Rating: 
Summary: Outstanding Book!
Review: The author masterfully balanced the intricate, devilish details of COM, MTS and COM+ with readability requirements of developers. I have read more technically thorough books on COM and MTS, but have never taken away more solid understanding and practical application skills in these technologies from any other publication than Understanding & Programming COM+.The examples are clear, straightforward and entirely centered around demonstrating the COM, MTS and COM+ theory exposed. This book explains the facts of these common technologies, which are widely misunderstood and more widely misused/abused, in a very practical, real-world manner. A must read for all the guys running around like headless chickens blaming Microsoft because "MTX.exe keeps crashing!!!!!" - You know who you are ;-) Finally, this is a very technologically agnostic book, which fairly compares/contrasts competitive transaction brokers with COM+ and respectfully explains programmatic techniques to both C++ and VB developers in a way that will offend neither - definitely a feat in itself!
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding Book!
Review: The author masterfully balanced the intricate, devilish details of COM, MTS and COM+ with readability requirements of developers. I have read more technically thorough books on COM and MTS, but have never taken away more solid understanding and practical application skills in these technologies from any other publication than Understanding & Programming COM+. The examples are clear, straightforward and entirely centered around demonstrating the COM, MTS and COM+ theory exposed. This book explains the facts of these common technologies, which are widely misunderstood and more widely misused/abused, in a very practical, real-world manner. A must read for all the guys running around like headless chickens blaming Microsoft because "MTX.exe keeps crashing!!!!!" - You know who you are ;-) Finally, this is a very technologically agnostic book, which fairly compares/contrasts competitive transaction brokers with COM+ and respectfully explains programmatic techniques to both C++ and VB developers in a way that will offend neither - definitely a feat in itself!
Rating: 
Summary: Still more information on COM+ is needed.
Review: The book is not so bad if you want to be initiated to COM+, but many advanced topics like writing Resource Managers and Compensated Resource Managers are not covered. Also, if you are interested in directly working with the COM+ Catalog, this book is not for you: even the Catalog hierarchy is not described. I'll keep looking forward to see whether any other COM+ book has something about the Administration API. In few words: don't buy it if you already know "raw" COM. The "+" of COM+ in this book is only touched in a half. Probably many Internet sites over there have more and better information.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book for COM and COM+
Review: There is only I word I can describe this book - Excellent. It helps you in a lot of ways to understand how to program COM and COM+. The co-existance of VB and VC++ makes you understand the concept more clearly... strongly recommanded
Rating: 
Summary: Good Windows DNA Description
Review: This book gave me an excellent understanding of COM+ and the Windows DNA. It is definitely geared more towards C++ programmers than it is towards VB programmers, however, there is still a lot of good information for any developer trying to learn COM+. I read most of it (even the C++ parts), but, coming from a VB environment, some of it got tough to follow. After reading this book, I had a solid foundation, but I definitely needed to pick up a book that was geared more towards VB programmers to get more of a by example experience. The book I picked up Scot Hillier's book COM+ Programming with Visual Basic (also got Visual Basic and COM+ Programming by Example by Peishu Li). I am about a third of the way through it (I'll write a review on it when I get done with it), and it has been rock solid so far. In a nutshell, this is a good book to understand the architecture and concepts behind COM+ and the Windows DNA, but you may need to supplement it with another book that is more example driven to hammer home the concepts.
Rating:
Summary: Good Windows DNA Description
Review: This book gave me an excellent understanding of COM+ and the Windows DNA. It is definitely geared more towards C++ programmers than it is towards VB programmers, however, there is still a lot of good information for any developer trying to learn COM+. I read most of it (even the C++ parts), but, coming from a VB environment, some of it got tough to follow. After reading this book, I had a solid foundation, but I definitely needed to pick up a book that was geared more towards VB programmers to get more of a by example experience. The book I picked up Scot Hillier's book COM+ Programming with Visual Basic (also got Visual Basic and COM+ Programming by Example by Peishu Li). I am about a third of the way through it (I'll write a review on it when I get done with it), and it has been rock solid so far. In a nutshell, this is a good book to understand the architecture and concepts behind COM+ and the Windows DNA, but you may need to supplement it with another book that is more example driven to hammer home the concepts.
Rating: 
Summary: This book needs revision
Review: Yuck! I'm an experienced VC++, VB, COM, and MTS programmer for Window NT. I bought this book to help bring me up to speed with the changes for Windows 2000, specifically COM+ transactional services (the new MTS). First of all, the first 300 pages have little to do with COM+. It's a review of other programming issues, which belong in a different book. It's pure fluff and a waste of paper. Second, its treatment of transactions is very lacking. For example, it doesn't even discuss the importance of stateless development and that's very important to understand. Don't buy this book. Get "Visual Basic and COM+ Programming by Example" by Peishu Li or "Programming Distributed Applications with COM+..." by Ted Pattison or the golden oldie "Distributed COM..." by Jim Maloney (for NT).
Rating:
Summary: This book needs revision
Review: Yuck! I'm an experienced VC++, VB, COM, and MTS programmer for Window NT. I bought this book to help bring me up to speed with the changes for Windows 2000, specifically COM+ transactional services (the new MTS). First of all, the first 300 pages have little to do with COM+. It's a review of other programming issues, which belong in a different book. It's pure fluff and a waste of paper. Second, its treatment of transactions is very lacking. For example, it doesn't even discuss the importance of stateless development and that's very important to understand. Don't buy this book. Get "Visual Basic and COM+ Programming by Example" by Peishu Li or "Programming Distributed Applications with COM+..." by Ted Pattison or the golden oldie "Distributed COM..." by Jim Maloney (for NT).
| 
