Building N-tier Applications with COM and Visual Basic 6.0 [Paperback]

For people who are experienced in programming (not necessarily VB or COM), I suggest you read on.

The thing that I don't like about this book is that it goes on and on explaining something that could be represented by one or two sentences instead of a whole paragraph. LOTS of paragraphs can be totally omitted without lossing contents or flow.

For example, "But don't get too worked up about the term tier. Adding tiers does not necessarily mean another server is required for your application. Tiers can be logical as well as physical. Putting another tier in the loop might simply mean creating another service or series of components as part of your application. You create the tiers as necessary for your application. Besides, the term tier is fairly loose, and you can classify just about any major component as a tier."

In the above paragraph the only information that is actually useful to me is "Tiers can be logical as well as physical." In fact, if you have been programming for a few years, you don't need this peice of information because you probably know that tier can be logical or physical. Throughout the whole book I found lots of fillers like this one.

I read lots of computer books and all I want is quick information and I don't have time to go through all these unnecessary words to find them. If I want to read books with fillers, I would read a novel. So I am returning this book (sad).

I suggest another book which is far more concise and get to the point "Programming Distributed Applications with COM and Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0" The only thing this book lacks is the description about interaction between SQL Server and COM. I have not finished this book yet but so far I am giving it at least a 4 star.

This book did not add much to what I already knew. It tries to cover conseptual/architectural issues as well as "real-life" programming issues. But there is a clear gap between the level at which these are covered. The language and style of conseptual coverage is quite dence and complex and probably assumes some experience in architecture/design areas, whereas the language and examples of programming coverage is over-simplistic, as if meant for people that are new to VB (not just to MTS). That is why I said that auhtors probably did not have their target audience clearly defined.

I think this book is more useful for managers that want to stay current with overall design trends and terminology than for practical programmers.

Authors often refer to their book as a "wihrlwind tour" on developing distributed apps. And that's really what this book is.

I found the chapters that cover architectural issues most usefull. The rest of information was probably intended for people with less experience in COM/MTS programming.

If you want a more thorough overview of COM/MTS (within the boundaries of VB) with more accent on programming side, I would recommend Ted Pattison's "Programming Distributed Applications with COM and Visual Basic 6".

P.S. Unfortunately this book was not free from some errors. For instance, on page 129 authors ask you to open some sample project and immediately proceed to Properties and set Binary Compatibility, WITHOUT saying that you should compile DLL first and specify this DLL file as a reference point. Not a big deal, but the error message VB provides is not the most descriptive one and for someone with lack of experience this can be quite a nuissance.

The only drawback I've seen so far is that the author missed highlighting the important code section like: GetObjectContext() in the every first example of how to create the first MTS component. Well, the good thing is that you won't want to miss any parts of this book and like to read every written line anyway. If you have intention to learn MTS, this book is definitely the start, and it won't let you down.

There are many other MTS books out there too, but I think without this one, others are either too advanced or do not cover the foundation good enough. Start with this first!

Good luck.