February 2003
Intermediate to advanced
752 pages
16h 35m
English
In a distributed application, components contain classes that typically play one of two roles:
A provider of services
A container for information
Why the sharp distinction? In a distributed application, state is a critical issue (as discussed in Chapter 10). By using this distinction, you can separate classes that require state but don’t provide much functionality (the information packages) from classes that provide a collection of utility functions and are entirely stateless (the service providers).
Programming veterans might notice that I’ve studiously avoided bringing business objects into this discussion. In Chapter 10, we’ll revisit the issue in more detail as we examine tiers and object modeling. ...