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CORBA 3 is the latest of the Object Management Group's recommendations for the common object request broker architecture, although the various new facilities have been trickling in via point-releases since as long ago as CORBA 2.2 in 1999. Quick CORBA 3 is a book that explains what these new facilities are and how they can be used. The book doesn't cover CORBA basics, but rather assumes that the reader is already familiar with some previous version of CORBA (At least 2.0) and the author recommends his previous book, which covers the basics of CORBA (including version 3), for those who need it.

The new facilities provided by CORBA 3 and covered by this book include Java integration and value types, the XML mapping (which uses value types to implement the XML Document Object Model API), the interoperable naming service, asynchronous messaging using callbacks and store-and-forward facilities, Quality of Service provisions, real-time, fault-tolerant and minimum varieties of CORBA, CORBA Component Model and finally modelling with UML and CORBA metadata facilities (including a couple of chapters by other members of the Object Management Group).

Although there are descriptions of IDL and the author has included code samples throughout, the book does not really get into a lot of technical detail, concentrating more on describing the concepts involved. This makes the book more suitable for development managers or architects than for programmers as a reference - which it really is not.

Because of this, as a programmer, I found the book a little wordy and found myself thinking 'where is the code?' on a number of occasions. Although if you need to understand the new facilities provided by CORBA 3 without having to dive into the code, this book provides a good overview. If you are looking for a programming reference, look elsewhere.