Applied Languages Books

This book is one of the classics on developing information systems with a business rules approach. Not only does the book give a good overview of the key concepts in business rules, it also lays out the core tasks and techniques for an actual methodology to develop rules-based systems. Barbara brings great experience in database design and other core application development techniques and she weaves the unique tasks and issues of a business rules approach right in. Anyone used to a "traditional" application development approach will find plenty of reference points so they don't get lost and yet all the keys they need to succeed with a need approach based on business rules.

The references to business rules management systems are a little out of date as you would expect given the book is a few years old but the core advice remains as good today as it was then. Although Barb continues to develop her ideas and write on business rules, this book is an excellent reference for anyone planning business rules projects, conducting them or interested in how to start using them. Highly recommended.

I purchased Barbara von Halle's book after the 2001 Business Rules Forum in New Orleans. This forum is an annual meeting of experts, vendors, and participants in the business rules "evolution" and is used to share ideas and information among colleagues in the field. Barbara's book was introduced in many of the forum presentations, which prompted me to make the purchase. This action was perhaps the most significant step I have taken to fully understand the business rules methodology and has saved my current project from almost certain failure.

I have now implemented many of the ideas and techniques from the book and placed my business rules project on a road to success. My project has endured many obstacles, not the least of which is understanding the differences that are imposed on the project team from traditional re-engineering efforts. If I hadn't come across Barbara's excellent documentation on project scoping, rules discovery, and designing for the business rules approach, I would have seriously doubted our ability to implement the project successfully. My project team was able to read and comprehend the most important concepts from the book and we have been able to modify our project plan to incorporate her ideas and techniques.

I believe it is our responsibility as IT professionals to recognize the importance of the business rules movement and to follow a strict methodology when implementing any rules engine initiative. I must personally thank Barbara for sharing some of the most important concepts with this methodology. I honestly consider it my blueprint for success.

Dear Reader,

Business Rules, like Data Warehousing, both have the potential to dramatically reverse the downward spiral in the credibility and coherence of many IT organizations. Both initiatives focus on giving the business what it wants; Data Warehousing from mainly a strategic decision-making perspective and Business Rules from mainly an operational-support and tactical-orientation perspective.

To understand the importance of the role of Business Rules in business is to recognize a done deal, to actively go about leveraging Business Rules as the key component in process development, application development and application evolution is really the thing that will separate the smart people from the sceptics.

One of the problems of Business Rules, like Data Warehousing as well, is that they are both seemingly intuitive - the sort of thing that one could do just by imagining oneself what needs to be done. Now, don't let me put you off, and I would say that there is an element of truth in the idea that, at a certain level of abstraction, both the Data Warehousing and Business Rules concepts are very straightforward. However, and this is the crux of the matter, there are a number of seemingly small and insignificant project decisions to be made where the right decisions (based on experience) are not always the most obvious or intuitive choices, especially when we base our decisions on knowledge of other IT project methods, and, which in turn could lead to decisions that result in the collapse of your BR or DW project and the failure of yet another IT project.

So, if you think that Business Rules might be just the thing for your business then read this book. In it you will find a wealth of knowledge and experience. It leads the reader from a good description of real reasons for using the Business Rules approach, Business Rules concepts, through to the process of identifying, defining and capturing Business Rules, and describes, in great detail, an iterative project approach to the active and evolutionary management of Business Rules in business. The book is well structured, is easy to read - for such a detailed book - and, focuses on important issues, options and decisions involved in Business Rules.

As a long term advocate of the Business Rules approach I could not rate this book more highly.

Best regards,

Martyn R Jones
Iniciativa Org, SL

I bought this book based on some of the enthusiastic reviews here but was very disappointed. I think people who see rules engines as the next big thing and are very excited about it may be enthusiatistic about this book because it pushes that line very hard. However, there is very little in this book that reflects hard practical experience or that is likely to surprise an experienced software designer with a basic understanding of rules engines. Good books on this subject are still waiting to be written.

Instead of this book I would recommend reading "Domain-Driven Design: Tackling Complexity in the Heart of Software" by Eric Evans and the documentation for whatever rules systems you are considering.

I find the concepts introduced in the book such as categorisation of business rules, and the worked examples using a few products very useful.

