I was accidentally pulled in to the world of REA. I was evaluating the redesign of our major financial application. After deeply thinking the details of the business application dynamics, I started to group them under some basic overly simplified models and entities.

From there, I started to think that there should be somebody out there who faced the same situation and solved the same set of problems with a similar approach and hopefully more elegantly.

Then, I stopped evolving my model and started searching the literature and the Internet. I came across Fowler's book and I think it was great and I liked it so much, especially modelling the account and the relaed entries. But that was about it as far as the simplicity goes. It started to get a bit more complex as I started to get more patterns.

I started to do some more searches till I got to the REA, Resources- Events-Agents and that was it. I was blown away.

The model is so simple but powerful in capturing the most fundamental concepts in the accounting and business domain.

Unfortunately, I did not find enough resources (at this time) that examines the REA and its applications in detail till I found this wonderful book.

I really thank the author for his work.

So I think, REA model will change the business information modelling arena in the same way object oriented programming changed the programming world, and like design patterns impacted the design world.

I also predict that this book will be for the business application architecture community as the GoF book to the software designers community at large.

I was accidentally pulled in to the world of REA. I was evaluating the redesign of our major financial application. After deeply thinking the details of the business application dynamics, I started to group them under some basic overly simplified models and entities.

From there, I started to think that there should be somebody out there who faced the same situation and solved the same set of problems with a similar approach and hopefully more elegantly.

Then, I stopped evolving my model and started searching the literature and the Internet. I came across Fowler's book and I think it was great and I liked it so much, especially modelling the account and the relaed entries. But that was about it as far as the simplicity goes. It started to get a bit more complex as I started to get more patterns.

I started to do some more searches till I got to the REA, Resources- Events-Agents and that was it. I was blown away.

The model is so simple but powerful in capturing the most fundamental concepts in the accounting and business domain.

Unfortunately, I did not find enough resources (at this time) that examines the REA and its applications in detail till I found this wonderful book.

I really thank the author for his work.

So I think, REA model will change the business information modelling arena in the same way object oriented programming changed the programming world, and like design patterns impacted the design world.

I also predict that this book will be for the business application architecture community as the GoF book to the software designers community at large.

Design patterns, as general solutions to commonly occurring problems, were introduced in the software field by the landmark book by the so-called "Gang of Four" (Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides: "Design Patterns: Elements of reusable object-oriented software," Addison-Wesley, 1994. ISBN 0201633612 ). Even though design patterns were originally targeted at the design of object-oriented software systems, their use quickly spread to the analysis phase.

Pattern catalogs for analysts have been relatively successful because they provide extremely useful information for software analysts, novices and seasoned alike. Martin Fowler and David C. Hay were the first to produce pattern catalogs from the analyst's point of view. Both Fowler's analysis patterns, whose notation predates the now ubiquitous UML standard, and Hay's data model patterns, from a more database-oriented perspective, delved into different application domains and provided us with a rich repertoire of invaluable models for the analysis phase of software development projects. More recently, David Hay has updated and complemented his original work and the OMG-sponsored Model-Driven Architecture has also led to similar catalogues using the UML notation (see Arlow and Neudstat's "Enterprise Patterns and MDA").

Even though the relatively typical dull prose of pattern catalogs is in this case exacerbated by some typos (showing the lack of proper copy editing work I hope will be fixed in future printings of this book), this book is still noteworthy for two reasons:

- Plenty of modeling diagrams (almost one per page) cover almost every situation you can find when developing business applications,

- and they do so by relying on a simple conceptual model, the REA model, which is in itself an interesting approach for the design of business applications [...]



PS: Here are the complete references to other pattern catalogs you might find of interest...

- Jim Arlow and Ila Neustadt: "Enterprise Patterns and MDA: Building better software with archetype patterns and UML," Pearson Education, 2003. ISBN 032111230X

- Martin Fowler: "Analysis Patterns: Reusable object models," Addison-Wesley, 1996. ISBN 0201895420

- David C. Hay: "Data Model Patterns: Conventions of Thought," Dorset House, 1995. ISBN 0932633293

- David C. Hay: "Data Model Patterns: A Metadata Map," Morgan Kaufmann, 2006. ISBN 0120887983

Design patterns, as general solutions to commonly occurring problems, were introduced in the software field by the landmark book by the so-called "Gang of Four" (Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides: "Design Patterns: Elements of reusable object-oriented software," Addison-Wesley, 1994. ISBN 0201633612 ). Even though design patterns were originally targeted at the design of object-oriented software systems, their use quickly spread to the analysis phase.

