Expert One-on-One Visual Basic .NET Business Objects

In the late 1990s, author Rockford Lhotka wrote extensively on creating distributed, object-oriented Windows applications using Visual Basic 6, COM, and DCOM. The introduction of .NET has motivated him to revisit these themes and revise his strategy. In this book, he explains the changes introduced by .NET, the new possibilities that are emerging, and an essential tutorial on the best ways to make .NET work for you.

This book is divided into three parts. In the first, Lhotka analyzes logical and physical application architectures, exploring their effect on scalability, fault tolerance, and performance. In the second, he implements and documents a Visual Basic .NET framework for the creation of distributed, object-oriented applications that employ .NET technologies including remoting, serialization, and auto-deployment. This framework encapsulates functionality such as database access, transaction handling, and location transparency.

In the last part of the book, you'll use the framework to create a sample application, and discover the ease with which you can write Windows, Web, and Web services interfaces for the underlying objects. In addition, this book contains the author's own Component-based, Scalable, Logical Architecture (CSLA .NET), an object-oriented framework that can act as the foundation for a diverse range of enterprise applications. By the end of the book, you'll be free to examine, use, and modify this architecture for your own needs.

User review
Excellent Book for Architects
Rocky's book is a MUST HAVE!
His no-nonsense approach is straight forward and down to business. No fluff here, just PLENTY of meat.
His concepts are clear, precise and right on target.
Even if you are not currently design the next generation killer ENTERPRISE APPLICATION, his advise and knowledge are invaluable.

key words: INVALUABLE & MUST HAVE !

User review
Excellent real-world solution in building n-tier application
I've read many books on building apps with vb.net. This one really hits the jackpot. The thing with other books are it only gives you how to use tools, while this one applies those tools into real world problem. It deals nicely with various real world issue in building n-tier apps. I like the way he make special notes on some stuff that needs attention.

If you are building real world n-tier apps, buy this book. I can't wait to have his new book on Business object with VB 2005.

User review
useful information
I came to read this book AFTER having designed a framework of a company that has recently converted VB6 to VB.NET web apps with the keywork CLASS never used (just webforms and SQL Server client functions). Was interesting to see how many of the same concepts (such as the BaseBusinessObject having the `Fetch`, `Insert`, `Update`, and `Delete` methods) were the author's version of the same design pattern. Did find some useful ideas, such as having the Criteria class declared as a nested class inside the business object class, and then using an instance of Criteria to specify the parameters on which to build a where-clause in SQL. Also, it illustrates a poor man's version of a rule based system (`BrokenRules`) in which several asserts are performed and the broken rules of such assert fails contained in a list, for which, if not empty, the property IsValid returns false. I would not claim this book to be the answer to everything, nor would I say this is a great book, but it gave confidence and some new ideas for refinements for someone who has already implemented a similar framework, and it was useful to see another person's implementation.

User review
Excellent, unique content on applying best SW practices
I don't know of any other author as dedicated as Rocky Lhotka in helping developers to most productively apply software engineering best practices to solve real-world problems. VB .NET Business Objects is the only text I have found that is successful in developing 100% of the instruction needed for a developer with a moderate to advanced understanding of OO development to become significantly more productive when developing enterprise solutions.

I award Rocky 6.0 out of 5 stars on his the .NET version of his text. (A previous edition covered VB 6.0 and an upcoming edition will address VB .NET 2.0.)

No single text can address all aspects of software development and this book far exceeds all or almost all others available. That being said (and without reducing the score I assign to Rocky's book), there are always improvements that can be made. Here are my recommendations for the next edition:

Readers who are new to OO development and who are using this text to understand best practices of applying OO techniques while they simultaneously learn OO basics from another source will find the text challenging. Rocky's book provides some basic OO instruction but is most beneficial to those with a fairly solid grasp of the underlying concepts. That statement is not intended to reflect negatively on the book, as no single book can address all needs.

One suggestion of how Rocky might expand the audience for his next edition, however, is to select a different case study for the book to follow. The current edition uses a Project Tracker case developed by Rocky for the book to illustrate the concepts he describes. Less experienced developers could gain more benefit from the book if Rocky selected a case study that was already described in a well-respected beginning-intermediate OO text. Rocky could focus on how to implement the case study using the CSLA .NET framework. Readers who are new to OO design could reference the detailed instruction in the corresponding text if they need a better understanding of the underlying OO concepts.

I am sure there are many case study options available for selection; I happen to like the POS case study used by Craig Larman in `Applying UML and Patterns: An Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design and Iterative Development, Third Edition.`

With such an approach, Rocky could produce a volume that would be as beneficial to beginning developers as his current text is to intermediate and advanced developers. The level of support that Rocky (along with the large and responsive VB .NET BO community of readers) graciously provides would likely be significantly reduced if an existing text answered many readers' basic OO questions.









User review
You must buy this book!
I have bought many book, most of them have been worthless. This is not one of them. I have read this book twice and it was worth it. The author actually responds to postings at his website. If you really want to think about what you are doing when you are creating business objects, You must buy this book. The material is somewhat complex and there were alot of time I did not understand how it worked. Once I got it to work I was very impressed. I am thinking about buying the book again, because my copy is so worn and so full of marks. When was the last time you bought a book twice. It is that good!