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Summary: Yesterday, today and tomorrow of middleware - a must read!!
Review: An excellent coverage of what's, why's and how's of middleware technologies.The book gives an interesting perspective into the growth of middleware solutions with special focus on enterprise systems architecture and distributed technologies. The long journey that begins with TP monitors and primitive "transaction machines" covers a great deal of ground outlining the need-driven evolution of various middleware alternatives and ends with the discussion of latest - the EJB, .NET and CORBA. There is a special emphasis on the changing landscape brought about by the rise of eCommerce and the need to manage large-scale enterprise systems. I love the way author drives home some very complex concepts. This book can serve as an indispensable resource both for beginners and experienced professionals. While the novice can easily comprehend intricacies of IT architecture, experienced architects will find a lot of food for throughout and new insights into many issues. I personally had many "ah, what a brilliant idea" moments. You will find many useful and perhaps unconventional solutions to practical problems. It can even help an IT manager to understand the real middleware and IT architecture issues and to make intelligent decisions without having to get deep into technical waters. Overall, this book is a must have and deserves 10 horseshoes. [...]
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Summary: Focuses on the conceptual foundations
Review: Excellent book that focuses on the conceptual underpinnings rather than on the specifics of products. If you want to sample a specific section of this book while you are at the bookstore to decide if this is the book for you, I would recommend Section 4.3, "The issue of state." A couple of pages of reading here will clearly reveal the character of this book and help you decide if this is the type of discussion that would make your adrenalin flow.
I withheld one star because the writing style was a bit jagged -almost as if written by someone as the author was speaking impromptu.
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Summary: Old Stuff
Review: I had high hopes for this book, but was very disappointed. Missing was detailed discussion of application integration technology and enabling standards, not much there to speak of. Also, some of the technical information was dated, and there was not a good architectural spin. In short it left me wanting more. If you're interested in a good book on application integration check out the books from Linthicum and Ruh, they are much better than this one.
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Summary: Excellent overview of IT Architecture
Review: I have been reading a lot of books about architecture recently, so when I spotted this I bought it without looking too closely at it. If I had paid more attention then I would have noticed that even its title hints that it isn't a standard book about n-tier architecture and/or UML modelling. First, the book is about IT architecture not software architecture, and second middleware is a major driver for the book.
In fact I have to say this is one of the most refreshing books I have read recently. It has the subtitle "Strategies for Building Large, Integrated Systems"; though this is undoubtedly true, I would be more inclined to call it "Everything you wanted to know about architecture but daren't ask"! Certainly for me it filled in some gaps in my knowledge and in general drew together a number of topics that aren't always treated in architecture books, and gave them a nice coherent thread.
See my blog for a more detailed review.
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Summary: Could have been a great book ..
Review: I would agree with Bob Hoeppner's review.. The topics in this book are really great. Non are covered in any detail unfortunately. There are a few obvious mistakes as well. However, from what I have seen in other comments and the contents of other books, it seems that the subjects covered are not covered in this way by any other publication. One has to buy multiple books to get the same overview. So may be this book is a must anyway. So with some added information, this could have been a classic. May be a future edition could have accomplished that. For now, I am left searching for more information from other sources about many the same topics this book is intended to cover.
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Summary: Good Review on Middleware
Review: In short the first five chapters provide a good overview of the middleware developement and its eveolution process, outlining its O-O precursors, and development of its standards environment. Apart from that, the proceeding chapters focus too much on the business anaysis, and does not go into the nuts and bolts of Middleware inetgratiion issues or case studies. In short dissappointing.
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Summary: Essential reading for sytems managers
Review: In this book the author provides solid, pragmatic approaches to tackling the complexity of IT environments today. He shows how an architectural framework enables more rapid and cost effective implementation and integration of new systems and technologies whilst minimising risk. By following Britton's guidelines, any systems manager can be assured of greater success in adapting to the ever changing IT landscape. In addition to valuable advice, this book is also easy to read! I whole-heartedly recommend it.
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Summary: A concise overview of middleware technology alternatives
Review: IT Architecture And Middleware: Strategies For Building Large, Integrated Systems, presents the essential principles and priorities of system design, emphasizing the new requirements brought about by the rise of e-commerce and distributed, integrated systems. IT professional Christ Britton offers a concise overview of middleware technology alternatives and distributed systems as he covers such topics as information access requirements and data consistency, creation of a new presentation layer for existing applications, application integration, and component architectures. Carl Britton's IT Architecture And Middleware is a highly recommended addition to the growing body of information technology literature and IT architecture reference collections.
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Summary: An out and out excellent book
Review: Rarely these days do you come across a technical book that gets to the bottom of the issues in a non-marketing manner and without using excessive technical jargon. At the bottom of it all, the complexities of building large applications are based on some practical issues as well as some theoretical computing issues. How these architectural issues can be addressed in a product independent manner is at the heart of this book. It was a pleasure to read again a non-verbose book showing the clarity of thought, and I strongly recommend it to any one interested in architectural issues of building large systems.
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Summary: experience-based principles = pattern-oriented reality
Review: The value of this book can be distilled into a succinct sentence: it describes middleware and how it's used as an architectural foundation, and provides guidance for when to use transaction-oriented and message-oriented solutions. While this sounds simplistic, consider how architects go about designing systems. They think in terms of their background and experience. An architect who comes from a data-intensive environment is apt to use a transaction monitor as a component of a solution instead of a message queuing manager that may be more appropriate. This book provides architects with a high-level view of middleware and how to select the most appropiate solution for a given design problem. What I especially like about the book is the clear writing and well designed illustrations that combine to convey basic concepts and subtle nuances of transaction- and message-oriented middleware. If you are seeking low-level details necessary for the detailed design or build phases of a project this book will disappoint. However, if you are seeking clear and unbiased information on the strengths and weaknesses of various middleware solutions and how they serve as the foundation of distributed systems this book will almost certainly give you insights and knowledge that you can immediately put to use. This book is a perfect complement to B2B Application Integration by David S. Linthicum, which goes into additional technical detail and covers broader issues of architecture with respect to heterogenous [legacy] system integration. Regardless of your technical environment, however, IT Architectures and Middleware is worthwhile for new and seasoned architects and IT managers.
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