The book covers the key principles of building distributed object architectures, using CORBA as an example technology. The author looks at:

• The organisation of a distributed system and the design issues.
• An explanation of distributed objects and the support CORBA provides for them.
• The use of Meta information to build a flexible system.
• Object lifecycle and persistence.
• Transactions and Security.
• Architectural considerations for deployment.
• COM/CORBA Integration.

Each of these is covered in a chapter or more, with brief example code listings and UML diagrams to clarify where needed. The presented example code is clear and easily readable regardless of the reader's knowledge of IDL and Java. The book aims to take the reader through the design issues of distributed systems, from the architectural viewpoint, without, as the author puts it 'being another patterns book'.

Each topic is well covered, giving the reader a good understanding of the key design issues, often referencing alternate technologies and providing external references for further information. Each chapter then ends with a summary of the key points.

The writing is clear and concise and the examples are well chosen and get the point across as quickly and efficiently as possible. I found it a useful book for getting an overview of distributed systems architecture and what CORBA can bring to it.