Description:
Enterprise Computing with Objects: From Client/Server Environments to the Internet is a broad but useful survey of the growing role for object-oriented technologies in today's enterprise systems, including the Internet. Written for both managers and developers, the book does a good job of presenting information without the excessive jargon often found in software-engineering texts. (There are one or two notable lapses; for example, where the principal effect of the Internet is described as "disintermediation.") The book begins with an historical introduction to client-server computing, from dumb terminals to fat clients. The authors also provide guidance on how different architectures work, from two-tier and three-tier to today's "n-tier" designs in distributed systems. Next, the guide presents a tour of what objects are (using a video rental store as an example) and the advantages of such an approach over a traditional procedural design. The authors show how objects can be used in enterprises on the client--in object-oriented user interfaces--and on servers, where they introduce and explain crucial technologies such as transaction monitors. Particularly valuable sections include a fine explanation of what object-oriented databases are and what their advantages (and disadvantages) are versus traditional relational database solutions. Other chapters cover the implementation of objects within the enterprise, discussing everything from "glue" which allows intercommunication between CORBA and ActiveX/DCOM, to object "persistence," which allows objects to be stored and retrieved from databases. Another useful chapter describes the role of the Internet in enterprise computing. Further sections discuss today's object-oriented development tools (Microsoft Visual Studio and IBM's VisualAge tools get thumbs-up ratings from the authors.) Finally, the authors consider performance tuning and scalability in object-oriented systems, topics that will be most familiar to those with exposure to software engineering. Enterprise Computing with Objects concludes with some forecasting about the (predictably bright) future of objects in distributed systems. Overall, this is a very useful book, which presents a lot of critical information about wide-ranging roles for objects, now and in the future.
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