However, I wish the book can be less verbose, with less repetition of the same concepts (such as continuously expounding on the advantages of business rules approach) throughout the whole book. They are distracting and not necessary. The book could have been more concise.

This is a topic worth exploring into and I hope some of UML/MDA efforts can incorporate the ideas here.

I used this book for TAing my undergrad and grad classes. It is an unbeatable book in Linear Programming. The authors developed not only a strong linear algebric concept but also a wonderful geometric concept of LPs. By the way, it is not a beginner's book. I suggest Winston's book for the beginners.

In my point of view this book has 2 related problems:

Problem 1. It tries to pack much information in a small space.

Problem 2. I dont like the author's style of asking why? and how? to the reader in the midst of the text. Maybe this is to keep the book small but it forces you to stop reading and think about the question.


However, I think this book is a good reference. But, certainly the authors could have made it better. Let's wait for the next edition.

The techniques described are very theoretical but are friendly to be used in Computer programs. Has a great deal of depth.

I am using this book for a linear programming course. The most flagrant problem with this book is that it is filled with typos, making reading through proofs and examples very frustrating because you're never sure what is supposed to be written. The book is also not very good at explaining concepts and leaves many steps out in the development of new ideas. If you can avoid it, do not use this book to learn linear programming.

I used this text while taking a graduate linear programming (LP)course on LP and network flows. I really liked the treatment. The typesetting was clear ,consistent and easily followed (not as good as Nash and Sofer's). The book also includes lots of nice side discussion on how or why the theory is the way it is. Plenty of references are offered for further study. Proofs were not rigorous. The highly mathematical reader may be disappointed by the "show proof" style used instead of a rigorous theorem-proof style. In fact, I seem to recall a time or two where the theorem came after the usage. For me, I didn't mind that, but a pure math guy would likely grind his teeth.

The network material was acceptable. I personally thought the text problems were not of the best quality. I would suggest a teacher supplement their own favorites outside of the book.

One caution is that the book is somewhat aged. I noticed a text like Nash and Sofer seems to have newer updates on the theory.

Overall, a great read for getting into the nitty gritty details of LP.

Mark's book actually teaches you how to properly use classes and inheritance (virtual functions) to implement derivative pricing models in C++. The slim book is actually quite 'thick' in the sense that you need to spend some time on understanding the design and ideas behind those codes. In addtion, the second ed. includes a chapter on XLW (a package links C++ to Excel and modified by MJ). After using XLW for some time now, I have to say that it is definitely one of the best applications for financial engineering.

This is the book to buy if you want to develop/improve object-oriented thinking in C++.

This slim volume is totally inadequate either as a C++ book or as a derivative pricing book. (After all, how much can you cover on either topic in just 170 pages or so?) I'm not sure what purpose it really serves. It seems to require the reader to know quite a bit of C++ yet things like virtual function should already be known by the reader. This is not good as either tutorial or reference.

This book is easy to read and hands on. Although there are a lot of excellent books which will give you an introduction to C++ for general purposes, I will still recommend this book to people who want to learn C++ for derivatives pricing.

Joshi's book is practical and concise. The whole book is project-based and through step-by-step method in his book, Joshi provide a vivid view towards how to construct a pricing engine in an object-oriented way. This book forces me to think in an object-oriented way and to think about code reusability, the logics and relation between different classes I put into my pricing engine. After my first semester's intense focus on this book, I found that my codes are just a nutshell of my whole logics and my understanding to the problem I want to solve, and then codes are extensible and readable.

It is not a book for reading, but rather a book for practicing. It is not an easy book. But some of my friends' interview questions are just the exercise in the book!! I would believe it is also a great book for preparing interviews.

Do not be put off by the above-average price/page-count multiple: it will take a lot of time and work to go through the book's 200 pages, and you won't regret the effort. This is not one's introduction to C++, nor is it a collection of ready-to-use code. Instead, the book sets out to demonstrate why you need OOP, and does that in the context of a single, progressively expanding, exercise.

I resisted using this book at first, but now I find it very helpful. I like the mini books and use them in my class as I introduce letters and words. I like that the students have easy to read books and it's a nice way to reinforce the words I teach in class. I don't use much from the book, but what I do use is great. It's a nice addition to my Word Study curriculum. I recommend it.

