Expert C# 2005 Business Objects Book Review
by David Hayden ( Sarasota Florida ASP.NET Developer )
A few weeks ago I received an email from a reader asking if I planned to write a chapter-by-chapter book review of Expert C# 2005 Business Objects Book Review like I did for its predecessor, Expert C# Business Objects:
Although the author suggests Expert C# 2005 Business Objects ( Apress ) was essentially a complete rewrite to take advantage of the new features in the .NET 2.0 Framework, I didn't notice a lot of changes from Expert C# Business Objects. It felt like the same book to me, but to be fair, I didn't re-read Expert C# Business Objects again to refresh my memory. Due to my perception that little has changed, I felt the links above to chapter summaries still hold true today.
Summary of Expert C# 2005 Business Objects
The purpose of the book is essentially to showcase the CSLA .NET Framework, and lead the reader on a journey through its creation as well as the concepts and principles that shape it. One is essentially learning key technologies and concepts of object-relational mapping and creating domain ( business ) objects to support a distributed, scalable, and secure architecture.
During the journey, the author introduces you to the entire spectrum of technologies necessary for databinding, implementing business rules, tracking the life-cycle of business objects, object-relational mapping, and collaborating with other business objects. The author gets into the fundamentals of class design and discusses various interfaces ( IEditableObject, INotifyPropertyChanged, IBindingList, IDataErrorInfo, etc. ) and features in the .NET Framework ( serialization, reflection, delegates, etc. ) that can be implemented to support certain functionality.
The author discusses various object-oriented principles that govern the reason for assigning behavior to certain classes and why the domain objects collaborate in certain ways. He briefly mentions competing ideas and principles and the various pros and cons for choosing one over the other.
Most books only discuss the technology in a vacuum, leaving you to try to understand how to actually implement the technologies and concepts, but Expert C# 2005 Business Objects let's you have your cake and eat it, too. You get 1) a great introduction to class design, object-oriented principles, functionality in the .NET Framework, object-relational mapping, etc. and 2) pragmatic implementation of those concepts and technolgies to create a reusable framework for your business applications.
Even if like me you choose not to use CSLA .NET, the book is extremely valuable. The concepts and technologies in the book can be used in your own applications and frameworks to implement databinding, business rules, lifecycle tracking of business objects, etc. You can also use the ideas as a stepping stone to create your own implementations.
Recommendations
If you have the first book, Expert C# Business Objects, I honestly don't think you need to read Expert C# 2005 Business Objects. I didn't notice a lot of major changes in concepts and learnings from the previous book.
If you don't have Expert C# Business Objects and you are interested in business objects and object-relational mapping, the book is a must read in my opinion. It gives you a solid introduction to business object concepts and pragmatic implementation of those concepts into the CSLA .NET Framework.
Source: David Hayden ( Sarasota Florida ASP.NET Developer )
Filed: Expert C# Business Objects - Review, .NET Books, O/R Mappers
Additional Resources: OOP and Design Patterns Resources - Books Websites Articles