Customer Reviews

MICO: An Open Source CORBA Implementation (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Software Engineering and Programming)

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This is the second time I've purchased the Mico book/cd by Puder and Romer. The book covers installation { I've tried all but the AIX without trouble }, has a brief over-view of CORBA concepts, and does a quick run through of how to use CORBA and MICO in specific. It then walks through more code and explanation with some of the 'core' services one uses with CORBA. With a 195 page book do not expect a lot of hand holding. Enough information is provided for a self-starter to start climbing up the ladder of knowledge. Make sure you have at least a working knowledge of C++. On the other hand the sheer simplicity of CORBA makes the ladder a rather short one. Other than that, this is the most dog-eared book I have on CORBA! { Clienter/Server Programming with Java and Corba is the 2nd }

MICO is a complete implementation of CORBA which complies with the CORBA standard. It is freely available in source and binary formats and it has been ported to a number of environments. Because it is available in source format, you can readily port MICO to a new environment.

MICO does the business. You can use it for real applicatiions and not just as a toy. Even if you are committed to using a commercial package, I'd suggest getting hold of MICO as being the cheapest and easiest way of checking that your application and chosen ORB can interoperate with another CORBA ORB.

This package is the latest physical distribution of the MICO package. I am always a little cynical about publishers who bring out a second edition of a book under a different title and that is the case here. The book is an expanded and updated edition of "MICO is CORBA" by the same authors.

But that should not be seen as a strong criticism. MICO is a great product and this book does contain significant information that is not in the online documentation. Of course, as is normally the case with this type of product, there are now newer versions of the software than on the enclosed CD-ROM but the code in this package works just fine. Serious users will expect to download the latest software from the official MICO web site as well.

The book assumes that you know C++ and it does contain a small intoroducton to CORBA. However, do not imagine that this is a tutorial to designing and developing CORBA systems. You will want a copy of something like "Advanced CORBA programming with C++" by Henning and Vinoski at your side as you develop your application.

This text, and the associated CD ROM are outdated. This is expected for a book that describes a live technology, unfortunately there is no errata to be found, not even on the author's website.
The Windows binaries on the CD do not run on XP. The source code on the CD does not compile under VC++ 7.0. The code generated by the most recent IDL compiler (2.3.11) is not described by the book (the book describes code generated from the older IDL compiler). I can not figure out how to map code generated by IDL to code the book describes. I have given up on this book.

Outstanding reference! A true "must have" for any looking to delve into the Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) method of developing distributed applications.