Enterprise Patterns and MDA: Building Better Software with Archetype Patterns and UML eBook Download

The result is a practical, no-nonsense approach to building robust business applications that can be immediately applied in a corporate setting.


Great resource
This book is a great resource for common data patterns.

The meat of this book is a catalog of UML patterns associated with the enterprise domain. The authors mention Analysis Patterns, but call their patterns 'archetype' patterns. Fortunately, the authors advocate a 'literate modeling' approach, that explains the interactions in plain English, and the authors' writing is clear and unstodgy, effectively highlighting the important parts of each pattern, and where variation can be introduced. They claim their archetype patterns are sufficiently flexible to cover a wide range of enterprise, and I have to say they do a very good job of convincing you they've thought of most of the special cases, and how to unify them in one pattern.

Even if you aren't actually an enterprise programmer (and I'm not), I still highly recommend this book, just for the large number of examples of how to successfully model a complex domain.

//wiredweird


Great practical material instead of esoteric theory...
Over the last month or so, I've been reading Enterprise Patterns And MDA - Building Better Software With Archetype Patterns And UML by Jim Arlow and Ila Newstadt (Addison-Wesley). This is another one of those books that I thought would deliver one thing and instead produced much more than I expected.

Chapter breakdown: Archetypes and Archetype Patterns; Model Driven Architecture with Archetype Patterns; Literate Modeling; Party Archtype Pattern; PartyRelationship Patter; Customer Relationship Management Pattern; Product Pattern; Inventory Pattern; Order Pattern; Quantity Pattern; Money Pattern; Rule Pattern; Summary; Archetype Glossary; Bibliography; Index

Now, when I requested this for review, I was expecting something in terms of programming patterns and technical material. While the Inventory model is very comprehensive in the book, you can also pull the pieces you need to model the reality that exists in your own business.

There's some very practical benefits you can gain from this book. And if you're a developer who also has to design the systems, you'll look like a wizard when you complete a solid design with features the customer didn't even realize they needed.


Modeling patterns worth the price alone
The MDA in the title of this book probably overstates the amount of MDA related content in the book. The real value of this book, and the bulk of the book, is in the third part which gives in depth models for the common enterprise application requirements. They start with an excellent object model for a 'Party' (as in a contact database), and continue on at the same level of depth for other common entities and processes, such as orders, payments, purchase orders, business rules, monetary values.

These patterns are probably too in-depth for a small business application, but they serve as an excellent starting point that you can trim to create a model that has the right level of complexity for your application. You can find books on how to write SQL, and generally how to model a database for a given problem domain, and other books on how query the database and make transactions.

Computer science students, get this computer ebook by download itEnterprise Patterns and MDA: Building Better Software with Archetype Patterns and UML from Rapidshare/Megaupload/Hotfile for free.