Rating: 
Summary: Essential tools for your use - Highly recommended!
Review: In the past, I have seen many posts on newsgroups from folks inquiring as to what *real world* C++ code is available for them to study so that they can learn *real-world* tools and techniques they can understand and thereafter really apply. ACE is such a body of code and this book does an excellent job of presenting what ACE is, what it does, how it does it, and, the part I like the most, WHY it does things the way it does. I work with high performance distributed real-time embedded system factory automation equipment and network-enabled software defined radios. I remember diving into these areas of software for the first time and spending A LOT of time wrestling with the idiosyncrasies of the socket and threading APIs of not just one but a few operating systems. It wasn't until I started using the ACE classes and patterns described in this book that I was able to master these complexities and get on with solving the problem of the business domain for which the software was being written. This book does a great job of giving you not only the view of networked and concurrent applications from 30,000 feet (with the domain analysis of network application development and the resulting isolation of important design dimensions) but also the view from the battlefield trenches (with code that abstracts away the gory details of native operating system APIs) as well as the stuff in between (real life networked concurrent programming examples that bring it all together). After reading the book, I definitely feel I have gained some invaluable experience from the authors' intense expertise with the gory details of and differences between operating system APIs. They explain these details and differences in a very clear fashion and then show how you can program more productively using the ACE classes that abstract away these platform differences, without loss of efficiency, as well as prevent you from making common nasty programming errors that could cost you hundreds of hours of debugging time. They explain, in full, the C++ techniques that ACE uses to achieve this. They explain not only how these techniques work but why they are used. I feel my expertise and judgment as a C++ network/concurrent programmer have increased greatly as a result of reading the book. Despite the complexity of the subject matter, the authors' writing style enables you to absorb and understand the information at a very fast rate. I highly recommend this book for anybody involved with programming (you should know C++) as it captures the essence AND details of how a complex programming domain can be systematically and methodically tackled and a solution formulated and implemented effectively in real-world applications.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent reading for any network programmer
Review: This is an excellent reading for any network programmer. More than ACE itself the concepts covered are of a great value. I am a beginner to intermediate network programmer, but an experienced programmer otherwise, and found this to be an extremely valuable resource in terms tackling large application frameworks from the ground up. The concepts are precise upto the point but extremely easy to read and digest. Of course, the book is assuming that you know quite a bit of every thing else that is not covered here. There are quite a bit of things that are totally missing or not correct based on the OS and the advances in Posix threading. Nevertheless this is an excellent source for any network programmer.
Rating:
Summary: A MUST for every network programmer
Review: This long awaited book keeps its promises. It takes you on a fascinating journey through the world of network programming. If you are using ACE, then this book provides you with everything you need to know to understand its general philosopy, its fundamental concepts -- the ACE wrapper facades --, as well as how to use the classes and frameworks that it provides. Even if you are an ACE expert, this book will likely give you some new insights for using ACE more effectively. Even for programmers who are not using C++, this book is of great value. The exploration of the design dimensions of network programming gives you a complete and sound overview about all challenges that can arise in that domain. If you want to understand more than low-level APIs, here you find the information you are seeking for.
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