5 comments about Enterprise Application Architecture with VB, ASP and MTS.

1. In a nutshell Moniz puts forth a great concept, but plan on using your own implementation. Read on for the details. When I first read this book I couldn't turn the pages fast enough. I was elated that someone had an architecture that supported just about everything my users were asking for. Then we implemented, or tried to anyway. The code generated by his 'Object Factory' was poorly commented and dismally formated. It uses older ODBC, and improperly uses CreateObject() when the components are supposed to be built to take advantage of MTS. (You must use CreateInstance() to keep your components in the same context) He is also passing whole user-defined objects across process boundaries instead of serializing the data. Incredible performance hit! Still enamored with the concept I converted it to ADO and fixed the MTS errors, thinking that I would just copy this cleaned-up project over and over and edit it to support new objects. Man, was that ever complicated! So, now I'm in my third iteration (and last) of trying to implement this architecture by partitioning the functionality into separate components. In theory, this redisign should work better, and be much simpler than his implementation. (Maybe I'll write a book with my version.) ;^)>



2. Even as a non-VB programmer I got some great ideas from this book, such as the implicit pattern for implementing auditable entities and dynamic property lists in SQL Server. The (perhaps too long) introductory material on "farms" (distribution and components) had me yelling "Yes!" out loud. But, I found the organization of the book befuddling at times, and thought some of the methods and advice weren't as universal as they sounded. Look at this as one man's well-refined method for delivering a broad, but not universal, class of applications on the VB/MTS/ASP/SQL Server platform. Was worth my time. Thanks Mr. Moniz!



3. This book is mainly impressive but also, as some other reviewers mentionned, lacking some content.

   The great thing is that it does go over some quite good VB code example for reusable applications. I would say that about 40-45% of this book is to "learn and understand" how to THINK about reusable component while most of the rest is for the actual VB code that does it (and some leftovers for win32 & web interfaces).

   Indeed, it takes, at the least, an interesting position on Business Logic where he is mainly putting this logic on the data tier but I could agree that in some cases, it could be beneficial.

   As a .NET reviewer, I have to take special care about books that I'm now reading on VB6 code. This book can easily be migrated to the VB.NET syntax mainly because it's the thinking of the book rather than the actual code. Most or all of the ideas are available with VB.NET but the code will obviously needs some changes in order to accomodate ADO.NET, COM+ Application (somewhat really different than what we are used to with VB6), and some syntax modifications that came along with VB.NET.

   Even though there is this "issue" about Business Rules, this book remains an impressive reading about Enterprise Application ARCHITECTURE.




4. This book covers comprehensively how to create a system that allows you to add, edit, retrieve, undo changes on a distributed system.
   You will need to tread carefully in adopting this systems because nothing is offered to effectively analyse the system. How to do you effectively form queries against the large number of tables generated? OLAP has been fleetingly mentioned as a new book but to date I have not seen any hint of it coming out.
   What also is left out is the source code to the code generator the author has created. It would even be worthwhile buying, but you cannot. Therefore you are stuck with what is offered unless you are prepared to spend hours creating your own.
   In summary, interesting concepts but you might drown in the complexity of the system



5. There is so much muck covering the gems that the proposed architecture never becomes clear. Too much, "Okay, now I'm going to tell you..." "Next chapter I'm going to tell you..." If this book had a good rewritting and an editor, it could have been a worthwhile effort. Also, the focus is split between how to set the physical architecture (how many computers, etc) and how to write general purpose business objects that in theory could be used by many unrelated departments, and split again into how what essentially is making objects suitable for automatic code generation. This book needs to be split into maybe three refocused books, and needs a chainsaw to chop out the wordiness.

No comments about Real-World Programming With Visual Basic/Book and Cd-Rom.

No comments about Visual Basic 2005 y .Net 2.0.

5 comments about MCSD: Visual Basic 5 Study Guide.

1. This book, despite its acceptable editing and writing standards, just does not contain a large amount of material needed to pass the exam. Either buy one of the 1300-pagers or Exam Cram, or both. This book is the worst of both worlds unfortunately.



2. This is a very good book to start preparing for Exam 70-165. All the exam topics are covered and the topics are well explained. However, the book lacks details on some important topics like the Setup wizard (Bootstrap files, ini files, primary and secondary cab files) and ActiveX controls (Ambient and Extender properties). However, its very good for its price. I used this book, VB Books online and the transcenders and passed exam 70-165 with a good score on my first attempt.



3. Mistakes, mistakes everywhere! When following instructions to create a practice application, the code was wrong, it didn't work! Even the CD-ROM stuff was incorrect. Studying for these cert tests is tough enough without the added frustration of textbooks proclaiming to be "Study Guides" that are riddled with gross errors. I ended up using Microsoft's VB Programmers Guide and the Visual Basic 5.0 online documentation. I passed the certification test (hurrah) but certainly NOT due to any help from this book! Don't people read/edit or review this stuff? Doesn't the author check to be sure his code produces the desired results?



4. this book is very easy to understand. good price



5. I debated giving this one 2 stars, because I think you will fail the exam if you only use this as your study guide. I covered this book several times cover-to-cover. I agree with many of the other reviewers that there were an inordinate amount of typos and mistakes. The worst part, however, was that the material was not deep enough and the questions not difficult enough to adequately prep you for the exam.

   After reading each chapter several times and consistently scoring 90-100% on each of the practice exams (the end-of-chapter tests - the promised practice exam on CD-ROM did not work, nor did the supposed correction), I was full of bravado. Fortunately, I got access to a Transcender exam the day before the test. What an eye-opener that was. I took all 3 of the Transcenders and they blew me away. I was scoring in the low 60's. I pulled an allnighter with the Transcenders and the MSDN CD's and snatched victory from the jaws of sure defeat.

   I noted several of the other reviewers noted that they used this material in conjunction with the Transcenders. On its own, I think it is insufficient to prepare you.END

1 comments about Visual Basic: A Project Driven Curriculum.

1. I bought this book before I taught my first year of Visual Basic to high school students. It saved me hundreds of hours of development time for lessons. I didn't even know the programming language myself when I was assigned to teach the class and the example programs given with the book helped me learn what I needed to know before the year began.
   
   Also, when some students pulled ahead of my learning I let them work on the advanced projects while slower students and I were still working on the earlier ones.
   
   The included quizzes were useful and saved more time for me while I learned the language with the students.
   
   I highly recommend the book for teachers or anyone who needs sample programs for basic VB.

No comments about Visual Basic (Teach Yourself).

No comments about Client/Server Programming With Microsoft Visual Basic (Microsoft Programming Series).

No comments about Visual Basic 3.0.

No comments about Visual Basic 2005 for Students.

2 comments about New Perspectives on Microsoft Visual Basic 5.0 for Windows: Comprehensive.

1. I am currently reading this book for a VB 5.0 class and it is a good book for people who haven't programmed before. It gets you into the basics and gives a step-by-step of creating programs as well as having check points and assignments to do on your own. If you're looking for something in-depth though, this isn't the book to get. I would recommend this one and an in-depth hard core programmers book used together. This one will get you the basics of what you need and the programming one will get you more in depth.



2. I am currently using this book for a VB class and am very disappointed. The exercises in the book have steps with the word "explore" next to them. Explore basically means good luck finding the information you need to complete this exercise because we didn't include it in this textbook. I have never been so frustrated with a textbook or any computer book for that matter. Save your money, this text is not worth ten cents!