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Summary: From the Preface
Review: Copyright © 1999. Reprinted by permission. All rights reservedWelcome to Enterprise CORBA! The ambitious aim of this book is to provide you with a guideline for building truly large-scale, enterprise-class CORBA systems. Obviously, distributed system engineering is such a complex topic that it is hardly possible to provide you with a single, general-purpose pattern that solves all your problems at once. Often, there is no "best" solution, and your choice of a solution depends on many factors-technical and non-technical. This book is based on the experience that we, the authors, have gained in the last few years, training and consulting with many CORBA users all over the world, in industries as diverse as manufacturing, finance, telecommunication, and transportation. We hope that we have managed to cover most of the topics that are relevant to real-world projects, offering you guidelines and solutions that are not abstract or academic, but instead focus on the practical requirements of information system development. HOW THE BOOK IS ORGANIZED This book is broken up into five parts, each with a different focus: · Part 1: Foundations · Part 2: Core Services · Part 3: Database Integration and Transaction Processing · Part 4: Scalability Issues · Part 5: Engineering CORBA Systems The following gives a brief overview of each of these five parts. Part 1: Foundations This book assumes that readers already have a solid grasp of CORBA; we do not attempt to give yet another detailed introduction to the CORBA architecture. In Part 1: Foundations, we achieve two things. First, we provide a critical review of the core ORB specification and the higher-level CORBA Services, since this is the framework that provides the technical foundations for building enterprise CORBA systems (Chapter 2, "CORBA Revis-ited", and Chapter 3, "CORBA Services Revisited"). Second, we provide some information that is fundamental for understanding the book itself. In particular, we introduce the StockWatch system, which is used throughout the book to serve as an example system (Chapter 4, "Overview of a Simple Example"). Finally, we discuss the performance implications of IDL design, since this has fundamental impacts on most of the discussions in the reminder of the book (Chapter 5, "Performance Considerations"). Part 2: Core Services Some of the CORBA Services are more essential than others to building enterprise CORBA systems. In Part 2: Core Services, we concentrate on some of these most essential services. In Chapter 6, "Object Location", we discuss how to locate objects and services in a CORBA system, using services like the CORBA Naming Service and the CORBA Trading Service. In Chapter 7, "Messaging", we have a general discussion on CORBA and messaging. This covers unicast and multicast based ORBs, as well as higher level services like the Event Service and the Notification Service. In Chapter 8, "Security", we discuss how to design and implement security policies in a CORBA system. Part 3: Database Integration and Transaction Processing Exporting information stored in databases is potentially the most common usage of CORBA. Part 3: Database Integration and Transaction Processing, addresses this topic. First, we provide a general overview of object persistence (Chapter 9, "Object Persistence"). Based on this CORBA-independent introduction to object persistence, we then focus on persistent CORBA objects (Chapter 10, "Database Integration"). No discussion on CORBA and database integration would be complete without a discussion on CORBA and transaction processing. After a general discussion on transactions in a CORBA environment (Chapter 11), we focus on distributed transaction processing (Chapter 12). This includes a discussion of the CORBA Object Transaction Service. We finish part 3 with a discussion on user sessions (Chapter 13). This chapter covers several advanced topics, including long-lived versus short-lived transactions, and optimistic versus pessimistic locking. Part 4: Scalability Issues The CORBA specification provides many features intended to allow the implementation of very large-scale distributed object systems. Chapter 14, "Managing Server Resources", explains how some of these features can be utilized to increase the scalability of CORBA servers. In particular, this chapter covers memory management strategies, connection management, and multithreading. Part 4: Scalability Issues also covers some important issues re-lated to building large-scale CORBA systems which are not currently addressed by existing CORBA Service specifications. In particular, this includes load balancing (Chapter 15), and fault tolerance (Chapter 16). Finally, system management and maintenance (Chapter 17) are essential for large-scale systems. Part 5: Engineering CORBA Systems The last part of the book addresses system engineering aspects of CORBA based system development. We look back at the more technical discussion that we had in the previous parts of the book, and discuss the consequences for the engineering process (Chapter 18). An important conclusion is that traditional object-oriented analysis and design can not be mapped one-to-one to distributed object computing. We explain how the traditional OO development process can be adapted to reflect the specifics of distributed object computing. Another important topic related to system engineering is automation. This is covered in Chapter 19, "Automating the Engineering Process". This chapter includes a discussion on CORBA-related CASE tools, code generation, and process wizards. CORBA COMPLIANCE We have tried to make this book as CORBA-centric as possible, instead of focusing on particular ORB implementations. In many cases we think we have achieved this. However, this is intended to be a real-world book, focusing on technology that is available today. In some cases we provide discussions of vendor specific, non-CORBA compliant technologies or features, usually because we felt that this discussion provides a value that outweighs pure CORBA compliance (and in many cases a CORBA specification covering this aspect is in progress). All three authors work for IONA Technologies' Professional Services department. Therefore, quite naturally, you will find some discussions that are related to IONA-specific solutions. However, we hope we have managed to keep these occasions to a minimum, and stay CORBA-compliant wherever possible.
