Customer Reviews

Corba Programming Unleashed

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

As other reviewers have already noted, "CORBA Programming Unleashed" suffers from serious organizational problems. The book's total disregard for any sort of useful organization makes it approaching it a task for only the bravest of CORBA developers amongst us. And that's the other problem with it: you've got to be fairly CORBA-proficient already in order to make use of the material the author presents. If you don't know what an ORB is, stay away from this book. Mr. Ahmed doesn't even expand the acronym in a footnote in chapter 1, or anywhere else.

On the plus side, presentations of CORBA's threading models are digestible if somewhat concise, and with good diagrams. Discussions of CORBA's standard services are backed with somewhat motivating examples. And don't let other reviewers fool you: there are C++ examples in the book in addition to Java; it's just a bit Java-heavy.

However, those same code examples often rely on tools and packages that not everyone will have. For example, a Java/CORBA developer on a Unix platform will more than likely have a text editor, the Java SDK, and an ORB, but nothing else. Yet the very first example---a simple string-to-string registry for IOR binding---will have developers scurrying for a copy of JGL (just for a HashSet class) and iBus (for a message passing layer). The example could've been far more accessible and with much less cruft if it were done with nothing beyond the standard Java library and the ORB. Other examples seem to follow this sledgehammer-to-kill-a-fly pattern, and aren't independent from one another in many cases, making learning from them difficult.

Overall, you really need to be a CORBA expert to appreciate the material in this book. Even then, finding answers to particular problems in distributed object programming will prove challenging.

To be honest, the book is not an introduction to CORBA. The content is not well organized. The first topic of the book is already advance topics. Also there is not enough explaniation for some difficult points. However, the content will be suitable for reader who is already comforable with CORBA (Java and C). I like the section of 'E-commerce'. The code is good.

I unfortunately must echo the sentiments of other reviewers of this book: it's a tangled mess that leads nowhere. If you're already an expert at CORBA programming, there's an off-chance that you might find something useful in this book. If you're a novice, forget it.

The book jumps right in to advanced topics, such as ORB interoperability. Then, it backs up to basic C++/CORBA concepts. Then advanced Java. Then basic C++. In fact, the author describes the organization as consisting of a number of sections which may be read in any order, but these sections are not clearly delimited or even internally organized. In fact, Chapters 4 and 6 constitute one section! That's right, you're expected to jump in to chapter four, and, on finishing it, skip immediately to chapter 6. Number 5 is virtually unrelated. Come on folks! That's ridiculous!

I bought this book thinking it would give me the info I needed to get up to speed on CORBA quickly. It is not. The book jumps right into advanced topics, and presents information in an ad-hoc manner. There seems to be very little flow from one section to the next, so it does not read straight through as a tutorial. In addition, all examples are Java, not C++. All in all, I found the book to be useless for my needs: a good tutorial/reference on CORBA.

I do not know what book the reader from parijs!!! was reading but the version i have does not begin with OOP it starts with interoperability and the portable object adapter - what a start, no wasting precious time and paper. This book is for serious corba developers not oo -> corba hopefulls.

The table of contents before me is as follows:

Interoperability, IIOP and E-Commerce, Portable Object Adapter, Object References and Smart Pointers, IDL/Java Mapping, C++ Memory Management, The Naming Service, The Trader Service, The Event Service, The Transaction Service, The Security Service, Server Activation Modes, ORBIX Filters, CORBA and Threads, ORBIX Dynamic Loaders, Distributed Callbacks, Visibroker Caffeine, Visibroker Smartstubs, Handling Distributed Events, Visibroker Interceptors, CORBA and Java Servlets, CORBA and Mobile Agents, CORBA and Design Patterns, CORBA Interface Repository, Dynamic Invocation Interface, Developing CORBABean Wrapper.

The rating above is not totally accurate since i have not managed to read through the whole book.

Topics are good. But that's all.

It's badly organized. Sections are randomly put together. The starting point (IOR) is strange.

Everything seems to be sloppy. Typos. Badly formatted code. Important things unexplained. Code repeated often.

Although not stated on the cover, it's very Orbix oriented in some key places.

Really difficult book to read. I found that the writer has only a few difficult examples added to the text.

It is a great book that gives you a good understanding of Object Oriented programming. Basic Object Oriented Programming topics are covered to give you a thorough understanding of the core technology before moving on to ORB (Object Request Brokers) and CORBA.