The term “object-oriented” has become surrounded by jargon and mystique. This unusually readable book moves through the maze of terms and concepts with short, understandable explanations. It is not a book for technicians; rather, it is a book for someone who wants to understand the major concepts and issues of object-oriented information systems. I recommend it highly for people (such as managers) who need a reasonable understanding but not depth. It also provides a good starting perspective on major issues for someone who intends to pursue the subject in more depth. The explanations present both sides of major topics, but the overall bias of the book is to strongly support an object-oriented approach.

The book has interesting presentation features such as wide pages with notes in the margins describing the content of each short paragraph. Many figures graphically summarize points being made. This makes the book easy to browse. The early chapters start with high-level explanations, and later chapters explain more details. The topics range from technology explanations to implementation issues. The book is about object-oriented information systems, which is much broader than object-oriented programming.

The book consists of 12 chapters. The first three explain the importance of the object-oriented approach and how it meets needs. The next three chapters explain the concepts of object technology, methods for object development, and what must be done to create an object-oriented information system. Then three chapters deal with object-oriented languages, object databases, and development support systems. The last three chapters cover issues of change and implementation, including one chapter with vignettes describing actual applications.