Rating: 
Summary: Best CORBA / Java Book
Review: An exceptionally well-written book by best-selling authors. The book
is a great way to learn about Client/Server programming in general, and
CORBA in particular. This book is massive, totaling over 1000 pages
(a huge increase over the first edition). It includes a CDROM with all of the
code examples as well Borland's Vivibroker and others.Note the book is not just about teaching CORBA programming using
the Java language. It also provides large amounts of material on Java Beans and Enterprise Java Beans. This is a teaching book not a reference book.
While it does provide Java coding examples, developers will not use it
to write their code (at least I don't). Book Sections:
1- CORBA Meets Java (3 chapters)
2- Core CORBA/Java (3 chapters)
3- The Dynamic CORBA (3 chapters)
4- CORBA and Its Competitors (7 chapters)
5- The Existential CORBA (6 chapters)
6- JDBC 2-Tier Versus 3-Tier (4 chapters)
7- From JavaBeans to EnterpriseJavaBeans (8 chapters)
8- Grand Finale: Club Med with CORBA/JavaBeans (4 chapters) The CORBA coverage is extensive: BOA, POA, Interface Repository, Java-to-IDL and
IDL-to-Java mappings, and DII among others. However, no coverage of the CORBA Services,
besides the Naming Service. Be prepared for their style of writing. As with their other best-selling books,
they have Zog the Martian (see the cover) and Soapboxes, which give their insightful opinions on
issues and problems with the subject. Personally, I enjoyed it as it makes the
book more interesting. Some Negatives. This book has become somewhat outdated, written in 1998,
with an intro by Marc Andreesen and a CDROM containing JDK 1.1! There are better
books on Enterprise Java Beans. A new edition of this book could be thinner
by reducing the EJB material. Its missing coverage of the new CORBA Component Model
(of course, CCM was not out in 1998). In summary, I highly recommend this book for readers wanting to learn Client/Server programming and CORBA (using Java). I bought many copies of this book over the years
for training people at my company.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent tutorial and reference
Review: This is an excellent book for learning and applying CORBA from a Java environment. It is loaded with examples and is pretty well indexed. I have been able to find just about everything I wanted related to CORBA programming. It's focus is programming. In addition, it does an excellent job of comparing and contrasting alternative technologies (e.g., DCOM, HTTP/CGI, RMI, Sockets/RPC) and implementations (e.g., JavaIDL, VisiBroker, some Orbix, Applets). It has nice tables of capabilities and performance metrics to summarize the various comparison sections. It does not cover any details of the underlying protocol, etc. The last half of this 1000-page book is devoted to three-tier implementations, Java Beans, CORBA beans, and Enterprise Java Beans -- excellent coverage of an important topic, but better split into a second book if only to help make the index less cluttered.
Rating: 
Summary: Overview on CORBA and Middleware for Beginners
Review: This book is more suitable for beginners that want an insight to the jargon-laden world of Java middleware. CORBA is a powerful and complex method for distributed computing. This book does not go in depth into how to make use CORBA in practice. It gives a fairly shallow overview that frustratingly does not have much substance. It reminded me of an academic lecture I attended where I was positive that the lecturer did not have practical experience in the subject - and gave a theoretical discussion on the subject. This is fine as an introduction but frustrating if one wants to get over the theoretical summary of the concepts and work on what (and if) it works; and under what circumstances! BUT this book is very useful to beginners that would like the 50K feet view first and then go elsewhere to drill for more information. Another point to keep in mind is that this book was originally published in 1998 - some of the book's information is presently irrelevant. I am not sure if there was a reprint since 1998 but the information included is dated. In conclusion, buy this book if you are a beginner and would like a reference guide. Hope this is helpful!!
