The best thing about this book is its remarkably friendly explanation of the basics of CORBA, along with appropriate detail on what distributed objects are and what advantages they offer for distributed computing on the middle tier. There is excellent material on built-in CORBA interfaces (called CORBAservices), including the basics of creating and managing objects, as well as using transactions with the Object Transaction Service (OTS). For over a dozen CORBA services, the authors provide nicely readable scenarios (rendered in sequence diagrams) for the use and interaction of CORBA objects and services. (Another standout here is a long chapter on security in a distributed setting, including a discussion of authentication, audit trails, and non-repudiation, an essential legal requirement of e- commerce.)

Though some of this enthusiastically written book's prognostications (such as the ascendancy of CORBA-based "intergalactic objects" and "shippable places" on the Web) haven't quite come to pass, the strengths of Java and CORBA are indeed more and more obvious to many organizations. Though it shows off a few gray hairs here and there (with quite a few references to CORBA products from 1996-97), Instant CORBA still manages to deliver a lively presentation of CORBA fundamentals suitable for any manager or programmer who wants a thorough primer on this truly exciting technology. --Richard Dragan