Saturday, January 14, 2006
Stuff I'm reading - January 2006
I have always been a voracious reader since my youth - primarily non-fiction although I can be convinced to try a novel every so often. Enterprise architects generally tend to be a well-read lot (and quite a few are authors in their own right). However, only reading geek tomes shortens one's worldview. Not good if you plan to be effective with non-geeks, like the business.
Anyway, my system is short and sweet: I separate titles into geek and non-geek divisions and a simple rating system:
Non-Geek Tomes
Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near, Viking, 2005. You cannot help but admire this man and what he has accomplished in numerous areas, particularly in artificial intelligence. While I'm a big fan of his earlier work, The Age of Spiritual Machines, I've got a few issues with Singularity, particularly that he ignores cultural, economic, and political issues with respect to human-machine fusion and that the human race can always be bailed out of misery by good technical ideas. He also tends to be repetitive on topics he brilliantly covered in Spiritual Machines. Rating: Worth the $.
Geek Tomes
Thomas Erl, Service-Oriented Architecture - Concepts, Technology, and Design, Prentice-Hall PTR, 2005. A huge volume crammed with just about anything and everything you'd ever want to know about SOA. While I particularly liked the case studies and technical concepts explained in plain English (makes the book more marketable, I reckon), I'd have rather had those in some kind of supplement or separate volume because it distracted me a bit from absorbing the core material. Well written and thurough - a must have. Rating: Yeah Baby!
Dirk Kraftzig, Karl Banke, Dirk Slama, Enterprise SOA: Service Oriented Architecture Best Practices, Prentice-Hall PTR (Coad Series), 2004. Not as comprehensive as the Erl volume, but it's not aimed at developers and coders, but more at IT project leads and managers. The book is split into 3 sections addressing architectural concepts, organizational aspects and actual case studies. Very lucid descriptions and it's evident that the 3 authors have actually implemented SOA's with their clients. Rating: Worth the $.
Anyway, my system is short and sweet: I separate titles into geek and non-geek divisions and a simple rating system:
- Yeah Baby! - Buy this and read ASAP.
- Worth the $ - some minor quibbles, but take a good, long look
- Get from Library - got a few ideas or nuggets, but don't buy
- @$#)(&^! - author is entitled to his/her opinion, but I disagree with most if not all of the text
- Crap - Self-explanatory. Avoid.
Non-Geek Tomes
Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is Near, Viking, 2005. You cannot help but admire this man and what he has accomplished in numerous areas, particularly in artificial intelligence. While I'm a big fan of his earlier work, The Age of Spiritual Machines, I've got a few issues with Singularity, particularly that he ignores cultural, economic, and political issues with respect to human-machine fusion and that the human race can always be bailed out of misery by good technical ideas. He also tends to be repetitive on topics he brilliantly covered in Spiritual Machines. Rating: Worth the $.
Geek Tomes
Thomas Erl, Service-Oriented Architecture - Concepts, Technology, and Design, Prentice-Hall PTR, 2005. A huge volume crammed with just about anything and everything you'd ever want to know about SOA. While I particularly liked the case studies and technical concepts explained in plain English (makes the book more marketable, I reckon), I'd have rather had those in some kind of supplement or separate volume because it distracted me a bit from absorbing the core material. Well written and thurough - a must have. Rating: Yeah Baby!
Dirk Kraftzig, Karl Banke, Dirk Slama, Enterprise SOA: Service Oriented Architecture Best Practices, Prentice-Hall PTR (Coad Series), 2004. Not as comprehensive as the Erl volume, but it's not aimed at developers and coders, but more at IT project leads and managers. The book is split into 3 sections addressing architectural concepts, organizational aspects and actual case studies. Very lucid descriptions and it's evident that the 3 authors have actually implemented SOA's with their clients. Rating: Worth the $.
