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 Visual Basic for Windows by Example (By Example Series).

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

No comments about Microsoft Powerpoint 97 (Visual Reference Basics).

No comments about Visual Basic (Teach Yourself).

No comments about Visual Basic Programming.

No comments about Visual Basic 6.0 - Manual de Referencia Con Un CD.

3 comments about Software Development for Engineers: with C, Pascal, C++, Assembly Language, Visual Basic, HTML, JavaScript and Java.

1. The material about the different languages is good, but a little bit supperficial, it is only a preview, I cosider that is better to learn each language separately.



2. If you have been trying to decide which language you want to start programming in, or would like to see the structure of other programming languages, this is the book.
   It will not teach you the from novice, but will give you a general insight into each of the languages.
   



3. If you are an engineer on the field, you already had general ideas about these programming languages, so this book is a joke! DON'T WASTE MONEY ON IT ! You need more specific books. This book is best for 2nd-year engineering students, or general readers who are CURIOUS about software development, it will satify your curiosity, but it will not take you anywhere ! The book title "...For ENGINEERS" stinks because engineers need much deeper book than that, they need 'real food', not just a 'smell' of foods which may [make them upset]!!!
   I gave '1 star' for the book title "...ENGINEERS" and '3 stars' for general readers, so my rating is 2 stars.

1 comments about Logical Problem SOlving.

1. This book purports to teach problem solving skills, that is, how to come up with a solution to a problem that we have not encountered before. The author's thesis is that it's easy to "solve" a problem when we are given an equation or formula, because all we're really doing is plugging in numbers and performing a computation. The object of the book is to learn how to solve the problem without having the formula given. To assist in doing this, the author provides a number of rules, such as:
   Rule 1: The Clarity Rule.
   1. Be clear about what information you have to work with.
   2. Be clear about what information you are trying to discover.
   Rule 3: The Picture Rule.
   Whenever possible draw a picture.
   He also gives many example problems with the solution design worked out and displayed in pseudocode and as a flowchart. There is generally a good clear description of how the solution was achieved, and the inclusion of both pseudocode and a flowchart makes the text accessible to readers with differing learning styles. For each problem there is also an implementation as a C++ program in text mode and as a Visual Basic program, each with comments describing how it works.
   Unfortunately, the devil is in the details and in this book the details do not live up to the promise. Take, for example, Problem 1.3: "What Celsius temperature is equivalent to a given Fahrenheit temperature." If we were given the formula C = (5/9)(F-32) all we would need to do is substitute the Fahrenheit temperature for F and perform the indicated arithmetic. The point of this book, however, is to find a solution without being given the formula.
   To demonstrate the problem solving process, the author supposes that we don't know the formula but do know the freezing and boiling points of water in both Celsius and Fahrenheit. He lists as "initial data" these "commonly known facts" and then explains how the formula can be deduced. Unfortunately he leaves unstated one crucial assumption, namely that the relationship is linear. In this case it is linear, but there are plenty of other relationships in the world, such as the distance a marble falls through air in a given period of time, that are not linear. If the relationship between Celsius and Fahrenheit temperature were not actually linear we could still follow the procedure outlined by the author but we would deduce a totally invalid formula.
   In the C++ implementation and the accompanying discussion the author again stumbles. He correctly states that writing
   Ctemp = 5 / 9 * ( Ftemp - 32 ) ;
   in line 11 of the program, while it is legal C++ code, will not get the job done correctly and why. He suggests three possible ways to make it work correctly, but ignores a fourth way that is probably the most simple, namely rewriting the line as:
   Ctemp = ( Ftemp - 32 ) * 5 / 9 ;
   Many other problems solved in the book likewise have issues. For example, it is certainly true that correctness of the solution is more important than efficiency, but it would be nice to have a reasonably efficient solution. In problem 2.2 the C++ implementation uses the power function three times to calculate the same value. The power function is expensive in terms of the computer's time, so it would be much better to calculate the value once and store it rather than calculate it three times. In fact, in this particular case the value is used inside a loop and the same result can be obtained by multiplying the value by two each time through the loop and avoiding the power function entirely.
   Problem 3.4 deals with finding estimates of the solutions of a fifth order polynomial equation. After introducing Rule 11, The Function Rule, the author proceeds to write C++ code that evaluates the polynomial in four different places. This is an ideal situation to apply the rule just stated on the previous page by writing a function to evaluate the polynomial at the required value, but the author doesn't do this. Instead he inserts the complete code to evaluate the polynomial in each of the four places in the program. (He also uses a very inefficient method to evaluate the polynomial, but that's a different issue.)
   In short, if I were using this book as a text for a course that I teach, I would end up spending time almost every class period explaining why the author's discussion is incomplete, what assumptions he failed to mention, and how his C++ code can and should be improved. I realize that this book is intended for an introductory problem solving course, or as an accompaniment to an introductory programming course. Novice programmers would not be expected, in general, to think of some of these issues on their own. On the other hand, novice programmers learn to write good code in part by reading and analyzing good code, so I find it unfortunate that the author has provided so many examples of poor code.