C++ Network Programming, Volume I: Mastering Complexity with Ace and Patterns

I discovered ACE almost two years ago after a coworker told me about it. As a developer in the networking / streaming media / distributed computing space, i've all too often run into the problems that are inherent in developing this sort of software -- scalability, maintainability, not to mention all of those bugs ...ACE makes all of that much easier, and delivers the promise of true reuseability; not just classes, but common behaviors (patterns). This book explains why ACE was needed, the problems it solves, and how to use it. Though it's highly technical, it's not boring or overly verbose -- the problems developing networked apps are presented, and the solution ACE uses as well. Doug and Steve did an amazing job with this ... highly recommended.

I had great expectations from that book.I can say that it had full-filed these expectations.The book is written by the finest writers !I am using ACE for more than 2 years, and that book is a greatstep towards complete documentations of that library.The book shows how to use ACE and its feature without having topass some *all* of the stiff curving learn.Worth the money indeed.Can't wait for the next volume !

Doug and Stephen did a great job writing this book (I only wish it came out earlier ;-). Everything is clearly explained, from analysis, to design patterns, to low-level implementation details with copious, well-written code examples. Even tho I've used ACE for several years now, I still learned many new things from reading this book, and it will continue to be a great reference. I particularly liked their explanation of trade-offs between various server concurrency stategies (eg: iterative, process-per-connection, thread-per-connection, etc), and ACE's design principles (appendix A).

In the past, I have seen many posts on newsgroups from folks inquiring as to what *real world* C++ code is available for them to study so that they can learn *real-world* tools and techniques they can understand and thereafter really apply. ACE is such a body of code and this book does an excellent job of presenting what ACE is, what it does, how it does it, and, the part I like the most, WHY it does things the way it does. I work with high performance distributed real-time embedded system factory automation equipment and network-enabled software defined radios. I remember diving into these areas of software for the first time and spending A LOT of time wrestling with the idiosyncrasies of the socket and threading APIs of not just one but a few operating systems. It wasn't until I started using the ACE classes and patterns described in this book that I was able to master these complexities and get on with solving the problem of the business domain for which the software was being written. This book does a great job of giving you not only the view of networked and concurrent applications from 30,000 feet (with the domain analysis of network application development and the resulting isolation of important design dimensions) but also the view from the battlefield trenches (with code that abstracts away the gory details of native operating system APIs) as well as the stuff in between (real life networked concurrent programming examples that bring it all together).After reading the book, I definitely feel I have gained some invaluable experience from the authors' intense expertise with the gory details of and differences between operating system APIs. They explain these details and differences in a very clear fashion and then show how you can program more productively using the ACE classes that abstract away these platform differences, without loss of efficiency, as well as prevent you from making common nasty programming errors that could cost you hundreds of hours of debugging time. They explain, in full, the C++ techniques that ACE uses to achieve this. They explain not only how these techniques work but why they are used. I feel my expertise and judgment as a C++ network/concurrent programmer have increased greatly as a result of reading the book.Despite the complexity of the subject matter, the authors' writing style enables you to absorb and understand the information at a very fast rate. I highly recommend this book for anybody involved with programming (you should know C++) as it captures the essence AND details of how a complex programming domain can be systematically and methodically tackled and a solution formulated and implemented effectively in real-world applications.

I have worked on the development of large scale distributed networked systems for many years now, and have yet to see another so well organized text on the subject. It is an invaluable compendium that every network, distributed system, and application developer/programmer should keep handy.It conveys, clearly, concisely and precisely a wealth of experiences from the development/coding trenches that is hard to come by and is rarely found in one place or even so well organized. The text enumerates in detail how issues faced during development were resolved in a manner that met a multitude of complex development criteria. The book breaks down ACE into a set of key crucial areas/modules, and then goes to work on each piece. It then surgically disects and explains the details of each line of code of the ACE toolkit and how and why the API's were developed the way they were and today what benefits and critical issues they solve as a result of those choices. I am eager to read the completed second volume.I'd recommend this text to any and all students and practioners alike who are involved in distributed system (sockets, CORBA, RPC... etc with C++) development, even if they dont plan on using ACE, simply because of the high quality development advice and the way it makes one aware of pitfalls and issues that might and invariably do arise in large scale distributed systems development.