I am currently using this book with my 2nd preschooler & thought I should add a review since I've been so happy with the curriculum. This satisfies the needs of those siblings who beg to do schoolwork with their older brothers & sisters. Even my kindergartener who has moved on to bigger and better things, still enjoys looking through her poems and pictures, and reading her mini-books. I did not do every thing reccommended in the book, but used the mini-books, along with the craft and poem to introduce the letters & sounds of the alphabet. My son looks forward to reading his completed books to his Daddy. I highly reccommend it!

Supports learning letters and sounds while doing it in the context of reading little books. The self-esteem of the children grows rapidly as they have success "reading" the little books. A must for anyone who teaches children all about letters and sounds!

This book looks impressive at over 500 pages, but unfortunately much of the page count is taken up with repetitive information. Each letter has an art activity to go with a poem that focuses on an object beginning with the letter. There is a reproducible half page book with objects beginning with the letter followed by full page sized pictures of the same object which you are to make into a "big book" to read with a group. The activities for each letter are identical:

* read and act out poem
* identify letter on a card
* name object held up that start with the letter
* complete art project (mostly cutting and pasting with some painting and stamping)
* read big book for letter to child
* the child reads a little book of the same text.

Each step is described in detail for each letter although the format is exactly the same, which makes the book unnecessarily long. The little books are the best part of this curriculum, with repetitive text suitable for young readers and plenty of words that start with the letter being studied. The drawings seem a little crude, but they are friendly.

I modified ideas from the book for my preschool class with great results. We did a poem and a little book a week. We read the poem and book every day; it only took a few minutes. At the end of the week, I let the students make their own little book to take home. We would all read it together, and they had to touch each word as we read. Then we would play a game where I would have them touch different words at random to see if they could recognize the words and they did!
This is a wonderful resource for older preschoolers and kindergarteners!

Wow! It's a road trip that sets the scene for this absolutely hilarious Amelia Bedelia novel that will keep her fans laughing 'till the last page!

Good Drriving, Amelia Bedelia is filled with tons of "Amelia-isms," her constant misinterpretations of the most ordinary things -- most outstandingly "fork in the road!"

The wonderful illustrations bring the story to life. This is most certainly a book not to be missed! It's wonderful.

I ordered several Amelia Bedeelia books for my granddaughter for her 7th birthday. She absolutely loves them.

This book is one that shows how a lot of things can be muisunderstood. It explains how people can screw up a direction, or just what someone si trying to tell them. It also teaches that when you are drving or doing some other important task, you need to concentrate, and make sure you know what you are doing. This book is full of surprises about what happened to Amelia Bedilia when Mr. Rodgers took her driving.

I like this book because these are some things that people do tend to confuse in life. IF you do not know how to drive, you should learn before you go on the road. This is a good childrens book on teaching responsibility and learning. I think many young kids will enjoy this book, escpecially when they are just learning how to read.

Amelia Bedelia might never learn to not to take things literally, but then Mr. Rogers seems to keep forgetting what makes his housekeeper so unique, so he is not exactly showing a high learning curve either. In "Good Driving, Amelia Bedelia," things start off innocent enough. It is Amelia Bedelia's birthday and she is going to go visit her cousin Alcolu. Mr. Rogers offers to let her drive the family car, but Amelia Bedelia has not driven in years so he decides to see if her driving is as good as the picture on her drivers license. Of course, this turns out to be something of a mistake.

Actually, in this story, written by Peggy Parish's nephew Herman and illustrated by Lynn Sweat, there is more of a tendency to go with puns, especially once our heroine drives by a farm: "Herd of cows" says Mr. Rogers, and Amelia Bedelia says "Of course I have heard of cows." Once we get to cows we get around talking about a steer and horns, but then the pair are back on their way, looking for the fork in the road, trying to find a jack, and getting a toe.

So with all these puns this new adventure for Amelia Bedelia is really not in the true tradition of the series where the fun is always in how she takes comments literally, but it still has its moments and is charming in its own way. Sweat, of course, provided the illustrations for some of Peggy Parish's Amelia Bedelia books such as "Merry Christmas, Amelia Bedelia" and "Amelia Bedelia Goes Camping," so for many young readers these will be familiar pictures.

