The Complete Book of Middleware (Paperback)

by Judith M. Myerson (Author) "This chapter discusses various transaction and messaging middleware tools..." (more)
Key Phrases: Java Bean, Advanced Server, Enterprise Edition (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
The book gives a very useful overview of current middleware technology and products and is equally accessible to technical staff and managers.
-Nick Dunn, Student Software Developer

Product Description
The challenges of designing, building, and maintaining large-scale, distributed enterprise systems are truly daunting. Written for all IT professionals, The Complete Book of Middleware will aid in resolving new business objectives, new technologies, and vendor disputes. This book focuses on the essential principles and priorities of system design and emphasizes the new requirements brought forward by the rise of e-commerce and distributed integrated systems. This reference highlights the changes to middleware technologies and standards. It offers a concise overview of middleware technology alternatives and distributed systems. Many increasingly complex examples are incorporated throughout and the book concludes with guidelines on the practice of IT architecture. Performance considerations such as caching and monitoring are reviewed and the appendix includes middleware resources and new modeling standards. The scope includes traditional middleware and also next-generation techniques that serve to glue disparate systems in the ever-expanding world of distributed network systems. Provided with concepts, principles, and alternatives discussed in The Complete Book of Middleware, systems architects, systems analysts, systems designers, systems developers, and programmers, can proceed with greater confidence in designing complex enterprise systems.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Auerbach Publications; 1 edition (March 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0849312728
• ISBN-13: 978-0849312724
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,851,800 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Covers major vendor offerings and middleware in general, June 6, 2002

By	Mike Tarrani "www.tarrani.com" (Deltona, FL USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)

This collection of papers is divided among eight major topic areas, each on a specific middleware category. The main value of this book is the wide range of technologies and vendor solutions, and the fact that it's up to date (at the time of this review).

I like the complete coverage of both transaction and queuing approaches, and the vendor-specific information that includes Microsoft's .NET and Sun's Java, as well as everything in between. The sections database middleware and middleware performance are especially valuable because they are more generic and applicable to a wider audience than the MS- and Java-centric sections.

While individual papers have a slight vendor bias, the book as a whole is vendor neutral. This is not a book for learning about middleware as much as a good description of what's currently available and their strengths and weaknesses. If you are looking for a more general book I recommend Chris Britton's "IT Architectures and Middleware: Strategies for Building Large, Integrated Systems" for the fundamentals, and David Linthicum's "B2B Application Integration" for a detailed text on how to employ middleware in practice. However, this book will give vendor-specific details and a more up-to-date view of middleware that are missing from Britton's and Linthicum's books. If you're a system architect or consultant this book is an excellent desk reference.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Like Getting Breakfast from a Fire Hose, March 11, 2003

By	Elderbear (Loma Linda, Aztlan) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

The accronyms alone will kill you in the first few chapters unless you wear special protective gear while reading this book. If you haven't got the faintest clue about middleware when you start reading, you'll find yourself half-drowned, bedraggled, and nearly as clueless when you finish. A truly "Complete Book of Middleware" ought to at least have a chapter that orients the reader to middleware--that way we know which acronyms to duck and which to glom on to!

This seems to be quite the shotgun approach to middleware. Make that a fully automatic shotgun with a large magazine. From Java to CORBA to specific vendors and program scripts, Ms. Myerson manages to cover a lot of ground, sometimes deeply, sometimes shallowly, and mostly with acronyms. I useful (?) overview, but one that will leave the reader wanting to buy more focused books to solve real life problems--or run out to hire a consultant who knows it all anyway.

I found several chapters quite relevant to a project I'm currently working on--although they mostly describe why current business solutions are inadequate to solve our particular problem. I also found that the relevant chapters demanded that I purchase more books so that I could leverage what I had read into real information.

So, know a bit about middleware _before_ you get this book. Then, if you need a description of (nearly) current systems and approaches that covers vast amounts of acreage, give this one a shot to see where you need to focus your reading--but plan on buying other books.

This is not "The Complete Book of Middleware," it's a modestly broad-based and exhausting introduction to what's out there and what it does.