Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture
Martin Fowler (Chief Scientist for ThoughtWorks) has been a long time favourite author of mine, ever since I read "UML Distilled". I'm a regular reader of some of his columns and his articles are an inspiration, so I thought I'd start these series of reviews, not with a classical book, but with one of the books that really got me excited when I first got it.
"Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture" defines some patterns that address recurring problems in enterprise application architecture design. However, enterprise application design is too vast a scope to be condensed in a book. And a prescriptive book at that. So, keeping in mind that this book doesn't pretend to tell us either how to design an enterprise application nor to address all the issues involved with the enterprise application architecture like security or performance explicitly, I was able to thouroughly enjoy it.
While most of the patterns in the book are known to the enterprise developer, some require some thought in how and when they could be applicable. Context and tradeoffs are key in enterprise development.
Altough I wasn't blown away by the book as I initially thought I'd be, I was quite happy with it as a reference for some insight into particulars of apparently common situations we're usually faced with, especially when it comes to contemplating all possible consequences of the implementation.
My Rating:
ISBN: 0321127420