Customer Reviews

Applied .NET Attributes

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2 star:		(1)
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I had been programming in .NET for a while before I really learned to appreciate the power of attributes. But even then I was still playing around with [Obsolete], [Serializable] and the more common ones. Then I ran across the whole subject of declarative security and realized I had a Lot of learning to do. Fortunately for me, this book eased the process.

The only thing I didn't like about it is that I wish there was a lot more of it. Most of the discussion of attributes that I've run across are either the 'canned' ones like what I mention above, or overly theoretical. Too often I just couldn't see where they'd be applicable (more because of my thick head than any writer's deficiencies). That's where this book really shines. It starts out with your basic "what's" and "why's" but gets moving pretty quickly. Another thing about this book is that it's a pretty advanced topic. Back in college, we were heavy into OOP, but I don't remember hearing about AOP (Aspect Oriented Programming) and this is the first time I've really run across it. I really wish there would have been some more on the subject, but they did a very good job explaining the subject.

There are many good examples in here and the text is very well written. APress is pretty great about the quality of their stuff and this is no exception.

Excellent way to move the .NET tools you build to their next level of value. I have been developing for over 10 years; I buy an average of 4 books a month. I have never written a review before this. This is the first.

These guys took the first serious shot at moving us (the .NET crowd) toward thinking about Aspect Oriented Programming by doing an excellent job revealing the tools that currently exist in the .NET Framework.

I have been looking into AOP using C# and there are not that many available resources. A few, but not many. The book doesn't go into a bunch of over kill on selling AOP. It actually points out some possible performance issues with using context-interception. It just gives a real practical overview of AOP.

The book hits the ground running and covers a ton of valuable information related to .NET Attribute usage. I won't go into the details of the book there is plenty of information available on the APress web site. Go check out the Detailed TOC, Index, and Sample Chapter: Chapter 1: Attribute Fundamentals.

This book is the shortest one I have bought this year.
It is also the most informative one... WELL WORTH IT...

Excellent way to move the .NET tools you build to their next level of value. I have been developing for over 10 years; I buy an average of 4 books a month. I have never written a review before this.
These guys took the first serious shot at moving us (the .NET crowd) toward thinking about Aspect Oriented Programming by doing an excellent job revealing the unpublicized tools that currently exist.
To date I was looking into AOP in C# here among other places (there are not that many available):
Theme/UML
http://www.dsg.cs.tcd.ie/index.php?category_id=165
AspectC#
http://www.dsg.cs.tcd.ie/index.php?category_id=171

I won't go into the details of the book, you can find them here:
http://www.apress.com/book/bookDisplay.html?bID=227

If you buy just one book this year, make it this one. It is the shortest one I have bought this year.
It is also the most informative one...

Nowhere near as good as the Wrox Handbook series (which Apress now owns).

I'm sure this book is a good introduction to attributes and if you're not that knowledgable with attributes, you will learn. But you could probably learn a lot from some of the (much shorter) online tutorials from Fawcett or dotnet247.

I found that WAY too much time was wasted on covering topics such as serialization and writing a compiler. Introduce the concepts, sure, but don't waste an entire chapter on either of them. Those are for other books.

Also, the author was very "wordy" on describing things. I'd rather read the odd sentence twice to fully understand it instead of constantly reading one sentence, understanding it, and having to read 10 more that REALLY don't elaborate... or say much of anything.

I also found that the order in which the book taught was backwards. If chapter 1 had introduced a simple custom attribute along with a little bit of reflection, the book would have flowed much better.

Many of the benefits of attributes were never covered... single attributes that replace handres of lines of code... the real power of attributes and inheritance.... not covered.

This book was nowhere close to my hopes and it didn't teach me a great deal, but then I've made extensive use of attributes in the past. It succeeded in answer only one of my unanswered questions.

All in all, it could have been 50% shorter and still given about 25% more useful information. If you already know attributes well, don't bother.

I am so thrilled with this book. The coverage of AOP is excellent. Everything in this book is excellent (I especially love the IL that is listed and the fact you are not scared to 'go there') - most authors shy away from IL). I have added it to my must read books for .NET Mastery and on my Amazon list with over 11,000 reads as a 'must read'. Richter, Lowy, and now "Bock and Barnaby". This inspired me while reading this on a flight recently from Toronto to create an AOP implementation to use attributes for strongly typed collections in .NET 1.1. Works like a charm. So you might have a HashTable. The attribute is:

[StronglyTypedCollection(ColKeyTypeName="System.String", ColValueTypeName="%RunningAssembly%,CustomerBusinessObject")]

Note the use of a substitution parameter: %RunningAssembly% . I substitute this and other parameters at run-time to do the Type Check. The syntax for the type is:

"Assembly (optional), TypeName".

The Type name may need to be qualified by namespace as well.

I am using this as part of the DotNet2UML utility my company maintains (google on DotNet2UML) and the next major release (3.0). I am also making this assembly available to beta testers as it provides many cool AOP Framework type features. Email me if interested. And thank you Jason and Tom. Excellent work.

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