Customer Reviews

Server Component Patterns: Component Infrastructures Illustrated with EJB (Wiley Software Patterns Series)

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Well, the cartoons are nice!

Seriously, the authors go into great detail explaining the nuances of EJB usage. They approach this by using patterns as the key conceptual thread that binds the book together. Now, to some extent, the basic EJB functionality has been stable for several years. So at one level this book won't (and cannot) reveal any more EJB functionality than several other books already published.

But if you regard patterns as crucial organising ideas in their own right, then this book may appeal to you. The patterns are higher levels of usage of EJBs. That perhaps other books have not made so clear, or even mentioned.

Another distinctive feature is a frequent comparison of the EJB components and usages to COM+ counterparts. Every other EJB book I've seen totally ignores COM+, as being in another universe perhaps. In contrast, the authors hope the comparison helps give you more perspective on EJBs. Now, they do also compare EJBs with CORBA. Here, you might also benefit by seeing how EJBs can improve over CORBA implementations. The COM+ may be more pertinent though, as Microsoft seems to be pushing this heavily.

The book presents a pattern language which is applied in implementing the component infrastructure (component and container) on the server side, particularly the EJB (Enterprise JavaBean) model. The patterns are also implemented with little variations by COM+ and CCM (CORBA Component Model).

E.g., how does the component tell container to handle its technical concerns by using ANNOTATION, and how does container intercept component call by using COMPONENT PROXY, manage the resource through LIFECYCLE CALLBACK and PLUGGABLE RESOURCES, achieve scalability and performance by using VIRTUAL INSTANCE, INSTANCE POOL and PASSIVATION, how does the transaction and security related information get passed through INVOCATION CONTEXT, etc.

The basic principles behind these patterns are Separation of Concerns and Functional Variability. The separation concerns between functional (business) and nonfunctional (technical) requirement yields the architecture and collaboration between the component and container; the functional variability yields reusable component building blocks.

No pattern is an island, the book provide a definitive guide on what is composed of server component infrastructure, it is a very valuable resource for both component and container developers, it is a link to chain all the individual patterns, each of which tries to solve one particular software requirement to illustrate how these patterns are working together to form a powerful yet flexible component infrastructure.

Great book about server patterns foundation. This book show up several component patterns in a theoric way, but it converge to pratical way because much of theses patterns are found on web easily. For a programmer or analyst I recommend reading too EJB design patterns that's implementation of theses concepts.

A very complete guide to component services. I strongly recommend it.