Customer Rating:  
Summary: Exactly What I Was Looking For
Comment: When I decided to start reading this book, I was hoping to expand my knowledge of N-Tier programming to the point where I could develop my own business framework (not necessarily built on CSLA.NET) that was flexible and reusable across various solutions (Web, Windows, *WPF, *Silverlight,etc). I was not disappointed.
The author begins the book with a brief explanation on architectures (physical vs logical) and also discuss high level requirements for what a business framework needs (chapters 1-2). These chapters are fine and are exactly what you would expect.
The book really starts to pay off starting with chapter 3 when the author begins to build the CSLA.NET framework. He walks you through all the important code implementations and the various reasons why he did X vs Y. For several chapters you build the CSLA.NET framework from the ground up. This framework is meant to be the foundation for any solution-specific business architecture.
After building the framework, the author guides you through implementing a specific business architecture (Project Tracker) the uses CSLA.NET as it's foundation. This architecture is then implemented in a web based, win forms based, and SOA based solution, all of which use the same business framework dll, but differing UI layers (obviously).
I was happy with the time I invested in reading this book and I would recommended it to any non-novice C# developer.
*Not specifically discussed in this book (this was written in 2006)
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good but not gread
Comment: A number of other reviewers have already covered this book well so I will just add a few comments.
This book is not general purpose. It only covers Mr. Lhotka's Csla framework. While that framework is interesting and fairly useful it should not be considered 'ready to use' for many real world projects. User authorization and data validation are both too limited for general use. And, in a manner similar to the .NET framework itself, Csla often causes problems by handling things a bit too automatically. And as others have pointed out, the poor separation of business logic and data access will cause complaints in some IT departments.
To Mr. Lhotka's credit, he acknowledges these problems and his license allows you to alter the framework. I do wish he would have given some examples of ways in which that could be done. The "Project Tracker" example from the book is a bit unusual and not particularly useful, which adds to the above problems.
I do feel it was very useful for the author to explain not only what the framework does, but how it does it. Without that information I would not have been able to actually get it to work (more or less) in a real-world application.
I've studied this book at length and built a non-trivial demo program using Csla. While I find both the book and Csla useful, I plan to explore other frameworks before I commit further to this one because it is simply not all that easy to use.
One final warning - the binding on my book broke within a few days of opening it. That certainly isn't the author's fault, but it makes me wary of purchasing more books from this company.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Nice work
Comment: A good written book, it's a step by step trip in the author's mind: from idea through design to coding of his framework. You may not agree with all choices (such as heavy reflection use) but you always know why he did. A good start point to build your own businnes objects and a rich bag for your developer's toolbox.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Somehow outdated
Comment: The book itself is somehow disappointing. Sounds like the old vb6 bo book, rather outdated.
The main concept involved as a guideline on design is the fat table module object arbitrarily called business objects by the author, when the market is more oriented to model domains. Why should we choose fat objects instead of other solutions? It is not discussed on the book.
A big issue is the way the book is written. He assumes you are a vb6 person. The author is not fully aware of the asp.net architecture. Look at this paragraph about keeping state on the page:
"There's no automatic
mechanism that puts all state data into each page; you must do that by hand. Often this means creating
hidden fields on each page in which you can store state data that's required, but which the user
shouldn't see. The pages can quickly become very complex as you add these extra fields.
This can also be a security problem. When state data is sent to the client, that data becomes
potentially available to the end user."
So he's completely unaware of viewstate object which address all these issues. I think asp.net has gone a long way now and this guy don't even know one of the basic revolutionary concepts brought up by as.net.
I have constantly the sensation that he is addressing a vb6 developer, but vb6 is long gone.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Very frustrating
Comment: Author spends too much time in theory and less time showing real examples. Author wants you to down load code and spends time discussing bits and pieces of each section. Very, very, very steep learning curve. Not a good investment - wish I could find a CSLA book that teaches you step by step....
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