Software Architect Bootcamp [Paperback]

Unfortunately, the other half of the book is less useful. The technical parts are either too simplistic, or too detailed when discussing a particular solution favoured by the authors. The text frequently tends to become a repetitive and thinly-disguised commercial for CORBA, and there is an obsession with standards such as RM-ODP which are simply not relevant to a great many commercial developers. The few examples are very simplistic, with no real discussion of many of the technical issues which a real architecture must address.

The book would have been much better for more care in its editing and presentation. The quality of proof-reading is in general poor, but becomes quite appalling in some of the technical sections - evidence perhaps that the authors allowed their technical stance to dictate a poor choice of word processor. The choice of diagrams seems random: some are good, but some difficult discussions cry out for a diagram (horizontal and vertical partitioning, for example), while in other places a diagram confuses where the text is clear. The reference list is incomplete, omitting even the authors' "primary" reference which is quoted, frequently, in the text. All this is doubly disappointing when you consider that one of the authors is the series editor, and both were co-authors of the excellent "AntiPatterns" book.

My advice: if you are happy with the technological side of software architecture, and want advice on how to be a better architect, then buy this book, but read chapters 5 through 9 before you even attempt to read the first part. If, however, you are seeking technical guidance in the real world of software from Microsoft, Oracle and a host of legacy systems, then look elsewhere.

But this is the first book of its kind, in my experience. Buried within are some extremely practical nuggets and an overall useful treatise on what it means to be an architect that serve to remind those of us with that title on our resumes to take pride in our work. Later chapters cover topics such as "Architecture vs. Programming," "Leadership Training," "Communications Training," "Architecture Mining," and a concluding chapter on "Psychological Warfare"--techniques for building and selling the perception that a given architecture represents the correct future course of a large organization. (I can't help but feel that one of the two authors was dumping in raw data while the other contributed insightful gems--I blame the apparent lack of an editor for the uneven result.)

Prentice Hall used to have higher quality standards. For this price, I was shocked to see so many typos, such as this from page 33: "...also we are adding some dynamic architecture elements represented metadata." In most cases, the meaning can be inferred, but here--perhaps the meaning is that the book had little or no copyediting.

In the case of software architecture, this book's approach to bootcamp is narrow in that it focuses on component-based architecture instead of a more general and encompassing treatment of this aspect of software engineering. Despite the narrow focus, this book covers some important fundamentals that will serve the new or aspiring architect well in his or her career path or job.

What I like most about the book is that it's independent of vendors and products. The foundation is, instead, based on standards and methods that are important to the discipline of software engineering in the component-based development domain. An excellent example is RM-ODP (Reference Model for Open Distributed Processing), which allows you to decompose an architecture into viewpoints to examine specific dimensions of requirements. Even if you do not adopt RM-ODP, the paradigm is a great foundation for architecture. Moreover, the Unified Modeling Language (UML)is placed into context with respect to architecture. Finally, although I personally believe CORBA has some problems, the mechanics and concepts are solid foundation material for understanding object request broker infrastructure as one building block of an architecture.

There are some things I do not like about the book. The oscillations between high- and low-level details are akin to a roller coaster and it's disorienting to a reader who is intent on learning the basics of architecture. The lack of good editing makes the book read like a patchwork instead of an "intense indoctrination."

Editing and writing problems notwithstanding, this book is a worthwhile (if ponderous) resource on an important aspect of software architecture for the new practitioner. Although the focus is on component-based development, the fundamentals can be extended into a more general view of architecture that will prepare the architect for his or her specialization in the real world.