This book sets standards; anyone seriously thinking of writing should read this book and gasp in awe at the way this book works. Every section builds upon the last. For example, IDL is introduced and explained to the reader. Then a climate control system is defined and written in IDL. Then the IDL to C++ mapping is introduced. This is followed by the client side C++ mapping with the climate control system IDL as illustration, then the client is implemented. This is repeated with the server-side mapping to produce the climate-control server. Simple transitions like this make the book so good - the book itself mirrors the development processes involved, introducing what you need to know at each stage, instead of flooding the user with information. After being taken through the production of a simple system, the mechanisms of CORBA are introduced and discussed.

The naming, trading and event services get thorough treatment with over 200 pages of quality material between them. If that isn't enough for you, the authors have saved the best for dessert; the Power CORBA chapter considers multithreading, performance and scalability issues not touched by previous CORBA books.

As if that wasn't enough to get your mouth watering, the book deals with standards; standard C++ and standard CORBA (version 2.3 - the CORBA examples are vendor independent). HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.