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Microsoft Visual Basic Design Patterns (DV-MPS General) Review by Daniel Moth
Very Good content. Bad style. Needs more Patterns. 3.5 stars
The author acknowledges Gamma et al for their brilliant `Design Patterns' book and recommends that we read it (there are 23 patterns described there). I could not agree more, as the introduction to patterns found there is far superior to the one in this book.
To take advantage of most design patters in VB, one has to tweak them a bit so as to cater for the lack of some OO features in the language. It is exactly that that this book aims to fulfil. Chapter 2 (30 pages) provides an excellent description of VB's OO limitations and how to overcome them. The main points are further reiterated as necessary while describing the patterns in chapters 4-14.
10 patterns are described, 7 taken/based on the Gamma (Adapter, Bridge, Proxy, Factory Method, Prototype, Singleton and State). The other 3 are: Object By Value (a serialisation pattern), Repository (persisting object state to a data store) and Event Service (alternative to the Event mechanism that is based on connectable objects). Although each pattern is described in detail, Stamatakis uses a derivative of OMT for class diagrams and his own notation for sequence diagrams; personally, I found his diagrams hard to follow and also inaccurate. In addition, his writing style proves his claim that he is a developer first and a writer second. On the upside, for each pattern he provides a mini application with code on CD, which is a great idea and very useful.
Finally, a good job was done at describing further insights on the effects of each pattern to COM components. There is good stuff in this book...if only the writing style and notation were friendlier...