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Analysis Patterns: Reusable Object Models (Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series)
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Analysis Patterns: Reusable Object Models (Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series) |
Author: Martin Fowler
Published: 1996-10-19 |
List price: $64.99
Our price: $51.99
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As of: December 02nd, 2008 09:40:29 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 A bit dated in a few spots, but quite good.
This is Martin Fowler's first book, published in 1997. The book is divided into two large sections.
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br /The first section details analysis patterns that Fowler has encountered across industries. These chapters cover several common domain patterns including representing organizational hierarchies, inventory, accounting, and others. Fowler approaches these chapters by starting with a simple model and repeatedly expanding on this model to fit more and more complex needs. This section of the book is interesting from an academic and a practical perspective. It was interesting to see how Fowler has approached different domain problems and I expect to reference these chapters as I tackle similar problems in the future.
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br /The second section of the book covers what Fowler calls Support Patterns. In these chapters Fowler discusses tiered architecture, presentation layers, facades, and association patterns. The second section on support patterns is less useful and some chapters are quite dated. While this information may have been useful in 1997, if you are looking for more information on layered architectures read Enterprise Application Architecture - a more recent book by the same author.
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br /I found this book to be quite good. I enjoy Fowler's style of writing and for the most part I found the book easy to follow. However, this is Fowler's first book and it lacks the polish of his more recent other books -- in a few spots it was hard for me to follow the author's train of thought.
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br /This book predates UML and the diagrams used throughout the book take a while to understand. There is a key to the models on the inside cover of the book, but if the diagrams had been updated to UML they would have been easier to understand. If needed, you can find UML diagrams for this book on Martin Fowler's website. I think sample code would have helped clarify some of the models as well, as was used in the "Gang of Four" book.
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br /If you are designing a domain model for a complex business, I think this book would be useful for you. If you are looking for similar books, I would suggest Design Patterns by Gamma, et al. ("Gang of Four" book), Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture, and Refactoring both by Fowler.
 The only "practical" book on deciding which design to use
What I am nearly always missing when reading about design (esp. when sifting through design case studies) is the path that lead to a design. The weighing of arguments that made the author/designer choose the solution at hand. The context and the "drivers". Fowler is the only one achieving this: offering different solutions and discussing their advantages and disadvanteges. Yes he dives deep and goes into abstract concepts, but sometimes solutions only differ from an abstract viewpoint. You need quite some understanding of design principles, to (i) understand the book and (ii) be a good designer.
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br /For me this is the book that helped me understand the design process as it should be. And using "analysis patterns" he gives plentiful of concrete examples, sharpening your mind.
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br /One remark to everyone critcizing Fowler for not using UML: This book does not use UML since it dates back to 1996! When UML was not really there. Version 0.9 of the UML came out in the second half of 1996. And btw. Martin Fowler has written the very first -- and still one of the best -- book on UML ("UML Distilled", now in its 3rd edition).
Truly Unique, Extremely Valuable Entry
Kind of funny, reading the reviews here makes it clear that this book is something of a sleeper, it has not gotten the exposure that a lot of the other pillars of the pattern community have. I think the reason is that people may glance at it and think that it is too domain-specific. In fact, this book does a lot of great things, it is a meditation on some crucial OO modeling issues. pThe first problem Fowler broaches is a patient's weight and he states, correctly I'm sure, that most programmers would just make weight a class property and make it be of type integer. But there are problems with that approach. First one is the issue of units. If you make it an int you are assuming that it is just a count of pounds. What happens if you want another measure? Furthermore, what happens when someone asks where the patient's weight has gone in the last month. pFrom this point of departure, many issues are taken up. For people who have grappled with OLAP before and know something about dimensional models, it will seem as though he is trying to make an operational into an analytical model, which experience has taught us is not good. But, in fact, there is sanity to Fowler's approach. pPersonally, if he ever does rev this book (read on his site that he is thinking about it), I wish he would consider writing a section that attempts to hide the observation elements and seamlessly map them back into the object model. Having a separate class keeping track of what the weight of a person represented by another class is does ultimately seem to undo the objectness of the model, but that's a minor nit. Definitely a book that I've returned to many times.
Study, don't just read this book.
I bet you are an object oriented software developer striving to build better applications. If you have not read GoF iDesign Patterns/i and followed that with Vlissides's iPattern Hatching/i, read those first. Follow those with this, Martin Fowler's iAnalysis Patterns/i.pAs two readings of iDesign Patterns/i took my OO knowledge from infancy to adolecence, iAnalysis Patterns/i will take you from adolecence to adulthood. Fowler's work does not put together patterns from the iDesign Patterns/i book, but takes its time to decompose actual application domain concepts to applicable object models. It will then be up to you to use your knowledge from iDesign Patterns/i to create mechanisms that support properly modeled business concepts as iAnalysis Patterns/i describes.pIf you like OO modeling and design, but are wondering how better to apply your modeling concepts, Fowler's book is something you will definitely benefit from. However, make a pot of coffee per chapter-this book is very dense with concepts.pFowler ends iAnalysis Patterns/i with some more easily read chapters on application design on a larger scale. You've heard of "n-tier," his discussion of the concepts of "n-tier" at the end of the book are possibly worth reading first.pAfter reading this book-and understanding it's motivations-you will never again be tempted to take "innocent" shortcuts in your application design. You will not be motivated to use "Strings" for "measurements" or "doubles" for "distances." You will look upon your peer's object designs either with a new understanding that they know that going the distance with their object model is worth it-and you won't demand they dumb down their design ever again-and you'll likewise gain intuition about where a simplistic business domain model is going to fail.
 A bit too abstract
There are lots of interesting ideas here, but the actual patterns themselves are not that useful as they are too abstract.
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