Customer Reviews

Professional Visual Basic 6.0 Business Objects

5 star:		(28)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I've read computer books for programmers for at least 12 years. Lhokta is probably the best organized computer book author I've ever read. Wrox always uses presentation style and format to produce excellent books, and Lhotka's writing style is perfect for introducing concepts in an organized way to begginners and people who don't want the first 6 or 7 chapters of a business-oriented VB book to be filled with elementary stuff. Therefore, they complement each other. However, Lhotka seems to be an OOP purist, and by structuring the material the way he does, you get a sense of concept overload, particularly on the first six chapters which deal with the basics of n-tiered architectures, (D)COM itself, and business object analysis. I sense he wants to discipline the reader into not following sloppy coding habits, about which VB is quite forgiving. The examples are excellent, and the respective chapters are compact: if you want to develop, say, an IIS application, all details for structuring it as well as developing an app interface are right there. Very rarely do you have to go back and forth. (That can't really be said about the first four introductory chapters, but he'll go over each concept mentioned in passing later on... so that you don't get lost in a quagmire...)

This is a very good book for an intermediate VB programmer, as well as a good reference for advanced ones.

Here are a "couple of" (pun on Mr. Lhotka' overuse of the phrase) problems with the book:

1. The design is inappropriate for a web site.
Notice how the author steps around the issues in the ASP section. His ASP example is of minimal use since it does not show one how to add/edit data. If I want to use his design, I need a lot of Session variables around - a not altogether scalable solution.
2. Lack of a Graphical Model
The book really needs a graphical view of the object model with methods and properties ala Visual Modeler.
3. Development of the object model seems a bit haphazard.
The scheme is a bit harder to follow than should be. I think the whole thing should have been sketched out more in the beginning. Unlike most real-life projects, the author had a chance to do it right from the beginning. This would have been a valuable lesson on project design.
4. Absence of Design Patterns
This may be a bit more advanced, but should have been mentioned.
5. Too Fat
Like most other Wrox books, they are way too fat. This could have been trimmed down a lot. I, like most developers, do not have time to read books of 700 pages or more. I need to read a lot of books so I need the fat trimmed a bit.

Great is not enough! Wrox did it again. If you want to do n-tier architecture, don't go further except if you want to get the Professional Visual Basic 6 Distributed Objects from the same author.

You can get into a more *real-life* programming examples with this book and ALL exemples are very well explained. It gets you in every twist there is to do good OOP with Visual Basic 6.

For beginner's to intermediate programmers, you might have some difficulties BUT it's written well enought where you can follow anyway. For experienced programmers, you will probably learn new twists.

A must.

If you don't have this or the previous book relating specifically to VB5 - get it now ! The author almost manages to clearly explain implementation of the layer model and why you want to in the first place straight off. I must confess, that I got a little lost about two thirds of the way through the book, but soon recovered by actually trying to create my own objects and then referring back to the book. The problems that he explains the solutions to are not always apparent at the time ; I can't really blame the author for that though - far better a solution given to a problem you are not yet aware of, than none at all. Overall this is the most valuable book on VB and indeed object technology in the real world I have ever read. My own companies applications are now heavily based around these techniques - modified and improved somewhat to increase flexibility but in reality we only needed to change his concepts by about 5 or 10%. Well, you have to have something to do as a programmer...

What a great book!

The title should actually be, "I Can't Believe I Was Able To Program Anything Without Using Class Modules". This book is really about back-end programming. It's about writing a DLL that abstracts what you want to do from the nuts and bolts work of actually doing it. And the best thing about it is that the components you write are COM compliant so they can be used with basically any language; specifically I've used them with ASP and ColdFusion.

Imagine writing an ASP page like this to update someone's salary:

<% set objStaff = server.createobject("MyCompany.StaffMember")
objStaff.beginedit
objStaff.load 10
objStaff.Salary = 60000
objStaff.applyedit
set objStaff = nothing %>

Notice that there's no database code, no business logic, no MTS stuff, no nothing. All of these things get encapsulated in a DLL so that the front-end programmers don't have to worry about them. They just create an object, do stuff, and kill it. If that StaffMember was a non-manager, the DLL could be written to raise an error if the salary was over a certain threshold, or whatever. It's up to you, the back-end programmer, and it's not possible to bypass the business's rules by forgetting to include the logic in the GUI. Also, this is great if you are selling your app to a customer, because your code is compiled and can't be "stolen" or modified.

The book got a little bit confusing to me at times in chapters 4 and 5, but I hadn't touched VB in about two years since an intro college class, so that may have been to blame. Also, it was more like "Where are we going with this?" rather than "What's going on?". However, if you struggle through to chapter 6 or so, you will have an "A-ha" moment and then it will all make sense. Believe me!

I now feel like a VB 6 Expert from reading this book. It goes deeply into Debugging as an added bonus, and I don't really know how I got along without the "Immediate" window for so long. Also, VB components are so much faster and more reliable than writing (and re-writing) your business rules in ASP code. Your web apps will stop sucking and start being fast and reliable.

I whole-heartedly recommend this book, and I can't wait for the VB.net update.

Another fantastic Wrox book! I have already used Rocky's design principles in a 4 tier Web application and they are already reaping the dividends (literally!). Rocky doesn't just copy out examples from the MSDN - he actually explains in great detail HOW to design a working application outlining the pitfalls on the way. Rocky guides the reader through the basic principles all the way to a full blown 3/4 tier working development using different front ends, while explaining the limitations and power of Microsoft's DNA paradigm. You will learn and understand the principles faster by actually going through the examples and using the VB debugger rather than leaving it for bedtime reading. It takes a little longer to develop an app using components but the rewards come in the reduced maintenance costs, multiple front ends without re-code and the scalability of your solutions. No more maintenance budget gobbling code monsters!!

Not really for the beginner programmer though - too much melon twisting!

Thanks Rocky!

This is the most important Visual Basic book on 3-tier application development. It is a tutorial on 3-tier development, as such it stands with Petzolds original "Programming Windows" in its clarity of presentation. There are loose ends, particularly error handling, concurrency, and reporting, which are not really addressed, but he does touch on these problems on his web site ... He also doesn't present the complete picture until halfway through the second book; "VB6 Distributed Objects", which is a necessary companion to this book. These 2 books are "must haves", cornerstones upon which current VB application programming is based.

The amount of material covered in this book is amazing. I would recommend this to any programmer who is experienced with VB but would like to get up to speed on Multi-tier development techniques. It proves to be a great introduction to other aspects of programming, like MTS and various web development technologies. After implementing what I learned from this book in a management system, programming became a much more enjoyable experience. Recommended!

As a professional programmer since '87, it has been a long, long time since I have read a book of this quality. "Visual Basic 6.0 Business Objects" is an excellent resource for the serious VB programmer with serious problems to solve. The thoughtful combination of object-oriented theory and practical client-server implementation realities made for a highly profitable read. As my first selection from Wrox's "Programmer to Programmer" series, I can honestly say that the label is well deserved. Going through the book yielded many of the same intellectual pleasures I have experienced much too seldom on the job. If you are new to programming, be prepared to *think* when you read this book... but never fear, it will be worth it. This is an excellent book.

I read the Business 5.0 Objects Book three times with this new version I was expecting to see revisions for building Business objects that included VB 6.0's new abilities to pass UDT's in classes and persistance. There were almost no changes made between the 5.0 and 6.0 book. If you have the 5.0 book don't bother getting this one. If you don't have either book then buy it. This book is the best coverage of coding real objects I have seen. Even if I am dissapointed in the lack of changes.