Architectures Module: Solution Architectures Through Components

Rating:
Summary: Very Useful Treatment of Component-based Architecture
Review: This paperback is just great! Umar gives a very practical yet thorough discussion of component-based architectures. The material is especially useful for IT managers and students in IS/IT. I really like Umar's style of defining terms and establishing a framework for discussion before discussing a topic. I wish other authors would do something similar. He uses the same style in all modules of this handbook. Every time I thought that the discussion was getting dry and an example could be useful here, guess what, an example appeared. The numerous diagrams and sidebars significantly add to the learning experience.

Even while discussing intricate topics, author's sense of humor shows (the discussion of good versus bad architectures is an example). The topics are well chosen and covered. The first chapter defines and explains different types of solution architectures, especially component-based architectures. The second chapter takes a closer look at business components and component-based architectures. I was really surprised, and delighted, to see a complete chapter on enterprise data architectures in the modern Web-XML environments. I rarely see this type of discussion in architecture books. It also shows the strength of the author in this area. The architecture implementation chapter is extremely valuable for developers because it shows several implementation examples with sample codes. The last chapter gives state of the practice, market, and art and rounds off this paperback very well. The chapters are long but they go through each topic completely -- several breakpoints divide the long chapters into digestable sections.

Highly commendable work.