wagnerblog.com

I had mentioned a few days ago that one of my Christmas presents was Ted Neward’s book “Effective Enterprise Java”. Having finished it, I can highly recommend it to any programmer Java centric or .Net centric. It doesn’t matter which camp you are in, the information presented applies equally well. I dohave to give credit to Rocky who first mentioned it in his blog and got me all curious.

My favorite aspect of the book discusses various methods of data access and data transfers in Enterprise settings. Specifically I appreciate the fact that Ted talks about the two more prevalent way of dealing with data - by using business objects and by using rowsets. For the past few years I have vaccillated back and forth between each approach. I appreciate the beauty of a nice domain model but at the same time couldnt completely discount the work Microsoft has done with ADO.NET (which is very table / row centric) . In my quest for information I first came across Martin Fowler’s Enterprise Patterns 2 years ago. Fowler attempts to deliniate the difference by explaining patterns such as Table Gateway and Domain Approach. But his work while extremely valuable for a “mile-high” aspect lacked the feeling of practical experience. After reading it I felt a bit like an engineer trying to build a car based on the description of a technical writer who never used a wrench in his life. Sure the information was valid and well presented but it somehow seemed disconnected from real life experience.

Not so with Ted Newards work. He discusses both the Domain Object architecture and the DataTable Gateway (rowset) approach and contrasts them against the needs of a large scale multi-tiered system. In doing so he provides a single cohesive resource based in actual development experience. Its a great book.

I am left with only one question: Where does a small-mid sized aplication end and where does and enterprise system begin? It strikes me that so many of us jump on the latest and greatest bandwagon and use technology for the sake of technology even in applications that dont need it at all. And I guess part of the never ending discussion in the industry could be seen as people being excited about some new way of doing something and wanting to use it everywhere. If all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. The point being we have a lot more than a hammer in our arsenal. Being fluent in numeous architectural approaches and not a fanatical adherent to any single specific one could make me an outsider…. I hope not.