Component Software: Beyond Object-Oriented Programming (Acm Press) [Hardcover]

Clemens Szyperski (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0201178885 | ISBN-13: 978-0201178883 | Publication Date: December 19, 1997

Component Software Engineering is an emerging technology about to take the software industry by storm. Building on existing object-oriented approaches, component technology can be used to deliver reusable, 'off-the-shelf ' software components for incorporation into large applications. Component Software: Beyond Object-Oriented Programming explains the technical foundations of this evolving technology and its importance in the software market place. It provides in-depth discussion of both the technical and the business issues to be considered, then moves on to suggest approaches for implementing component-oriented software production and the organizational requirements for success. The author draws on his own experience to offer tried-and-tested solutions to common problems and novel approaches to potential pitfalls. Anyone responsible for developing software strategy, evaluating new technologies, buying or building software will find Clemens Szyperski's objective and market-aware perspective of this new area invaluable.

Editorial Reviews

Review

'This book provides an insightful analysis of existing component technology and is an extremely valuable contribution to the field. It will help you understand what it takes to get from object-oriented to component-oriented programming.' Erich Gamma Insightful analysis of software components A beautifully written and researched book, Component Software is a fascinating study of the practical aspects of making components work in software development. Touching on Java, CORBA, COM, architectures, frameworks, component assembly, domain standards and much more, the author gives the reader an impressive panaroma of the state-of-the-art in component technology...But this doesn't do justice to the expressiveness, insight, and impressive range of integration between fields of component study that Szyperski puts into this book. You will not find a more useful addition to your library about component technology and we recommend it strongly. -- Object News Book Reviews [e-mail] from Redmond, WA , 01/27/98, rating=9: The definitive text for component software If found this book very enlightening. It is the first book I have seen that discusses component oriented software in a real world way. Mind you this is a text book, not your typical programming book, so some of its appeal will be limited. However, for anyone doing any serious thinking about component software this book is a must read. The author (one of the principles behind Oberon and Component Pascal) very carefully avoids taking explicit sides in the so-called "component wars" (the same cannot be said about his stance on objects v. components, he clearly believes OO has failed to live up to its promises). However, I think the book is (indirectly) about Microsoft's COM in that it explains, in a very detailed, academic sort of way, the same principles that are behind COM. I don't think the author intended to write a book about COM, it's just that his ideas and the ideas of the designers of COM appear to be very similar. At 28 chapters & 411 pages this is a long book. It covers a lot of material. Some parts are pretty hard to read because they are so academically grounded. The author recognizes this and warns the reader beforehand. Most of the sections I found hard to read could easily be skipped over without detracting from the real value the book provides.

From the Back Cover

Component Software: Beyond Object-Oriented Programming explains the technical foundations of this evolving technology and its importance in the software market place. It provides in-depth discussion of both the technical and the business issues to be considered, then moves on to suggest approaches for implementing component-oriented software production and the organizational requirements for success. The author draws on his own experience to offer tried-and-tested solutions to common problems and novel approaches to potential pitfalls.

Anyone responsible for developing software strategy, evaluating new technologies, buying or building software will find Clemens Szyperskiis objective and market-aware perspective of this new area invaluable. Helpful Features Include:

* a uniquely objective comparison of the industry front-runnersi products: Sunis Java Beans; Microsoftis DCOM and Active X; the OMGis CORBA and IIOP
* a description of the emerging industry standards being developed by consortia such as the OMG and the OPEN Group
* studies of component-oriented tools and languages, using Java and Component Pascal as examples
* in-depth discussion of the potential and challenges of component software

© Clemens Szyperski 1998 0201178885B04062001

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 411 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pub (Sd) (December 19, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201178885
• ISBN-13: 978-0201178883
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,170,173 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A good book, May 25, 2000

By 

"mimou" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Component Software: Beyond Object-Oriented Programming (Acm Press) (Hardcover)

The main objective of the book is to present software components and their importance in software engineering mainly for reuse purpose. To a large extent, this objective has been achieved. The book is a fairly good and complete coverage of many technical (foundations, approaches, implementation, standards, etc.) and non-technical aspects (markets, billing, professions, etc.) of software components. The presentation of the three major approaches for software components, i.e., OMG CORBA, Sun Java and Microsoft COM, and their comparison are very valuable especially when one has to choose one of this approach in building component-based systems. The discussion of non- technical aspects, especially, the market issue is a plus in such types of books.

In this book, systematic reuse is viewed as how to build reusable asset consisting primarily of software components. Reuse is mostly viewed through implementation inheritance and object composition with forwarding or delegation in the object-oriented sense. In that respect, the book goes into many details related to objects. While objects are tightly related to software components from the author's point of view, it is sometimes not clear how the presented discussion is useful for actually building reusable components. Also, sometimes the reader may lost the relationship and differences between objects and components. On the other hand, the author should have discussed in more details the importance of software components in the general area of software reuse. In particular, will software components based on objects be the only way to build reusable components. There are also a number of software engineering issues that should receive more attention regarding the reuse of components. These concern library or catalog of components and quality measurement of components.

The book is well organized, but I think that short chapters should be grouped together. This is especially the case for the last part. Also, one of the problem that I had while reading the book is that in some instances the link between successive sections is not well done. Finally, in my opinion, many of the chapters in part two, three and four should be read in two passes, a first quick pass and a second more deep reading. This will enable the reader to get a maximum benefit from them.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The definitive text for component software, January 27, 1998

By 

cek "cek" (Bellevue, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Component Software: Beyond Object-Oriented Programming (Acm Press) (Hardcover)

If found this book very enlightening. It is the first book I have seen that discusses component oriented software in a real world way. Mind you this is a text book, not your typical programming book, so some of its appeal will be limited. However, for anyone doing any serious thinking about component software this book is a must read.

The author (one of the principles behind Oberon and Component Pascal) very carefully avoids taking explicit sides in the so-called "component wars" (the same cannot be said about his stance on objects v. components, he clearly believes OO has failed to live up to its promises). However, I think the book is (indirectly) about Microsoft's COM in that it explains, in a very detailed, academic sort of way, the same principles that are behind COM. I don't think the author intended to write a book about COM, it's just that his ideas and the ideas of the designers of COM appear to be very similar.

At 28 chapters & 411 pages this is a long book. It covers a lot of material. Some parts are pretty hard to read because they are so academically grounded. The author recognizes this and warns the reader beforehand. Most of the sections I found hard to read could easily be skipped over without detracting from the real value the book provides.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A new bible for component designers, developers, and users., July 27, 1998

By 

Joseph Kiniry ([e-mail]) (Caltech, Pasadena, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Component Software: Beyond Object-Oriented Programming (Acm Press) (Hardcover)

Szyperski's book discusses component software from an unusual point of view: as an academic and a professional. This perspective provides the reader with the best of both worlds: a discussion of essential academic object and component concepts as well as a pragmatic review of existing component systems. In particular, the important topics that Szyperski covers include callbacks and their impact on reuse, reentrant code, component interface specification with contracts, subtyping (co/contravariance), code and behavioral inheritance, and finally safety and progress specifications. Each of these topics is critical to the development of robust and reusable components. Szyperski's discussion of todays' component frameworks (loosely, CORBA, COM, and Java) shows his biases, but they are objectively justified. Finally, the author discusses the next generation of component architectures. Included in this discussion is a brief foray into OpenDoc! , a discussion of Oberon Microsystems' BlackBox component framework, and Portos and Denia, two hard realtime component frameworks. Any designer or developer that uses or builds components must read this book. It will help the good component designer/developer/manager become a _great_ component thinker.