Pattern-Oriented Software Architecture: A Pattern Language for Distributed Computing (POSA4)

This is a great book. It pulls together 114 patterns and shows how to use them in the context of distributed software architectures. It also claims to reference 150 patterns in other publications.

The authors did a great job of creating a language composed of patterns for distributed software architectures.

The book does not go into the details of the pattern's implementations, so you should already be familiar with the patterns, or be prepared to spend some time researching. They do provide brief descriptions and a model for each pattern included in the language. If you need to research a pattern a little more, that shouldn't be a problem because they have included an excellent References section that contains sources for all the patterns original resources and they do a great job pointing to them throughout the text.

The book's best attribute is in how they show the relationships between the patterns. At the beginning of each section they include an introduction to a problem area that ties all the patterns in that section together.

They have broken the language up into the following sections:
From Mud To Structure
Distribution Infrastructure
Event Demultiplexing and Dispatching
Interface Partitioning
Component Partitioning
Application Control
Concurrency
Synchronization
Object Interaction
Adaptation and Extension
Modal Behavior
Resource Management
Database Access

Although the book is a pattern language for distributed software architectures, the patterns are definitely usable in other contexts.

I used the search on this page to check out the internals of the book before buying it. You can also get some sample chapters here.

Every Software Architect should own a copy of this book. It is a wealth of information. If you have a Software Architect working for you, you should make this mandatory reading in order for them to keep their job.
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