Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture: A Pattern Language for Distributed Computing, 4th Volume

Foreword

The patterns movement has been around for over a decade now, and has gone through the usual cycle of inflated expectations, backlash, and quiet acceptance. Frank, Doug, and Kevlin have been there the whole time, lauded and scoffed at, but above all quietly collecting good ideas from the field and describing them. The POSA series of books is rightly regarded as one of the most solid elements in the patterns literature, and every volume has a space in my library.

Earlier POSA volumes were traditional patterns books, describing patterns in a range of specific areas, mostly with patterns that hadn't been written up before. This book is different. Distributed Computing is a very wide topic and even the patterns we've captured so far is far more than would fit in a single volume. Indeed they are spread over multiple books, both within and outside the POSA series. This book's mission is to pull these patterns together. As a result you've got many more patterns here than you'd usually find, and consequentially a much terser description. Some of the patterns described here aren't primarily about distribution, but have some relevance for distributed system work. As a result the descriptions in this book highlight that usage, summarizing a pattern in a distributed systems context.

This book is also about more than the individual patterns—it's also about how they relate. Any system contains multiple patterns used together, but I for one find it harder to talk about inter-relationships ...