The practice of enterprise application development has benefited from the emergence of many new enabling technologies. Multi-tiered object-oriented platforms, such as Java and .NET, have become commonplace. These new tools and technologies are capable of building powerful applications, but they are not easily implemented. Common failures in enterprise applications often occur because their developers do not understand the architectural lessons that experienced object developers have learned.

Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture is written in direct response to the stiff challenges that face enterprise application developers. The author, noted object-oriented designer Martin Fowler, noticed that despite changes in technology--from Smalltalk to CORBA to Java to .NET--the same basic design ideas can be adapted and applied to solve common problems. With the help of an expert group of contributors, Martin distills over forty recurring solutions into patterns. The result is an indispensable handbook of solutions that are applicable to any enterprise application platform.

This book is actually two books in one. The first section is a short tutorial on developing enterprise applications, which you can read from start to finish to understand the scope of the book's lessons. The next section, the bulk of the book, is a detailed reference to the patterns themselves. Each pattern provides usage and implementation information, as well as detailed code examples in Java or C#. The entire book is also richly illustrated with UML diagrams to further explain the concepts.

Armed with this book, you will have the knowledge necessary to make important architectural decisions about building an enterprise application and the proven patterns for use when building them.

The topics covered include:

As a PHP developer, you have some great tools for developing web applications. Ruby on Rails is another key tool to add to your web development toolbox. Rails is a high-level web development framework that emphasizes high productivity and clean code. However, the Ruby language and Rails framework take a different approach from the way many PHP developers write applications.

Ruby lies at the foundation of Rails, and we’ll teach you the Ruby language from the beginning by building on your existing foundation of PHP. We’ll explore Ruby through parallel code examples that illustrate the differences between the languages, and help you understand the Ruby idioms and how they differ from popular PHP code and style.

You’ll then learn the Rails framework by iteratively building a complete application, starting from the home page through to a finished product. Along the way, you’ll build your skills as a Rails developer by learning the Rails fundamentals such as MVC structure, domain modeling, and testing.

In addition to serving as a guide to learning both Ruby and Rails from a PHP developer’s perspective, this book includes two extensive reference chapters. They map the most common PHP tasks to their equivalents in the Ruby and Rails world, giving you at-a-glance information that you’ll refer to often.

• Leverage PHP knowledge to learn Ruby on Rails quickly
• Understand key differences between Ruby and PHP
• Learn Rails best practices and relate them to PHP
• Develop techniques for writing effective Rails code

Web 2.0 makes headlines, but how does it make money? This concise guide explains what's different about Web 2.0 and how those differences can improve the bottom line. Whether you're an executive, a small business owner, or an entrepreneur, Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide illustrates through real life examples how various businesses are creating new opportunities on today's Web. This book is about strategy rather than the technology itself.Web 2.0 makes headlines, but how does it make money? This concise guide explains what's different about Web 2.0 and how those differences can improve your company's bottom line. Whether you're an executive plotting the next move, a small business owner looking to expand, or an entrepreneur planning a startup, Web 2.0: A Strategy Guide illustrates through real-life examples how businesses, large and small, are creating new opportunities on today's Web.This book is about strategy. Rather than focus on the technology, the examples concentrate on its effect. You will learn that creating a Web 2.0 business, or integrating Web 2.0 strategies with your existing business, means creating places online where people like to come together to share what they think, see, and do. When people come together over the Web, the result can be much more than the sum of the parts. The customers themselves help build the site, as old-fashioned "word of mouth" becomes hypergrowth.

• Flickr, a classic user-driven business, created value for itself by helping users create their own value
• Google made money with a model based on free search, and changed the rules for doing business on the Web-opening opportunities you can take advantage of


• Social network effects can support a business-ever wonder how FaceBook grew so quickly?
• Businesses like Amazon tap into the Web as a source of indirect revenue, using creative new approaches to monetize the investments they've made in the Web
  

Legendary programming author Herb Schildt shares some of his favorite programming techniques in this high-powered C++ "cookbook." Organized for quick reference, each "recipe" shows how to accomplish a practical programming task. A recipe begins with a list of key ingredients (classes, functions, and headers) followed by step-by-step instructions that show how to assemble them into a complete solution. Detailed discussions explain the how and why behind each step, and a full code example puts the recipe into action. Each recipe ends with a list of options and alternatives that suggest ways to adapt the technique to fit a variety of situations. Whether you're a beginner or an experienced pro, you'll find recipes that are sure to satisfy your C++ programming appetite!

XML-RPC takes web technology in a new direction, giving you a new way to create simple, but powerful, connections between different kinds of programs. After wasting more hours than I care to admit developing and documenting network formats used to exchange relatively simple kinds of information between programs, I was very happy to discover XML-RPC. It would have made all that work much easier.

Whether you integrate systems within a single network or provide services and information to the public as a whole, XML-RPC provides critical layers of abstraction that make it simple to connect different kinds of computing systems without needing to create new standards for every application. Because XML-RPC is built on commonly available HTTP and XML technologies, the costs of implementing it are low. Because XML-RPC focuses sharply on solving a particular kind of problem -- making procedure calls across a network -- it is very easy to learn and implement across a wide variety of systems.

• Types and Operations -- Python's major built-in object types in depth: numbers, lists, dictionaries, and more
• Statements and Syntax -- the code you type to create and process objects in Python, along with Python's general syntax model
• Functions -- Python's basic procedural tool for structuring and reusing code
• Modules -- packages of statements, functions, and other tools organized into larger components
• Classes and OOP -- Python's optional object-oriented programming tool for structuring code for customization and reuse
• Exceptions and Tools -- exception handling model and statements, plus a look at development tools for writing larger programs