Pattern catalogs for analysts have been relatively successful because they provide extremely useful information for software analysts, novices and seasoned alike. Martin Fowler and David C. Hay were the first to produce pattern catalogs from the analyst's point of view. Both Fowler's analysis patterns, whose notation predates the now ubiquitous UML standard, and Hay's data model patterns, from a more database-oriented perspective, delved into different application domains and provided us with a rich repertoire of invaluable models for the analysis phase of software development projects. More recently, David Hay has updated and complemented his original work and the OMG-sponsored Model-Driven Architecture has also led to similar catalogues using the UML notation (see Arlow and Neudstat's "Enterprise Patterns and MDA").

Even though the relatively typical dull prose of pattern catalogs is in this case exacerbated by some typos (showing the lack of proper copy editing work I hope will be fixed in future printings of this book), this book is still noteworthy for two reasons:

- Plenty of modeling diagrams (almost one per page) cover almost every situation you can find when developing business applications,

- and they do so by relying on a simple conceptual model, the REA model, which is in itself an interesting approach for the design of business applications [...]



PS: Here are the complete references to other pattern catalogs you might find of interest...

- Jim Arlow and Ila Neustadt: "Enterprise Patterns and MDA: Building better software with archetype patterns and UML," Pearson Education, 2003. ISBN 032111230X

- Martin Fowler: "Analysis Patterns: Reusable object models," Addison-Wesley, 1996. ISBN 0201895420

- David C. Hay: "Data Model Patterns: Conventions of Thought," Dorset House, 1995. ISBN 0932633293

- David C. Hay: "Data Model Patterns: A Metadata Map," Morgan Kaufmann, 2006. ISBN 0120887983

Design patterns, as general solutions to commonly occurring problems, were introduced in the software field by the landmark book by the so-called "Gang of Four" (Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, John Vlissides: "Design Patterns: Elements of reusable object-oriented software," Addison-Wesley, 1994. ISBN 0201633612 ). Even though design patterns were originally targeted at the design of object-oriented software systems, their use quickly spread to the analysis phase.

Pattern catalogs for analysts have been relatively successful because they provide extremely useful information for software analysts, novices and seasoned alike. Martin Fowler and David C. Hay were the first to produce pattern catalogs from the analyst's point of view. Both Fowler's analysis patterns, whose notation predates the now ubiquitous UML standard, and Hay's data model patterns, from a more database-oriented perspective, delved into different application domains and provided us with a rich repertoire of invaluable models for the analysis phase of software development projects. More recently, David Hay has updated and complemented his original work and the OMG-sponsored Model-Driven Architecture has also led to similar catalogues using the UML notation (see Arlow and Neudstat's "Enterprise Patterns and MDA").

Even though the relatively typical dull prose of pattern catalogs is in this case exacerbated by some typos (showing the lack of proper copy editing work I hope will be fixed in future printings of this book), this book is still noteworthy for two reasons:

- Plenty of modeling diagrams (almost one per page) cover almost every situation you can find when developing business applications,

- and they do so by relying on a simple conceptual model, the REA model, which is in itself an interesting approach for the design of business applications [...]



PS: Here are the complete references to other pattern catalogs you might find of interest...

- Jim Arlow and Ila Neustadt: "Enterprise Patterns and MDA: Building better software with archetype patterns and UML," Pearson Education, 2003. ISBN 032111230X

- Martin Fowler: "Analysis Patterns: Reusable object models," Addison-Wesley, 1996. ISBN 0201895420

- David C. Hay: "Data Model Patterns: Conventions of Thought," Dorset House, 1995. ISBN 0932633293

- David C. Hay: "Data Model Patterns: A Metadata Map," Morgan Kaufmann, 2006. ISBN 0120887983