"Good Driving, Amelia Bedelia" is a story about a girl named Amelia Bedelia who wants to visit her cousin Alcolu so she can take a day off and rest on her birthday. Friends of hers, Mr. and Mrs. Rogers allow her to use their car to get to her cousin's house. But first Mr. Rogers takes Amelia out to make sure she still knows how to drive. Along the way, Amelia keeps misinterpreting Mr. Rogers's directions, like pushing on the horn of a cow instead of honking the car horn and misinterpreting a fork in the road as an actual kitchen utensil lying in the road. Soon their car gets a flat tire, but luckily a man in a towtruck happens to pass by and gives them a ride home where a party is waiting for Amelia.
I think that this is a pretty good book because it is fun to see how Amelia Bedelia can mix up just about anything Mr. Rogers says to her but I didn't find anything really special about it. The book is entirely for entertainment of how Amelia totally misinterprets everything around her.

OK. So you are a seasoned software engineer, 4th and 5th generation languages hold no secrets for you, design patterns are your credo, and you even have tackled this good old OMT technique. However, you still feel uneasy when it comes to translating use cases to risk management, and especially to take into account those interns who will develop part of the software.

This book answers your questions by proposing both a technique and a language (UML extended), that will help you list the different factors affecting your project, infer the right design decisions, and document them throughout the project. For those with an analytical mind, the architecture process itself is decomposed and re-engineered. No consultant talk here : everything is explained, both in words and figures, using real world examples.
Some will regret that the application field used for the demonstration is too narrow, since only real time applications are used, and there is no reference to database architecture or e-business ! But for those of the embedded world, such a book was awaited, and browsing (too) quickly through various application fields would have contented no one, anyhow.
It is still a long reading, if you want to study all examples in depth - fortunately, you can start your own design after the first case study.

Lastly, using UML throughout the project eases the communication with the development engineers, and it really helps when your team tackles detailed design.

This book spends a great deal of time discussing what it suggests one does to architect a system. However, there is very little on how to actually do it. The steps to do things are detailed, but what doing the steps means is not well articulated. Further, some parts of the process are very poorly explained, but still used as a foundation of many other parts of the process.

The best practices are simply case studies that really impart no wisdom to the reader (or, at least, to this reader).

I tried to "get something" out of this book several times, and read it fully twice. However, I'm convinced that there really isn't much there.

This book is clear, solid, and workmanlike. It could work well as a textbook, or one of several texts for a term course.

It gives a systematic introduction to several high-level notations, describing the conceptual, executable, structural (or module), and code views. Most of the notation is well-formed UML, and the authors take care to add semantic notes to every part of the graphical notation. They supplement the standard notations with a few text-based extensions. These capture requirements, archtiectural decisions, risks and risk mitigation, and other operating features of a living software project.

One real asset is the related set of brief case studies at the end of the book, three separate products with a common conceptual base. This book is aging, it dates back to 1999 - five years, as I write this. That's old in the "architecture" literature, and the authors fail to apply the "product line" notion. I take this book for its good, though, and lack of one buzzword is a small enough fault.

The book uses a process-and-pipe model pervasively for architectural description. It's a good tool, but other tools are good for other purposes, and their omission is a problem here.

Still, the book is competent on the whole. Its sustained product-line example ties the whole together, and it focusses on practice intead of mainfestos and brand-name methodologies. There's a lot of good here, and you can pick out out easily.

//wiredweird

I am Software Architect at Siemens Medical Systems, Angiography Division in Chicago.I am involved with the architecture for a Angio Acquisition/Post processing system. I have read the book "Applied Software Architecture". It is excellent! I find it very helpful and use it as a reference for my architecture work.

Computer scientists at Siemens have developed an intriguing and very useful approach for describing the architecture of software systems. This book, written at a high level of quality, details a wide variety of factors that project managers and architects must consider during the course of planning, designing, and implementing small-, medium-, and large-scale projects. Backed by data from real-world examples, the authors present their ideas in a very understandable form and give software engineers many good ideas for improving the quality of their products.

i don't understand why everyone is giving this book such great reviews. as a linear programming student, i find this book extremely difficult to understand, very poorly orgranized, extremely lacking in practical examples to demonstrate the concepts that the author is attempting to describe, and basically a piece of garbage. it was obviously written by a mathematician, not someone capable of teaching. i would not recommend it to anyone.

