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A Review of Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture by Martin Fowler

Overall I was impressed with the quality of Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture. Although the code examples were necessarily simple, sometimes painfully simple, you could feel the experience embedded in the book. Most of these patterns I’ve encountered at some time or another, but Martin gave them a fresh look and maybe took a different approach than I had in the past. It was also interesting to compare Java and C# code (sorry, no VB.NET), seeing the differences and pontificating about which was the better approach.

I would only recommend this book if you are an experienced software developer. If you don’t have a few large-scale type projects under your belt, you won’t think many of the patterns are useful, applicable, or even necessary. If you do, though, reading this book will be well worth your time.

Check out more book reviews at the WeProgram.NET Book Review page.

Published Feb 11 2004, 11:37 AM by darrell

Comments

Steve said:

Do you read a book a night? ;-)

# February 11, 2004 7:41 AM

Darrell said:

Hehehe. No, but about 1 every 2 weeks, depending on length and difficulty of the subject matter. I did read 5 books while I was out of work (8 days + 1 weekend) due to my ankle, but you can't sustain that pace and still do things like WORK that actually put food on the table. :)

# February 11, 2004 8:00 AM

Steve said:

Man thats a lot of reading :) I probably only get through 1 (maybe 2) per month. I've been so busy with a couple side projects I've been seriously slacking lately. Oh well, such is life.

# February 11, 2004 9:24 AM

Darrell said:

Yeah, it varies for me too. Right now I'm just "unbusy". :)

# February 11, 2004 9:30 AM

DonXML Demsak said:

I loved Martin Fowler's book. As an experienced developer I'd say that if you want to learn how to communicate some of our ideas to other developers, this book is a must read. It definitely gives names to a lot of development patterns, and makes it so much easier to describe your designs to others.

# February 11, 2004 12:29 PM

Maxim V. Karpov said:

Darrell,
I think this is MUST read for any developers. Design Patterns are great for developers who are new to OOP. It provides them with better understanding why we do things with Objects that we do in Object Oriented Enviroments such as .NET Framework. Martin is the man when it comes to Design Patterns for Enterprise!

Maxim

[www.ipattern.com do you?]

# February 11, 2004 11:40 PM

Darrell said:

DonXML - Maybe I didn't express it in the review, but I thought the books was excellent! I rated it 5 stars on Amazon. I am already trying to change my vocabulary to reflect those patterns. In this way, the book attempts to do what the UML is supposed to do for modeling.

# February 12, 2004 1:11 AM

Darrell said:

Maxim - I agree it's a must read. However, I know that when I read pattern-type books when my knowledge was still at a beginners level, I did not get as much out of the book as I would with more experience/knowledge. In my opinion, it's sort of a catch-22 with patterns and experience. Which do you learn first? Probably both!

# February 12, 2004 1:13 AM

Steve Hebert said:

Hi Darrell,

Thanks for the recommendation on this book in my book list today. I'm looking forward to it - I just ordered it from amazon.

Thanks again,
-Steve

# July 13, 2004 7:51 AM