A Real Idea Generator
Unless you are looking for a book on how to add a GUI to a Web Service (that you likely are not providing), then there will probably be little direct relevance in this book to what you are doing.However, this book is very thought provoking in that it explores:
* Using XML as your code format. (They present JSML or the JavaScript Markup Language.)
* Using XSLT to generate your source code.
* Using State Machines to handle application flow.
* Schema-Based Programming (SBP) aka declarative programming.
There are a few minor complaints:
* The same "Petri-Net" examples are here -- regurgitated from two other books.
* They still get the Model-View-Controller pattern wrong. What they describe is the Mediator pattern.
But, I quibble. I found the book valuable solely for the thought-provoking ideas, not for the methodology they espouse. Viewed from that angle, it is a good book.
I agree with the previous reviewer that it is VERY Microsoft- and .NET-centric. So, if you are looking for a widely applicable resource -- look elsewhere.
Innovative but rough around the edges
I was attracted to this book because I read Stephen Mohr's earlier book designing distributed apps a few years ago. This book doesn't disappoint if you're (deep) into XML / network applications and architecture. Although it is stimulating and provides several eye-openers, I could only reward this book 3 stars because it is way too Microsoft / .NET centric. If you don't have a full scale, recent Microsoft box running, you'll need to download all kinds of .Net (framework) stuff. On top of that, the samples do not run with all installations of msxml (I only got them going by installing msxml3sp2). Major headache, wasted quite a bit of time on this because of the cryptic microsoft debugging info - almost made me throw the book out of the window. Next time a python version please!
(2 reviews)