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Summary: What's NOT in the book?
Review: Dear Visitor, Thank you for your interest in Enterprise CORBA. To avoid potential disappointments, we would like to set your expectations right: If you are interested in a CORBA programming book, we would recommend that you buy a CORBA programming book, like the one from Henning/Vinoski. If you are interested in future developments in the CORBA space, we would recommend that you visit "www.omg.org", since this is the best place to get up to date information on moving targets like CORBA 3.0. If you are interested in a book that looks at how existing CORBA technology has been used in the real world, and if you like to look at things from an architectural viewpoint, we would recommend that you take a closer look at Enterprise CORBA. If you like to have a technical discussion with us on some of the topics covered in Enterprise CORBA, we would be very pleased to meet you at "www.middlewarehouse.com", which provides an Enterprise CORBA bulletin board. Thanks, Dirk, Jason, Perry
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Summary: Hard-won advice for building real-world CORBA systems.
Review: First off - let me come clean : I'm biased!!! The authors are all Senior Consultants in our Professional Services Group at IONA Technologies. I'll limit my review to saying this: if you are seeking real, practical advice on how to actually build a CORBA system - then I believe this book is a must-have. To my mind, the authors have zoned in on the key topics we see again and again when building systems - object location and naming, scaling, performance, database integration, etc. You get the necessary fragments of code, IDL, design and architecture to ensure you can really understand the issues and apply it to your own situation. Because it's based on experience on the field, the book has a "been there, done that" feel to it - but it manages to avoid being overly didactic or preachy. The authors are very clear to identify open issues where they exist, and manage to group their topics to that beginners and experts alike will gain from their experience. All in all, the CORBA development community sorely needed a book like this, and I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone building or thinking about building a distributed system. This book will save you time. Now - roll on the second revision!! :-) Sean O Sullivan, Professional Services, IONA Technologies
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Summary: Where's The CODE???
Review: I don't want to say that this is a bad book, but it's not for anyone who'd like to see examples implementing some of the concepts they write about. There are only snippets of CORBA IDL. If you're one of those people, save your money for Advanced Corba Programming with C++. I should have.
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Summary: Up-to-date and highly relevant
Review: I found this book to be quite up-to-date. It spends a considerable amount of time examining the POA and discusses many of the pieces of the CORBA3 specification individually. However the most valuable aspect was its coverage of distributed system design issues which are widely applicable across different technologies.
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Summary: Very good!
Review: I highly recommend this book for anyone plannning to build a large-scale Corba System. It covers many important topics which I'm sure any developer will find useful. The chapters on Managing Server Resources, Load Balancing and Fault Tolerence are very good. This book also gives you very good guidelines on good IDL design which can have a huge affect on performance.
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Summary: building corba services
Review: If you are embarking on a service design project, use this book as a guideline. If you are in the midst of a service design process, use this book for validating your design decisions.
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Summary: CORBA Architecture and Design
Review: The best book on CORBA I've read, though not for beginners. The author focused on design guidelines and taxonomies of BOA/POA Orbs. Among other things, you'll find a good Load Balancing/Fault Tolerance discussion (form a design perspective) I found very useful.
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Summary: Out of Date
Review: The CORBA 3 spec is about to be finalized and this book doesn't mention word one about it. Don't buy this book and wait for an update. Better yet, find a superior book on CORBA (there are many) and save your money on this one!
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Summary: Best book on Distributed Object Architecture around
Review: The thing I like most about this book, is that it is written from the architecture perspective. Many of the principles in this book apply not only to CORBA, but any distributed object system - even those built with RMI or DCOM. I totally recommend this book to anyone building a distributed object system.
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