Customer Reviews

Visual Basic 6 MTS (VB Com)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an excellent book. It is not for a beginner, however. If you need an introduction to MTS, then try out Wrox's other MTS book, "MTS MSMQ with VB and ASP" (what a great title), which is also excellent and gives a higher level introductory view. I read the MTS MSMQ book and immediately ordered this book for the more advanced material. It's not rocket science, however, and I don't know why a previous reviewer had so much trouble with it. The book does assume that you are already familiar with objects, VB, databases, etc. If you are a total beginner, don't start here. Try Peter Wright's "Beginning" Wrox books, which do a good job of getting you up to speed on the basics.

I gave this book four stars rather than five for two reasons: one, I actually learned a lot more about the proper way to use MTS from a series of articles on vb2themax.com--alost none of this in-the-trenches material was included in this book. The second reason was that I wished that the book had more theory to go along with the excellent nuts-and-bolts material. What I mean is that there is plenty of great coverage here of how MTS works, how the distributed processing and transaction management works, how to set up and adminster MTS, plus good chapters on security, debugging, and COM+. I wish, however, that there was more material discussing the design considerations for stateless objects and MTS class design at a system level. This is not to say that there is none of this material--there is, I just wanted more. If you are already good at conceiving class designs and hierarchies, then transitioning to the stateless paradigm should not be too painful.

One other quibble: somehow the terms "object" and "class" have been suplanted by the term "component". A component is not an object, and vice versa, but now the terminology has become so bastardized that all these terms are interchangeable. This is less the fault of this book and more the fault of Microsoft for calling objects "components" within MTS itself. Imagine Microsoft confusing things by muddying the vocabulary waters...

Despite my quibbles, as I said this is an excellent book for an experienced VB programmer who needs to learn most of the ins and outs of MTS. I have not encountered a better MTS book.

This is an awesome book! The author has done an incredible job explaining COM/MTS theory and providing detailed discussions with examples on how to develop Enterprise applications using MTS technology. Although this is an advanced book (you should know the basics of COM), the author presents details in such a manor that a programmer at any level should be able to comprehend. This book not only has answered many questions I have been trying to find answers to, it has prevented me from making many programming mistakes. I give this book top marks. If only other books were written so well and so complete.

You Must Read this Book if you really want to understand MTS using VB6.

I have been a Software Engineer for over 8 years and I believe this is the most authoritative and complete book of its kind. The author does an excellent job explaining the architecture for COM and MTS. I particularly found the sections about transaction processing, security, and debugging MTS to be extremely helpful. Each of these sections goes much deeper in theory with clear explanations than several books on the same subjects combined.

OK, let me make this clear: As the book's title "Professional" suggests, this book is not for a beginner. It's my opinion that unless you are at least an intermediate VB programmer who understands basic COM concepts, this book is not for you - buy a beginner's book. If you have solid VB skills and you want to enhance them by learning MTS, I highly recommend you read this book. Study and learn from it (yes, it takes effort- no fast ticket to knowledge.) It will be worth it.

I would give this book 10 stars if I could.

I have worked with MTS (using both Visual C++ and Visual Basic) for the last eight months, and I haven't found a better resource than this! I thought I knew MTS, but the author really helped my understanding increase 10-fold.

This book is not a primer on transaction processing (there are better books for that, e.g. Principles of Transaction Processing). This book is not a primer on COM, but the author does a good job of covering the basics from a VB perspective. This book is a very practical hands-on look at the MTS explorer, development for the MTS environment, and MTS debugging. The chapter on debugging MTS is the best I have ever seen -- he points out the different ways of using VB to debug and the pitfalls, plus ways to debug using VC++ when VB doesn't do the job! This book is more for the intermediate to expert developer, but a beginner to MTS should come up to speed quickly.

What can I say; this book is excellent! Buy it now!

Matt Bortniker has written a great reference! Every facet of the subject is well laid out with relevant examples (the only bothersome aspect of this is having to go out to the web and download them). Some of the chapters include:

MTS and the Distributed Environment

Introducing MTS Explorer

COM and MTS Architecture

Transaction Processing

Designing MTS Components and Interfaces

Building MTS Components

Managing Components and Packages

Implementing Security (a real biggy for me)

Debugging MTS Components (another tricky subject, well covered)

Administration

Data Services and MTS

MTS and the Internet

COM+

Also included are a complete application (Sales Order App) and an MTS type library reference (this was really nice to have).

Downsides: No CD-ROM and they really squashed the print in tight in some places. Everything is well laid out and explained clearly. I have found this to be one of my more used COM books. A nice index rounds out the whole package. Well worth the purchase price. A must have if you plan on learning intermediate to advanced topics in VB and MTS.

First of all, this book assumes good knowledge of VB. Once you have that, it guides you well to MTS programming and administering.

The author did a great job in explaining some internals of COM and MTS, without going too low level for VB programmers. It is not a easy subject and I find it confusing in most other books that talk about COM.

The part that talks about transaction programming is great too. It is nice that the books also briefly cover MS DTC and COM+.

My only complain is: the example, or case study given in the book is too simple to be useful. MOst other books from Wrox give more sophisticated and very practical case study. However that won't stop me from giving 5 starts

If you're an intermediate+ VB programmer and want to learn COM/DCOM concepts, DNA, MTS, and transaction control via MTS, look no further.

This is a real programmer-to-programmer book and has become the book I turn to when I need a reference regarding developing components for use in distributed applications.

The author's coverage of COM/DCOM architecture is very thorough and presented perfectly. It's a tough topic, but the author guides the reader through it.

Microsoft's DNA architecture is plainly spelled out, and the author does a great job defining where MTS and components fit in.

I can find nothing wrong with this book. I highly recommend it.

I've been doing VB/OLE/COM development for 5 years now and haven't come across a book that is as well written or to-the-point as this one. Giving this book 5 stars doesn't do it justice; i think it deserves 7 stars (even on a 5 star scale.) If you want to know MTS, I suggest you get his book. It's probably the best money you'll ever spend!

In my opioion, Professional MTS VB Programming is the best MTS book on the market. I have purchased several books on MTS and find that this book is the only book that does more than a satisfactory job in covering both theory and hands on.

Briefly, this book takes a beginner by explaining the basics of COM and leads the reader through the ins & outs of MTS. Many advanced topics are covered including an awsome section regarding debugging and administration. Don't get the wrong idea, I have been working with MTS for over 3 years, and as a seasoned MTS developer, I learned many new techniques. Simply this book is for both the beginner and the advanced programmer who wants to "really" learn the ins & outs of MTS.

Because this is a very comprehensive book, the best advice I can give you is for you to try it yourself!

This book covers most of the topics of the MTS programming. In real world applications using this products I think you probably need to deepen in each aspect of the book. I believe that this book is recommended for people who have some knowledge of Visual Basic and Windows programming, not for beginners in this fields.