The book presents many aspects of linear programming, particularly basic concepts, in a much simpler and interesting way than earlier books on this area. If focuses on what I consider the relevant aspects of LP and avoids sections describing endless calculations. Besides basic and some advanced concepts, there is an entire section devoted to applications which is interesting for engineering courses.

I cut my teeth on this text in George Nemhauser's class. The book is clear and concise and does an excellent job explaining this topic to beginners. I've not come across a better introductory text yet. I still have this book in my reference library.

If you want an introduction to LP, this is the text for you.

The book offers an objective treatment of linear programming, in small self contained chapters. I consider this title the best introdutory text on LP, just because it is extremely well written. The major drawback of this book is the small and easy number of exercises proposed at the end of the chapters. The text is not an updated book on the subject, but I really recomend it.

I've been teaching a linear programming course at the advanced undergraduate level out of this book for the last 12 years. I'm still happy with Chvatal's book and haven't found anything better.

Prerequisites for this book include some background in linear algebra (the typical sophomore level introduction to linear algebra is enough), and some experience with proof based mathematics. Because the subject does not involve the difficult concepts of analysis, it (much like number theory) makes a good subject for students to study as they are developing proof writing skills.

The first 10 chapters of the book present the simplex method, the revised simplex method, duality theory, and sensitivity analysis.
This material can easily be covered in 10 weeks. The remaining chapters of the book are largely independent, mostly focused on various applications of linear programming and specialization of the simplex method to network flow problems.

Chvatal presents the simplex method and many of its applications from a mathematical point of view. He states and proves theorems, but also provides plenty of motivation. Students who make an effort do develop more mathematical maturity from working through this book.

Chvatal also presents the material from a computational and algorithmic point of view. One of the major points of the book is that the author prefers to use algorithmic proofs. For example, the proof that every standard form LP is either infeasibile, unbounded, or has an optimal BFS is built on the simplex method- Since the algorithm terminates in one of these three states, and can't go into an infinite loop, these are the only possibilities.

Another particular strength of the book is in the presentation of duality theory. The explanation is simply very clear and intuitive.

The one glaring weakness of the book is that it doesn't contain any discussion of interior point methods for linear programming. Since the book was published in the mid 1980's, this is not surprising. In my course, I supplement Chvatal's book with my own lecture notes on interior point methods.

The book is very good for both beginners and to some degree for intermediate persons. Also, chapters include many illustrative examples.
Besides, you can download the examples from a given web site, which is usefull to solve the examples in the book by yourself.

The book is comprehensible in general, it permits to make the exercises in Amos very easily. Nevertheless some explanations are hard to follow, for instance, what she call the "smorgasbord" of quality indices and other technical issues are difficult to follow, I had to read several times to connect the ideas and get the final picture of what she tries to explain, and figure out why the output may indicate that the model may be bad and good at the same time.
Concerning explanations I prefer the book by Tenko Raykov about SEM, but it is not related to AMOS, so the book by Byrne is acceptable. in addition Byrne provides several examples that are very useful.

This is an excellent book for beginners to AMOS, as well as to anyone who needs an occasional straightforward and detailed reference source. That said, don't expect detailed discussions of the theoretical underpinnings of SEM. I would classify this as a strictly practical, hands-on approach - and completely indispensable because of it.

One little bit of concern I have is that this book was published in 2001. Though it appears to remain relevant, it was written using AMOS version 4.0 (I'm using 7.0 now). It hasn't been a problem so far, but I would expect to find a few things that are out of date from time-to-time. A revision would be most welcom.

The printed output analysis may prove helpful - if I ever get that far.

After struggling for most of a day attempting to display output path weights I began searching the Internet for helps and how to's.

A CD that contained sample data for the printed examples would have been very much appreciated.

Great book, easy to read. It goes well as a companion book about SEM with a more mathematically heavy text. The author makes using AMOS easy! I've already shown my Professor something about AMOS he didn't know!

I haven't taken the Y2K issue to seriously until a few prominent business men in L.A. shared with me what they know about the Year 2000 bug and how it can effect them. I decided to do some research for the fun of it. As it turns out, there really is a large subject matter to concern ourselves with. This book helps to cover all the different solutions to these potential problems that may exist in the very near future. The book is well written and 'to the point.' I would recommend it for everybody.

