Building Reliable Component-Based Software Systems Review

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Building Reliable Component-Based Software Systems ReviewOh no, another book with a misleading title...
It should have been called "Building ***snip*** Component-Based Software Systems". See the difference ? The only reason I chose to read it was that magic "Reliable" word, and now what do we have ?
So, magic mirror, please tell us who should read this book ?
Quote:
"Experienced developers will find useful technical details ... while inexperienced developers can learn about the principles ... the book is [also] aproppriate as a course book ... for graduate ... or undergraduate students."
I for one am an experienced developer, now where are my technical details ?
Before I continue, please keep in mind that my opinion is biased by the word "Reliable" in the title. The book hardly says a word about reliability, for God's sake.
The book is a compilation of assorted chapters written by different European researchers. Researchers more than practioners that is. Basically the book hardly says anything you wouldn't know if you have ever put your hands on OOP.
First chapters come to components from different perspective each, but most remain introductory. Component is this, interface is that, environment is also concerned... Components are good (but too complex to say anything else)...
Many of the non-trivial conclusions are highly controversial. Example, chapter 3, "Architecting Component-Based Systems". The authors take 3 "architectures", namely "Pipes and filters", "Blackboard" and "Object-oriented", give each a half a page discussion, and come to the conclusion that out of the three the "Pipes and filters" is the most secure (!). Excuse me, but this is absurd.
Various discussions, ex. semantical integrity (limited with design-by-contract), roles, failure injections, product lines were reasonably interesting.
Chapters 11, 12 touch the Koala platform developed at Philips and used internally for their TVs and stuff. Ch. 12 was interesting to read, and is the only one that comes close to the promised "technical details". It's counterpart, ch. 11 is burdened with controversial conclusions, ex. "For example, the use of Windows results in applications based on message loops, which may not be the best architecture in all cases" or "A company that sells a software package can only survive if it has many customers".
The rest of the chapters is dedicated to using components in real-time systems and describing several case-studies. What do they say ? Using components is real-time is more complex than ever... It's difficult to introduce common approaches where machine power is limited... Real-time is special... Well, what do you know.
I won't discuss case studies which take last several chapters. They are various, some too aerial, some not, but they certainly say little new. Emulating a RTOS on top of Windows NT by means of a hi-res timer and cooperative user-level multithreading ? Tag-your-stuff-and-put-it-in-Active-Directory kind of system ? COM-like something which is not quite COM ? It's not RELIABLE.
The writing style is far less than perfect. Look, I understand that the book is written by a bunch of European professors, moreover, I'm not a native English speaker myself, but !
How shall a reader cope with something like: "There is that system, it has two parts to it - BOM and BOF. BOM does this, BOF does that." ? Oh, BOM it is, huh ? Thank you very much, it's all clear to me now. I mean, if you describe a system which is obviously transparent to you, why not make it easy for reader to understand ?
Also fun is repeating same things multiple times within a chapter. Like "Foo is bar, but biz is not baz. ... 2 pages ... Foo is bar, but biz is not baz." First time you encounter this, it's like "wait a minute, I've just seen exactly same thing... flip... flip... oh... what a heck ?". Again, I agree that one big book is better than one small book, but it's somehow disturbing.
I also didn't understand having a UML diagram with Name being a separate entity linked to all other entities on the stage. I always thought that Name should be an attribute.
And on and on it goes...
Therefore 3 out of 5, may be less, may be more for students.Building Reliable Component-Based Software Systems OverviewCBSE (component-based software engineering) is the emerging discipline of the development of software components and systems incorporating such components. This resource provides a practical guide to building reliable component-based software systems. It aims to give software-development professionals the guidance they need to effectively manage complex software through the integration of pre-existing components. Moreover, the book discusses the benefits and risks to be considered when developing components and systems using components. This hands-on reference describes technical and non-technical aspects of systems development using components and component development. It focuses on real-time systems, employing case studies using component-based approaches in the development of industrial automation systems. This book should be of interest to: software developers; project managers; researchers; and professors and students interested in component software engineering.

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