Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely Perfect
Review: This book is well designed from every point of view. It is highly topical as this technology is the stated direction of Sybase products (including PowerBuilder). It is a book which will bring the PowerBuilder programmer right back up to the leading edge of technology. The book does not assume that the reader understand anything at all about Jaguar. Since Jaguar is still a relatively new product this is a major bonus. In this book all of the technologies surrrounding the issue are defined and examined. CORBA, ORB, etc, all the troublesome new acronyms are cleared up. This is one of those rare books that are an absolute must have.
Rating:
Summary: Very broad, but very precise. Extremely helpful.
Review: This book was the most useful technical resource I have read regarding PowerBuilder development. As an instructor for Sybase Tools courses, I have looked through several independently authored books and this one is the best. Mike offers much more than the online documentation that most authors give in this type of book. He starts with an overview of distrubuted, but gets very thorough with component development. He adds ideas and tips that were not evident in the online doc provided with PB, and also gives good advice for multi developer environments. He was very helpful and thorough with respect to the component life cycle and the behavior of transactional components. I have not completed the security and async portions of the book, but expect them to be just as good.
Rating: 
Summary: Good - but outdated...
Review: This book was written for PowerBuilder 7 (now 7.03) and Jaguar CTS 3.0 (now Sybase Enterprise Application Server 3.6.1.08). While PowerBuilder hasn't changed much EAS most *certainly* has. When Jaguar 3.0 came out there was no database persistence standard for the Java platform, EJB was barely a spec (v 0.4), and a lot of things that we take very much for granted in the J2EE Specification simply didn't exist. Also, Jaguar 3.0 was a much 'clunkier' system to administer than that newer 3.6.1 release that Sybase has done. While many of the concepts discussed in this book from the PowerBuilder side are still applicable, some of the screen shots and processes are dated on the Jaguar side. Still, the book represents a good history lesson if nothing else. Being that this is the *only* book on the subject of using PowerBuilder as a front end to your Jaguar/EAS server-side code I'd say get it. But it's quickly become in *dire* need of a revamp. Are you listening, Mr. Barlotta??
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