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Review
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Reviewed: November, 2004 |
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Reviewer:
Bryan Tyler |
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I have been a fan of Rockford Lhotka since I read his “Visual Basic 6.0
Business Objects” book. That book was my first introduction to a framework
and architecture designed to work in almost any physical configuration you
threw at it. Understandably there were short-comings and workarounds due to
the nature of the Visual Basic 6.0 language, but the theory and logic behind
the architecture have now realized their full potential with the advent of
.NET and this book is a “soup to nuts” manual on understanding, building and
implementing the component-based, scalable, logical architecture or CSLA.
This book is not for the amateur C# programmer, it
assumes that the reader has a firm grasp on the C# language as well as a
fairly good understanding of object oriented design. This book is not a
tutorial on how to write a good C# program; rather it is a full-blown
discussion on the concepts and implementation of the CSLA. In my opinion,
the fact that this book contains “C#” in the title is secondary. To
summarize, if you’re looking to learn the C# language, this book is not for
you, but if you’re looking to learn a solid architecture and the concepts
behind it, you’ve found what you’re looking for.
Now that I’ve stated that the book is not intended for
the reader to learn the C# language, I must also say that there is a lot
that can be learned by the seasoned developer, in terms of the language and
code techniques, from reading this book. Even if you decide not to use the
architecture in your next project, there are a number of slick goodies that
the author added to the CSLA such as n-level undo capabilities and the
“smart date” class which make it at least worth browsing for ideas.
The book begins with a fairly in-depth discussion of
logical and physical n-tier architecture and how they relate to each other.
The n-tier discussion serves as a nice segue to the author’s discussion
about the theory behind his architecture, but I found myself itching to
write some code by they time I reached chapter 4 (about 175 pages into the
book). Not to worry though, there are plenty of code examples in this book
and Lhotka methodically works through the entire framework, class by class
and method by method with a full explanation of the whys and hows for every
piece of code.
My only criticism is related to the data model he uses
for the example application. Lhotka even mentions that he is not a DBA and
the model is for illustrative purposes only, but this is book is targeted at
professional developers and I think that it’s safer to assume that we are
working with professional DBAs. I also have a hard time believing that Mr.
Lhotka is as unskilled a DBA as he purports. To a certain extent I think his
model is used to illustrate that the framework will work in almost any
situation, but why show it working with a bad model if you don’t have to? I
fear that many developers will glaze right over the part that states the
model is for illustrative purposes only and potentially pick up some bad
habits.
This book is true to form with all of Mr. Lhotka’s work
I’ve read to date. With copious references to articles (no, not just his)
and a large on-line community, you’ll find plenty more reading to do even
after you finish the book. I thought the book was so good, that I asked the
company I work for to purchase a copy for every developer that reports to
me. This book will be an essential part of my library and I’m sure that it
will be essential to yours too. |
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