Rating: 
Summary: I give 5 stars for the conceptual discussion parts
Review: When you look at the table of contents, you can discover the book is not just about how Java and Corba work together. Or let me put it this way, that's not the only theme you can get from this insightful book. My take-away after reading all the parts where it discusses the history and difference between Corba and other distributed object technology is a satisfatorily complete overview of all these middleware/messaging technology, which are all important contributors to today's red hot J2EE-compliant application server market (BEA WebLogic, IBM Websphere), or what EJB likes to be known as: ORB with TP monitor capability. Granted, the book is a little outdated (written in early 1998 apparently), and this is about the only drawback of the book. Hope the authors will come up with a new edition with all the latest development in this topic soon. And mind you again, I skipped all the implementation parts of the book (which is the only reason I gave it 4 stars instead of 5 stars - because I don't wanna be potentially overrating a part that I didn't read). I focussed on the high level discussion on CORBA concepts (which explains it better than other books I've read on this subject), how Sun started to endorse it with Java, as well as comparing technologies (comparable not in the technolgy purist's sense, but in the sense that they are 'enablers' for IT folks who wanna implement remote object invocation over enterprise LAN or over internet) such as traditional sockets, CGI, RMI, Servlet, and the major CORBA rival - DCOM. If you've used these various technologies before separately like I did, and sometimes felt a bit overwhelmed by all the different standard and practices, this book provides an EXCELLENT melting point where suddenly why there're all such various levels of technology, and the relative pros and cons of each of them all makes sense.
Rating:
Summary: A truly great CORBA book
Review: I found this book to be a very helpful tutorial-style book on CORBA for beginners. Although some may argue about the wide scope of this staggeringly huge and complete volume, I thought that the chapters are justified and very helpful. For example, the book includes in-depth chapters on how CORBA compares to servlets, CGI, sockets, RMI, and DCOM. The chapters are very thorough and the same program is rewritten for each technology to allow you a clear perspective upon which to compare. In addition, the chapters on JavaBeans and JDBC are also top notch, written in a very personable tone that makes it enjoyable to read. I have gotten a great deal of valuable CORBA knowlege from this book and I would highly recommend it to any intermediate Java programmer who is looking to learn CORBA and willing to put some serious time into doing it.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent resource for the developer
Review: This is a fantastic resource; it has saved us in many situations. We are in development with Java and CORBA access via BroadVision and this has helped us tremendously.
Rating:
Summary: A Detailed, Diplomatic and Refined approach to CORBA
Review: This is definitely the best stuff around for all CORBA lovers.The book is detailed and goes step by step.A reader who is already well aquainted with OO techniques,RMI,Java and C++ will find a few chapters a bit boring.This is one piece of work which gives self-starters a chance to start programming using the CORBA architecture.The comparisions between different clients & servers breaks quite a few notions about C++ clients and Java Servers.The undermined Java Application receives a boost with such a comparision. Further on, The different approaches to using CORBA and explaining them in depth is one of the achievements of this book.A good round up of various ORBs, Transcation Monitors is also well appreciated.
Rating:
Summary: A big book with little detail
Review: Most of this book simply compares various client/server technologies. If that's what you're after then this book is for you. If you're after some good info on CORBA then find another book.
Rating:
Summary: Check carefully
Review: You may think because of the book's title, that this will teach you programming client/server.It won't.If they would call it 'proof and compare client/server programming and architectures' I would give it 5 stars. It also might be confusing if you aren't familier with this things, because there is now explanetion about the code ,so you must have written some client/server if you going to buy this book.
Rating:
Summary: great for Corba and other non-Corba overviews
Review: I used this book primarily to investigate how to use Corba, independent of whether I wanted to use Java. I ended up using Java, but I never got around to using Corba. This book was very helpful in weighing the different technology options available to me. I used it to learn Java RMI, which is related to Corba. I use that as an illustration to show how this book covered competing technologies well, so you can pick which technology is best for you. This most helpful. When learning and picking technologies I come in with a whatever-works approach. This book is aligned with that philosophy. If you are thinking about using Corba or something similar, esp. with Java, I would buy this book in a heartbeat. It comes in handy as good reference.
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