Customer Reviews

A3QGF6VF3VXTPP said
This is a must read if you want to learn how to develop best practice, scalable, object-orientated .NET systems. It starts off by discussing the issues which need to be faced, and the various tradeoffs that need to be considered. It introduces the advanced .NET techniques that will be required, and then works you through the development of a practical, free to deploy, framework within which to develop your applications.

Finally the book uses the framework to develop some example business objects, then deploys the BO's in three different modes; a Windows Forms application, a ASP.NET internet application, and as Web Services.

This is a real-world application framework that many people are using for their applications. Visit the author's web site to see the community which has formed around this book and framework. I can't post html here, but as a hint try the author's surname dot net. There is an article there which illustrates, via example, the many benefits that you will get from reading the book, using the framework, and joining the community.

AUOL8284BYMV7 said
First: This book is not "N-Tier for Dummies". It's pretty heavy going. To get value from it, the reader should be pretty familiar with .NET and with object-oriented programming.

The book provides a complete walk-through of application design, using a framework ('CSLA') that provides most of the basic infrastructure needed for a scalable, maintainable application. The framework isn't simple, and one really needs to understand how it works to use it effectively. That takes some time, but for me, it has been time well spent.

This book (and the CSLA framework) provides three important benefits: First, it is a great way to learn application design, from beginning to end. Second, the CSLA framework frees the designer to focus on the business objects that do the work of the applications, without getting bogged down in a lot of low-level infrastructure. And finally, it presents a fully-documented and widely-used application architecture. It's easier to hire and train developers for an application based on the CSLA framework, which has been around for about ten years.

This book probably won't help developers who write simple database front-ends. It's overkill. But I would recommend it to anyone who designs or develops applications that do more than collect user input and display query results.

A2K0JZN74WFCYO said
After carefully going through one c# book on design patterns. I had anticipated that going through the lhotka c# business objects book would be a breeze but boy was I wrong. Mr. Lhotka uses OO to the extreme in his framework and outlines his reasons behind tailoring the OO to his base classes in his framework unlike other book. Design patterns are for small apps. Enterprise applications take advice from this book. I have yet to see another book with this kind of detail and quality.

A282XXO5L4OEOU said
This book is definitely targeted towards expert C# individuals who are not only well versed with .Net technologies but have excellent OOP skills.
His framework CSLA has earned lot of kudos, though some of his designs can be easily refactored. Having said that, I think his designs are very extensible and could be easily customized for your individual needs.
Book starts off with pretty much basic stuff on .Net and ever growing demand for Distributed architecture.
Chapter 1 definitely resolves misunderstandings associated with distributed architectures. I think it's a must read for novice as well as expert architects.
Chapter 2 briefly goes through individual CSLA components and their responsibilities. A definite read if you want to have better handle of the framework!!!
Chapter 3 talks about the technologies used by the framework to accomplish his goals, like reflection, remoting, .Net attributes, .Net security, Enterprise services etc
The actual work begins from chapter 4 till 7 [atleast for me, because i am not UI guy]
He briefly talks about Web-Services in chapter 10, though i felt he could have added more content to it. But i guess this book is not on Web-Services.
Chapters 8, 9, 11 are basically oriented towards UI and Reporting needs!!

But while i was reading, i really couldn't justify most of the framework objects in the project. Though, i was impressed with a few, like -
ReadOnlyBase, ReadOnlyCollectionBase: a read only object and collection
- Rules collection and its associated objects - this was really helpful for validating data elements. in fact, i expanded it by using .Net custom attributes for e.g.

[IsRequired(True)]
[ValidLength(Max= 25, Min= 10, Message= "...")]
public string CustomerName {
..
The rules collection would simply use reflection and walk through each object and build broken rule collection & then pass it to UI
SafeDataReader - was very useful because application developers now don't have to worry about data conversions and db null values.
Data portal services - excellent design by Rockford !!! Allows us to retrieve, save data using local or remote objects with just one change in configuration file...
The list goes on!!!

He strikes a good balance between frameworks and simple coding...
What the author is good at that he triggers your thinking process. Once you start understanding his framework, you would gain confidence in designing your own or extending his framework. you might end up saying 'now why i didn't think about that'...he lets your design ideas grow!!

At the end, I recommend this book to architects but also would like to put a word of caution not to blindly adapt to the framework design, instead leverage the design ideas and customize it per your needs!!!

A13KSS397GJK9A said
Ever buy an expensive technical book based on glowing reviews in Amazon, only to get that sinking feeling on the first skim of the content.
This book is a rehash of an old book for VB6. The old book documented the authors design for a distributed n-tier client server application architecture in VB.
This book translates that design into C# (or VB.Net if you buy the other rehash).
My problems with the book:
First the whole n-tier client server thing is yesterdays buzz word. With web servers and web services becoming mature, it made me smile to see such quaint language... Ok I am a recent returnee from the world of Java, but the concepts in this book are rather dated.
Secondly authors that write frameworks rarely do a good job of it - frameworks need to evolve with real world use to expose weaknesses and flaws. I suspect that his proprietory framework was not that great in VB6 either.
Thirdly the mechanisms and strategies that worked in VB6 will not translate well into .NET - so much is available out of the box, but so much has to be recast to make proper use of the .NET framework that a book translating a VB6 framework is liable to be trapt in a dated design.

Not recommended.