The book gives an interesting perspective into the growth of middleware solutions with special focus on enterprise systems architecture and distributed technologies. The long journey that begins with TP monitors and primitive "transaction machines" covers a great deal of ground outlining the need-driven evolution of various middleware alternatives and ends with the discussion of latest - the EJB, .NET and CORBA. There is a special emphasis on the changing landscape brought about by the rise of eCommerce and the need to manage large-scale enterprise systems.

I love the way author drives home some very complex concepts. This book can serve as an indispensable resource both for beginners and experienced professionals. While the novice can easily comprehend intricacies of IT architecture, experienced architects will find a lot of food for throughout and new insights into many issues. I personally had many "ah, what a brilliant idea" moments. You will find many useful and perhaps unconventional solutions to practical problems. It can even help an IT manager to understand the real middleware and IT architecture issues and to make intelligent decisions without having to get deep into technical waters.

Overall, this book is a must have and deserves 10 horseshoes. [...]

At the bottom of it all, the complexities of building large applications are based on some practical issues as well as some theoretical computing issues. How these architectural issues can be addressed in a product independent manner is at the heart of this book.

It was a pleasure to read again a non-verbose book showing the clarity of thought, and I strongly recommend it to any one interested in architectural issues of building large systems.

This seems to be quite the shotgun approach to middleware. Make that a fully automatic shotgun with a large magazine. From Java to CORBA to specific vendors and program scripts, Ms. Myerson manages to cover a lot of ground, sometimes deeply, sometimes shallowly, and mostly with acronyms. I useful (?) overview, but one that will leave the reader wanting to buy more focused books to solve real life problems--or run out to hire a consultant who knows it all anyway.

I found several chapters quite relevant to a project I'm currently working on--although they mostly describe why current business solutions are inadequate to solve our particular problem. I also found that the relevant chapters demanded that I purchase more books so that I could leverage what I had read into real information.

So, know a bit about middleware _before_ you get this book. Then, if you need a description of (nearly) current systems and approaches that covers vast amounts of acreage, give this one a shot to see where you need to focus your reading--but plan on buying other books.

This is not "The Complete Book of Middleware," it's a modestly broad-based and exhausting introduction to what's out there and what it does.

I like the complete coverage of both transaction and queuing approaches, and the vendor-specific information that includes Microsoft's .NET and Sun's Java, as well as everything in between. The sections database middleware and middleware performance are especially valuable because they are more generic and applicable to a wider audience than the MS- and Java-centric sections.

While individual papers have a slight vendor bias, the book as a whole is vendor neutral. This is not a book for learning about middleware as much as a good description of what's currently available and their strengths and weaknesses. If you are looking for a more general book I recommend Chris Britton's "IT Architectures and Middleware: Strategies for Building Large, Integrated Systems" for the fundamentals, and David Linthicum's "B2B Application Integration" for a detailed text on how to employ middleware in practice. However, this book will give vendor-specific details and a more up-to-date view of middleware that are missing from Britton's and Linthicum's books. If you're a system architect or consultant this book is an excellent desk reference.