Review by James Owen

This book is one of several written by Orfali, all of which are excellent introductory books to the subject matter. Some of his other books are "The Essential Client/Server Survival Guide," "The Essential Distributed Objects Survival Guide" and "Instant CORBA," all written with Dan Harkey and sometimes Jeri Edwards. She's back for the latest books also. If your goal is a quick introduction to CORBA and all the players, Pros and Cons, this is the book. They don't care much for MicroSoft or MicroSoft products and that's plainly evident in both their side-by-side comparisons of DCOM vs. CORBA and their acid remarks. I HIGHLY recommended Orfali / Harkey / Edwards as one of the four best author teams in the CORBA field; the others being Jon Seigel, Thomas Mobray / William Ruth and Andreas Vogel / Keith Duddy. In comparison to Orfali, you will find Seigel much more verbose, Vogel more intense and Mobray more studious. Orfali is probably the most fun while not sinking to the idiot level of "A Dummy's Guide to CORBA." No, it isn't here yet, but don't worry; it will be here soon. :-)

Review by Billy Barron

"Client/Server Programming with Java and CORBA" by Orfali and Harkey (Wiley Computer Publishing; ISBN 0-471-16351-1) is a book that attempts to explain CORBA programming to the Java programmer. Though I have no current needs to use CORBA, I decided to read the first few chapters of this book. At the end of that, I am unable to say that it actually helped me understand CORBA much though I'm not sure if that is CORBA's or the book's fault.

The layout which I'm sure someone thought cute I found distracting and could have lead to my lack of understanding.