Thanks to this book I was prepared when disaster struck on January 1, 2000. I not only survived the crisis, unlike so many in my community, two of my three children survived as well. Thank you, Mr. Whisman!

We found all of the information contained in the guide objective and easy to read. The authors took a step-by-step approach to understanding the Y2K problem. The guide answered most of our questions to date. Each chapter was centered around " in the event of a Y2K disruption". We found the supplies list and the document information useful. We liked how the guide included what documents to get, how to get them, and the phone numbers for all the vital document offices. Since we both work, we don't have filter through pages of opinion. This guide gets right to the point!

We thought this was a decent guide. It provides 2-4 week home confinment preparedness information. We liked the shelf life information, the 100 item checklist and the different water treatment options. It would have been 4 stars and a steal at $5.00

Looks like each contributing writer picked a subject and downloaded it off a computer website! Don't buy this and all or any costs!! If you're looking for a guide which will be cost effective and practical without all the sensationalism get: "Don't Panic! You Can Prepare for the Y2K Crisis" by Lee Dodds. It's only 41 pages, yet manages to provide more clear, consise and useful information than can be found in this disorganized, paste-up mess.

This book added very little to my current understanding of SOA. In fact I am not really sure what it contributes to the design strategies of SOA, and it is kind of too late to introduce SOA in year 2008 -> about almost 8 years after its inception. To learn about SOA basics I suggeet to get the SOA for Dummies book that does a better job on explaining SOA. Also the chapters about SOA security and SOA governance are poor and again do not add to the current industry discussion of SOA. I do not recommend it to mid or expert level SOA persons. But even people that starting with SOA will find it poor to begin with. It is too late too little. I like the case studies in the end of the book and again I am not sure why these cases are for insurance companies. Is this book for the insurence industry only?

This book clearly explains the concepts and principles of SOA and makes the vital link to Enterprise Architecture. I would highly recommend this book to start with. If you then need more detail on for instance SOA Design Principles or SOA Design Patterns read Thomas Erl's series.

I have not seen a SOA book that is as practical as this one. Most of the people I work with understand why SOA is important, and we all get the vision by now. Many of the other popular SOA books ONLY focus on the vision and "what is SOA?" but not much else.

This book is different. It provides details. It focuses on architecture, design, and provides in-depth guidance for a wide variety of problem areas that we all encounter when we build SOA implementations. The book is a long one, but it is worth the read.

I just recently read through Applied SOA, and I found it to be one of the most practical and comprehensive SOA books out there. What I thought was especially helpful were all of the examples - specifically some of stories of where SOA implementations have gone wrong, how they were corrected, and how to avoid traps. I especially appreciated the in-depth case studies at the end of the book. I haven't seen many books that offer such a practical approach, and that is why this book stands out.


I thought that Part 1 of the book is good for those new to SOA, and I found that the rest of the book provides great guidance and detail for more seasoned architects. I liked the chapters on "Using Services to Build Enterprise Solutions" and "Designing and Using Integration in SOA Solutions", as they provided much detail. I have to disagree about an earlier review on this site - I found the chapters on SOA Security and SOA Governance to be incredibly well-done. I thought that the SOA security chapter was comprehensive in laying out different security blueprints, and I felt that the governance chapter focused on governance in a technology and vendor-neutral way, which is rare to find these days..



If I were to make one complaint, it would be that the book is very large. It is not a quick read, but it is a comprehensive guide to SOA and it is practical. I highly recommend it.

I found this book valuable for providing a solid approach to designing service oriented architectures. It is important for people to understand that this book does not focus on implementing web services - there are plenty of other books that do that. This book focuses on the hard parts - how to design an architecture around the concept of services.
This book is also not a "cookbook" - it does not offer easy answers to these tough problems. Instead it walks you through the thought process so you can learn how to come up with the right answers yourself.
I am actively using this book to help my customers get started with SOA and to help them avoid common design pitfalls. My favorite chapter is Chapter 9: Using Services to Build Enterprise Solutions. The distinction between today's monolothic applications and tomorrow's composite applications requires a paradigm shift that the authors express well.
Finally, I especially liked the practical approach, practical steps and practical advice continually peppered throughout the entire book.