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Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture
by Martin Fowler
ISBN 0321127420
Date Read 8/2006

My Rating

Excellent patterns book. Written in a pragmatic language.

Fowler talks about patterns that relate to domain logic, remote services, data source and more. Even though you probably heard a lot of the patterns discussed in this book (if you've been following patterns), you will learn from this book.

Fowler presents the patterns in an interesting way. He tells you how he used it, what worked and did not work for him. He gives you a lot of insight, which in the pattern world, is very important I think as it gives you the context you can use the pattern. It's good to see what problems he went through, the issues with the potential solution. This book gives you exactly that.

The book has two sections, the first, around 100 pages, is where he discusses the patterns and tells you when to use it. The section about layering the architecture is excellent. The overall section is quick to read. After reading this section, you basically read the whole book.

The second section is the pattern reference where all of the patterns are listed.

The best thing in the book is the author's pragmatic language and very good, simple examples

This is an important book in my architecture/design library. I plan to re-read this book every year or so, in addition to having it on a side as a reference.