etc) and the various tasks they perform (eg analyse, design, deploy, operate).

The clarity of thinking behind the book is matched by the clarity of expression within it. If you've struggled over the complexities of substantial design patterns, then this book will cut through the fog and give you much greater understanding into some of the best design patterns in use today.

Why would you read it? To make you a better professional, add to your armoury of proven solutions to common software design problems and steal a march over colleagues who still rely on personal experience and intuition rather than tapping into the combined experience of hundreds of successful developers distilled into a powerful, readable, practical book.

Rating:
Summary: Best practices for designing robust software
Review: This book contains nuggets of pure gold for anyone looking to design better software faster.

Don't be put off by the title "Enterprise Solution Patterns" - this book is not targeted solely at technical architects working on massive projects. The insights, analysis and examples are highly relevant to developers designing and building any non-trivial software.

The association with .NET needn't put you off reading this book, either, because the design patterns it contains are firstly described in the abstract and then applied using .NET - the patterns themselves are equally valid for Java developers, for example.

What makes this book outstanding are its structure and the clarity of its language.

Microsoft has created a framework in which its design patterns (and those of others) can be seen in a broader context - in the way they relate to each other and in the way they relate to the various software development roles (DBA, Developer, Operations Staff, etc) and the various tasks they perform (eg analyse, design, deploy, operate).

The clarity of thinking behind the book is matched by the clarity of expression within it. If you've struggled over the complexities of substantial design patterns, then this book will cut through the fog and give you much greater understanding into some of the best design patterns in use today.

Why would you read it? To make you a better professional, add to your armoury of proven solutions to common software design problems and steal a march over colleagues who still rely on personal experience and intuition rather than tapping into the combined experience of hundreds of successful developers distilled into a powerful, readable, practical book.

Rating:
Summary: Must read for an Architect (.NET, Windows, Microsoft)
Review: This is a very good book for an architect who designs Microsoft platform based solutions or integrates legacy solutions with Microsoft platform. The electronic version of this book is available on MSDN online. I found it after I bought this book, but I did not regret it.

The examples of the pattern implementations are not comprehensive, but they are a good start. I like this book, because it put many concepts and design paradigms together.