Rating: 
Summary: Great descriptions abd business cases
Review: This book is good and offers lot of business applications to various design patterns. It actually explains how and where the patterns can be used. However, it does require that you know the basics of the patterns.This book forms a good follow-up to the Gang of 4 book.
Rating:
Summary: A must have...
Review: This book is required reading for all Architects and Modelers. It helps one frame how to build reusuable systems not only from the technology perspective but will give you insight into how to structure actual business process. It will encourage you to think in alternative ways.
Rating:
Summary: A must have...
Review: This book is required reading for all Architects and Modelers. It helps one frame how to build reusuable systems not only from the technology perspective but will give you insight into how to structure actual business process. It will encourage you to think in alternative ways.
Rating: 
Summary: A little dispointed for an excellent book
Review: This is certainly a good book about patterns. I found it clearly written by the author. Also he provided his own graphics symbols on the front and back pages in his book so we can understand the patterns in his book. However, he chose smalltalk to explain his codes. I think most readers are more familiar with C++ or Java than smalltalk. I wish he could provide those sample code on the addison-wesley web site (or his own site) with Java or C++. He promised (in his book, page xix) to put "further materials to keep this book alive". However, I did not see much update on this site or his own home page on this book.
Rating:
Summary: An excellent book for all analysts
Review: This is simply an excellent book; quite possibly the best book I have read on analysis. Martin Fowler cheats by actually being able to write. He has a very lucid prose style making this a very readable book (a strength that also manifests itself in his book UML Distilled) even though it deals with complex subjects. The book deals with using patterns to address particular business areas. However, it has a great deal to offer anybody interested in analysis or modelling (whether they are working in the OO world or not) and provides one of the best explanations I have read of the purpose and objectives of modelling. Each problem area is presented very clearly and a number of different solutions are presented at different levels of abstraction (and hence complexity) with lots of useful insight into the factors that would determine the appropriate model. Analysis Patterns is a book that bears reading and re-reading. I frequently refer it as an excellent source of interesting ideas on ways of approaching complex modelling & analysis issues. I have never managed to take one of the patterns and apply it as is; however, the ideas and concepts expressed in the book influence many of my models (even when the business problem I am tackling initially appears to be entirely unrelated to any of the patterns). Frankly, this is a book I wish I had written.
Rating:
Summary: The only "practical" book on deciding which design to use
Review: What I am nearly always missing when reading about design (esp. when sifting through design case studies) is the path that lead to a design. The weighing of arguments that made the author/designer choose the solution at hand. The context and the "drivers". Fowler is the only one achieving this: offering different solutions and discussing their advantages and disadvanteges. Yes he dives deep and goes into abstract concepts, but sometimes solutions only differ from an abstract viewpoint. You need quite some understanding of design principles, to (i) understand the book and (ii) be a good designer.
For me this is the book that helped me understand the design process as it should be. And using "analysis patterns" he gives plentiful of concrete examples, sharpening your mind.
One remark to everyone critcizing Fowler for not using UML: This book does not use UML since it dates back to 1996! When UML was not really there. Version 0.9 of the UML came out in the second half of 1996. And btw. Martin Fowler has written the very first -- and still one of the best -- book on UML ("UML Distilled", now in its 3rd edition).
| 
