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February 15, 2006
Book ReviewsAOPJorge Aranda
Aspect-Oriented Analysis and Design: The Theme Approach; Access by Design: A Guide to Universal Usability for Web Designers; Jerry Pournelle Recommends...; Recent Releases
Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) may be the most promising shift in perspective to come since object orientation. At its humblest, it promises to tidy up entangled and scattered code; at its most ambitious, AOP attempts to revolutionize the development and integration of applications, bringing the software-development process closer to our natural understanding of complex systems. And just as .spawned its corresponding analysis and design techniques, AOP requires new approaches to analysis and design to achieve maturity. Aspect-Oriented Analysis and Design: The Theme Approach, by Siobhan Clarke and Elisa Baniassad, offers exactly this, and mostly succeeds in making a case for the problem and demonstrating its solution. Theme is formed by two parts: Theme/Doc, a technique to distill aspects from plaintext requirements, and Theme/UML, a UML extension for designing and weaving aspects. Together, Theme/Doc and Theme/UML transform requirements documents into design specifications (which, incidentally, do not need to be programmed in an aspect-oriented language). The book relies on a medium-sized example and develops it throughout the text, emphasizing its fine points to demonstrate the way Theme works. Two appendices also illustrate its techniques at work in different case studies, further clarifying the approach. For a field that is still as academic as this (you can preview the current debate in the first chapter), this insistence on practical examples is refreshing. Yes, Aspect-Oriented Analysis and Design does advocate for aspect orientation. It highlights its benefits while being light on its drawbacks (theme composition, in particular, can become problematic). However, its claims are reasonable, and its techniques relatively easy to use. If you're looking for a good introduction to AO analysis and design techniques, this is the book for you.
Aspect-Oriented Analysis and Design:
The Theme Approach Jorge is a graduate student who can be reached at jaranda@cs.toronto.edu AccessibilityReview by Laura MacDougall Web site accessibility is too often something that is hacked in as an afterthought, once a site has been created. In Access by Design: A Guide to Universal Usability for Web Designers, Sarah Horton advocates designing for usability right from the start, not just for users with disabilities, but for all users, to provide the best experience. If only she had enough content to make a whole book of it, it would be a welcome addition to the collection of accessible-design books on the market. In a book with 264 pages, there are maybe 30 pages of real content, the rest consisting of excessive repetition of basic concepts and vague statements about what the Internet is and how people use it. Each chapter begins with an introduction, which is really a summary of the chapter to follow, and is then broken down into sections that are a few paragraphs long, each beginning with an introductory paragraph, and ending with an "In a Nutshell" summary section. By the time you are 20 pages into the book, many of the concepts have been explained about 10 times. Putting the summaries at the end of the chapter instead of every other paragraph would have made the whole thing more readable and less tiresome. The hints and tips are useful things to consider, such as designing simply and giving users the most control, but there are no specific examples or how-tos, leaving you to turn somewhere else to figure out how to accomplish the task. Repeatedly, Horton talks about using CSS for layout, but never do we see a sample CSS page for reference. We see plenty of screenshots of web sites, but nowhere to turn to figure out how to actually do the thing in question--something that would have made the book much more valuable, and the content would have filled out the book without feeling so thinly stretched. Horton seems to be confused about who her audience is, sometimes practically writing for people who have never seen the Internet before, while at the same time assuming that people will know how to add captions to play alongside their video clips, or provide alternative navigation methods. One plus that you don't normally find in an accessibility book is her discussion on editorial style as an accessibility issue; this point is often overlooked, but writing in accessible language can be just as important for users as providing alternate navigation or visual elements. Overall, it is written more from the viewpoint of universal usability, as if for designing physical objects, which does not entirely transfer into the technical area she is going for. If you are going to get the book, by all means read the appendix of "In a Nutshell" summaries for its useful ideas about accessible design, but do not bother trying to read it cover to cover. There isn't enough content to make it worth your time.
Access by Design:
A Guide to Universal Usability for Web Designers
Laura is a software developer for HP and can be reached at laura.macdougall@gmail.com.
Jerry Pournelle Recommends...The book of the month is The E-Bomb by Doug Beason. I know Doug better as Colonel Doug Beason, U.S. Air Force (retired). He is also a former professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy where he used The Strategy of Technology (Possony and Pournelle) as a textbook. More to the point, he is also the former commander of the USAF labs at Kirtland, where he had such programs as the airborne laser. This book tells you about directed energy weapons, which are the most important weapons developments since the atomic bomb. The "death ray" and "disintegrator" of the old science fiction movies were fiction; modern directed energy weapons are fact, and this book tells you more about them than any other source I know. The first computer book of the month is Jack Herrington's Podcasting Hacks (O'Reilly & Associates, 2005), which is well organized and complete. While Michael Georhegan and Dan Klass's Podcast Solutions (Apress, 2005) is a better introduction to the subject of podcasting, if you're serious about getting into the game, you will want both books. John Locke's Open Source Solutions For Small Business Problems (Charles River Media, 2004) is a bit odd in that it starts at a pretty elementary level, but contains advice useful to those actually trying to work on problems at a professional level. There is no chance you won't learn something important from reading this book.
The E-Bomb
Podcasting Hacks: Tips and Tools for Blogging Out Loud
Podcast Solutions: The Complete Guide to Podcasting
Open Source Solutions for Small Business Problems
Jerry is a science-fiction writer and senior contributing editor to BYTE.com. You can contact him at jerryp@jerrypournelle.com.
Recent Releases
Software Security: Building Security In The software security best practices, or touchpoints, described in this book have their basis in good software engineering and involve explicitly pondering security throughout the software development lifecycle.
C in a Nutshell Following a format similar to "C++ in a Nutshell," Prinz and Crawford's new book describes the C language in the strict sense of the term; describes the standard library, and describes the process of compiling and testing programs with the tools in the popular GNU software collection.
Cryptographic Libraries for Developers A practical guide that teaches developers how to rapidly write and deploy applications requiring cryptography. This book covers the five common cryptographic libraries: OpenSSL, B/Safe, the Java Cryptographic Library, (JCE), and CAPI; teaches developers how to write security features for commercial software; and includes a CD-ROM with all of the figures and source code from the book.
Counter Hack Reloaded: A Step-by-Step Guide to Computer Attacks and Effective Defenses, 2nd Edition For this second edition, more than half the content is new and updated, including coverage of the latest hacker techniques for scanning networks, gaining and maintaining access, and preventing detection. Topics covered include how to establish effective defenses, recognize attacks in progress, and respond quickly and effectively in both UNIX/Linux and Windows environments.
Game Design Complete
The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology This book is a collection of key texts on the subjects of game analysis and criticism. It contains 32 essays by game designers, journalists, fans, sociologists, and other writers.
The Pebble and the Avalanche: How Taking Things Apart Creates Revolutions DDJ contributor Yudkowsky discusses how disaggregation works, its many benefits, and how to use it to innovate.
Contact Us
To contact Dr. Dobb's Programmer's Bookshelf Newsletter, send e-mail to Deirdre Blake, DDJ Managing Editor, at dblake@cmp.com. All content copyright 2005, CMP Media LLC.
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