Rating: 
Summary: A Tactical Book
Review: This book is a messaging technology book (as the small print states.) Thus, it's all about using messaging systems for "enterprise integration" and does not go deeply into other tech such as Web services and transactions. You should know that before you plunk down the bucks for this hard back. Also understand that we're talking about technology that is over a dozen years old, nothing really new here. The title should be "Designing, Building, and Deploying Messaging Solutions," minus the "Enterprise Integration Patterns." Would have saved me some money, I hope you don't make the same mistake.
Rating: 
Summary: Nice book, but with technical inaccurcies
Review: This is a nice book because it identifies and names the patterns for enterprise integration. But in certain places the author adds to the confusion out there in the software industry. In Chapter 2, Page 51, Martin Fowler says Web Services are the new way for Remote Procedure Invocation. This is not the case anymore. Today you are discouraged from looking at Web Services only as a firewall-friendly and platform-independent version of traditional RPC protocols. Web Services are one of the major (but not the only) element of the Service-Oriented Architecture and when it comes to Web Services, you should be really looking at passing messages, and not invoking remote components.
Rating: 
Summary: Invaluable resource for corporate developers
Review: This is the third pattern book in my collection (the other two are Analysis Patterns by Martin Fowler and the definitive Design Patterns by the Gang of Four) and IMHO this is the best example yet of where patterns can really improve the development process. This is the first book I've seen to address the area of enterprise development where the real heavy lifting takes place. Applications don't miraculously integrate with one another; it takes talented, knowledgeable IT personnel to wire everything together. If you're one of those people, Enterprise Integration Patterns is an important addition to your toolkit.
Chapter 2 takes the reader through the integration efforts of a fictional enterprise to demonstrate some of the patterns in action. The descriptions of the problems and their possible solutions... just make sense. You can really see the benefit that these patterns provide to simplifying, organizing and clarifying the situation.
Rating:
Summary: Patterns - revisited
Review: To do justice in reviewing this book, I should depict every single pattern and give you multiple examples on how it would apply to your job as a Project Manager, Software Architect, Technical Lead or a Developer. That would be a 500-page book all by itself. In short, this is one great book. The first book to actually take a complex and ever growing topic such as MOM, Message Oriented Middleware, and give you its benefits and the best practices/patterns all in one book. The author starts by giving the reader the top reasons why messaging should be chosen for the next project:
1) Remote communication
2) Platform/Language Integration
3) Asynchronous communication
4) Variable timing
5) Throttling
6) Reliable Communication
7) Disconnected operation
8) Mediation
9) Thread Management
The author goes into detail on each of these reasons. These reasons would convince any software architect, but the author goes even further than that and reiterates the benefits of each of these reasons and elaborates on them thru out the book. Chapter 3 of the book starts by breaking up a messaging system into its main components and briefly explaining each one:
1) Message Channel
2) Message
3) Pipes and Filers
4) Message Router
5) Message Translator
6) Message Endpoint Each of these high level topics is then broken down and various patterns are shown for each section. Just like the GoF book, the reader can simply go the desired section and read the patterns that are associated with that "subsystem" Each section is then followed by a full-blown example, which to me is priceless. The examples are shown using the most popular middleware vendors such as TIBCO, IBM, Microsoft, Web Methods, SeeBeyond and a couple JMS vendors. The examples show the similarities and differences in implementation but clearly show how EACH pattern that was just covered in the previous section applies to the example.
Having worked with many of the MOM vendors covered in this book, Chapter 7, Message Routing, is my favorite chapter. The author breaks down this topic into 14 different patterns:
i) Pipes and Filers
ii) Message Router
iii) Content-Based router
iv) Message Filter
v) Dynamic Router
vi) Recipient List
vii) Splitter
viii) Aggregator
ix) Resequencer
x) Composed Message Processor
xi) Scatter-Gather
xii) Routing Slip
xiii) Process Manager
xiv) Message Broker The chances are, not many of us need to write a MOM due to the fact that there are many vendors out there that are doing that already! But one could certainly use this section for education purposes, and/or use it a checklist of "nice-to-haves" when shopping around for a MOM vendor. By reading the book, you can figure out what "features" apply to you, your application and your enterprise, and take that list and see which vendor has implemented that feature.
In summary, Gregor Hohpe and Bobby Woolf have done a fantastic job depicting a very complex topic. I have made a place for this book right next to the original GoF Design Patterns book.
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